(MONEY Magazine) – Life insurance agents lately have been making this pitch: Buy one of our policies and name a charity you like as beneflciary and owner. Your premiums, they say, will be tax deductible; the charity can use the policy's cash value, if any, during your lifetime; and after you die, the charity gets your death beneflt. Sounds good. But it ain't necessarily so. Charitable life may not be a smart way to give to your favorite cause. If you were to live beyond your actuarial life expectancy -- the average is 72 for men and 79 for women -- the charity would generally lose on the deal. That's because the death beneflt would probably be smaller than what the group could have earned if you gave the charity an amount equal to your premiums instead and let it invest the cash.

Moreover, there's the risk that you may let the policy lapse. Then the charity loses the premiums you paid to the insurer as well as the death beneflt. Worse, insurance policies are freighted with huge sales charges. In the case of New York Life's Charitable Adjustable Life policy, for instance, about 50% of your flrst-year premium and 3.5% of subsequent premiums for the flrst 10 years go toward commissions. "It's naive to think that a policy's investment growth would be enough to make up for charges like that," says Mark White, president of Direct Insurance Services, a discounter in San Diego. Our advice: If you want to help a charity, avoid the middleman and make a direct contribution.