Greetings!
Bet you didn’t know that May is LEAVE A LEGACY™ month, did you? The goal of this promotional campaign is to raise awareness among Canadians about planned giving.
Planned giving is the process of including charitable gifts in estate and financial planning. The simplest example of a planned gift is a bequest, which is a lawyerly word for a gift made through a will.
The 2014 edition of Scotiabank’s annual Investment Poll, released last month, discovered that 22% of Canadians with a written will plan to leave some part of their estate to charity. But we also know that a large percentage of Canadian adults, some research suggests up to a half , don’t have a will.
For these reasons we have decided to devote this issue of ELFEC News to the personal aspects of planned giving.
HYRTCIYW?
No, we haven’t suddenly taken up a Slavic language. HYRTCIYW is a memory-jogger that stands for the question “Have You Remembered The Church In Your Will?”
In more than 17 years of gift planning for the church we have observed that bequests are by far the most commonly used way of leaving a legacy. More than three-quarters of all the planned gifts we have recorded come as a gift in a will. That is probably because:
- Every adult really should have a will, even if they don’t think they need one.Most of us underestimate the legal difficulties that we could leave behind if we die without a will (“intestate”).
- The cost of having a lawyer prepare a will is not increased by asking for a simple bequest clause.This is very basic stuff for an experienced estate lawyer.Lutheran Planned Giving has sample bequest clauses to help you think about how to structure your gift.
- A bequest is democratic. You don’t have to be Bill Gates or Lord Thomson of Fleet to be a philanthropist. Anyone can leave part of their estate to the church or other charities. In fact most gifts to the church that we see come from ordinary people (just like us) and are measured in thousands of dollars, not millions.
- Like any other charitable gift, a bequest produces income tax credits that reduce the cost of generosity.
There are other ways of making a planned gift which you can read about by clicking the link in the sidebar. Not every type of gift is appropriate for every person, but in its proper place each can be a wonderful way to leave a legacy.
And if You Have Already RTCIYW?
If you have already remembered the church in your will, will you let us know? We have a database with the names of several hundred people who have already told us about their planned gifts. With a simple phone call or email, you could be added to the list of people we call “Friends of Lutheran Planned Giving”.
Telling us that you are a donor allows us to express thanks while you are around to hear how much the church appreciates your generosity. We keep all information confidential, and we won’t embarrass you with over-the-top recognition. That’s a promise.
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