We are pleased to have been able to participate in the Community Foundation’s video on planned giving! Nice job by Thousand Lumens putting together this video for the Foundation.
Charitable Giving Using a Community Foundation
One of the greatest privileges of being an estate planning attorney is working with clients who are making charitable gifts as part of their estate plan. Our clients’ charitable goals vary widely, but in many cases they leverage our local community foundation (or, in some cases, a community foundation in a different area) to support long-term charitable goals for our community that otherwise would not be workable.
Here’s how this potential partnership can work.
(Note that this post assumes an understanding of charitable giving basics. Our charitable giving primer can be found here. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm on the board of our local community foundation, the Community Foundation of Central Wisconsin. Wisconsin Rapids and Wausau also have their own foundations.)
Basics of Charitable Giving
One of the best parts of this job is working with people who want to include charitable giving in their estate plans. Here's how we like to talk about this.
We start with how charitable giving fits into the plan. Many of our clients' primary beneficiaries are individuals (like children), but they want to include charitable giving in a small way, typically by giving a small amount to their church or another organization they care about. For those folks, generally deciding on a gift is just a matter of deciding on an amount and an organization.
For others, charitable giving is the main objective, or is a significant portion of their plan.