How planned giving expands literacy and girls' education worldwide
U.S. charitable bequests reached $62.2 billion in 2025, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the prior year, according to the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Individuals and bequests together accounted for 74 percent of all charitable giving that year, a distribution that reflects the growing weight of long-term estate commitments in sustaining nonprofit work. Alongside this shift in giving patterns, UNESCO reports that approximately 251 million children and adolescents remain out of school worldwide, and the World Bank and UNICEF find that 70 percent of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text. These figures describe a problem that outlasts any single grant cycle and requires funding built for decades rather than years. Room to Read, a nonprofit organization operating literacy and girls’ education programs across low- and middle-income countries, treats planned gifts as one channel suited to that kind of duration. A planned gift is a charitable contribution arranged during a person’s lifetime and fulfilled later through an estate, a trust or a beneficiary designation. Unlike an annual cash gift, it draws on assets a person has already accumulated, which makes it accessible to people who want to support long-term work without changing their current budget. These are four main giving options, each suited to different financial circumstances. A bequest in a will or living trust, naming a fixed amount, a percentage of an estate or a specific asset A beneficiary designation on a retirement account, life insurance policy or donor-advised fund A charitable remainder trust, which pays income to the donor or a named beneficiary before the remainder passes to the nonprofit A qualified charitable distribution from an individual retirement account for donors age 70 and a half or older Each structure routes an asset to a nonprofit on a different timeline, but all of them convert an existing asset into future program funding rather than requiring new cash flow. Many planned gifts also carry tax treatment that shapes which vehicle someone may choose. A gift of appreciated stock or property can avoid the capital gains tax a donor would owe on a sale, and a qualified charitable distribution counts toward a required minimum withdrawal without adding to taxable income. These advantages do not change the underlying value of a gift to a nonprofit, but they often determine which structure fits each person’s unique financial situation. A 2018 World Bank study found that limited educational opportunities for girls, including barriers to completing 12 years of schooling, cost countries between $15 trillion and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings. That estimate reflects a compounding effect, since each additional year of secondary school raises a girl’s future earnings and delays early marriage, and the resulting economic cost accumulates across a generation rather than a single year. The shortage extends to the educators who deliver instruction. UNESCO estimates the world needs 44 million additional primary and secondary teachers by 2030, a gap the organization projects would cost approximately $120 billion annually in salaries alone to close. Closing that gap depends on sustained investment in recruiting, training and retaining educators rather than a single wave of hiring. Programs designed to close these gaps cannot be built or evaluated within a single fiscal year. Local-language storybook development, for example, moves through drafting with local authors, testing with young readers and revision before a title is ready for a classroom, a process we run over multiple publishing cycles rather than a single season. Educator coaching follows a similar arc, since instructional habits shift only after repeated classroom observation and feedback rather than a one-time training session. Because program design operates on this timeline, funding that is committed years in advance lets an organization plan curriculum development, educator coaching and school-based mentoring without pausing between grant cycles. A bequest or beneficiary designation, realized on the donor’s timeline rather than an annual fundraising calendar, fits that structure more naturally than a gift that must be re-solicited every 12 months. Room to Read is a nonprofit organization founded in 2000 that operates a Literacy Program and a Girls’ Education Program in communities facing systemic barriers to education. We work alongside educators, local publishers and community-based staff rather than delivering programs unilaterally, and we collaborate with ministries of education to align our work with existing national curricula and school systems. Since 2000, we have reached 29 geographies and benefited 60.3 million children cumulatively. Within the Literacy Program specifically, we have benefited 55 million children cumulatively and distributed 45.7 million books, supporting reading environments built around local-language storybooks and child-friendly libraries. Within the Girls’ Education Program, we have benefited 4.4 million adolescents cumulatively, and more than 32,000 have graduated secondary school through the program to date. As of 2025, more than 90 percent of participants advance to the next grade, and more than 80 percent secure work or continue to tertiary education, outcomes tied to sustained mentoring rather than a single intervention. An unrestricted planned gift lets us commit to the multi-year cycles described above without waiting on annual renewal. In the Literacy Program, that can mean funding a local-language book pipeline from manuscript through classroom distribution, or supporting a multi-year coaching cycle for educators in a given geography. In the Girls’ Education Program, longer-horizon funding supports mentoring relationships that run across several years of secondary school, the same structure behind the completion and advancement rates described above. Donors can direct an unrestricted planned gift toward the Literacy Program, the Girls’ Education Program or both areas in their gift documentation. Our planned giving team can help translate that preference into language that continues to hold as a specific coaching cycle or mentoring cohort changes over a period of years. Because most planned gifts arrive unrestricted, we can direct them toward the geography or program area where a multi-year commitment is most needed at the time the gift is realized, rather than toward a fixed line item set years earlier. That flexibility matters for programs whose staffing and curriculum needs shift as a cohort of students moves through several grades of coaching or mentoring. Planning a bequest, a beneficiary designation or a charitable trust involves financial and legal considerations specific to each person, which is why we recommend a direct conversation rather than a generic set of instructions. Our planned giving team can walk through how a specific gift structure would apply to your estate and which program area it would support. Many people begin this conversation years before an estate plan is finalized, and a conversation with our team carries no obligation to move forward. Contact our planned giving team to discuss how a bequest, retirement account beneficiary designation or other planned gift can fund literacy and girls’ education programs for children in the geographies where we work.What planned giving can mean for you
Common structures for a planned gift
Why global education needs funding built for the long term
Why literacy and girls’ education programs run in multi-year cycles
What Room to Read is
Our reach in literacy and girls’ education
How planned gifts support our literacy and girls’ education work
How planned gifts differ from restricted program grants
How to start a conversation about your legacy