By Michelle Harder Fundraising Consultant
Legacy funds provide funds to your favourite charity that can last a lifetime and create a lasting memorial for you and your family. When planning your financial future, consider making a legacy gift you and your family will be proud of.
Leaving a legacy gift with the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association can be easily achieved with a gift by will or funded with appreciated securities or life insurance.
Giving in this way can also reduce your personal taxes and increase benefits to your estate and its beneficiaries.
Here are the ways you can finance a legacy gift:
- Securities – With the elimination of capital gains taxes on donations of publicly traded securities, these gifts are now the most tax-efficient way to make a charitable donation and a great way for donors to make a greater impact with their gift. This includes mutual funds, stocks, bonds, bills, warrants, and futures traded on approved stock exchanges in Canada and other countries.
- Life Insurance – A donor can make an outright gift of life insurance to a charity by transferring the policy ownership today or by naming the charity as a future beneficiary, and the gift will be transferred outside of the probate process in private.
- Retirement Funds – Use tax-deferred assets accumulated for your retirement after you no longer require them. Convert an ‘end of life’ tax liability into a meaningful charitable gift and retain control to make revisions quickly should your future circumstances change.
- Bequests – A Charitable Bequest is a gift by will and is perhaps the simplest and most common form of planned gift to arrange. This can be a set amount or a percentage of your remaining estate. Even if you already have a will, you can easily add what is called a codicil to designate your gift.
- Endowments – A gift of capital, funded with any of the assets listed above, can be used to establish an endowed fund held and invested to generate interest and dividend earnings for the benefit of a charitable organization. Often, people set up a fund either through the charity or with a local community foundation to achieve this type of gift.
You should always consult your professional financial advisors and lawyer to set up this gift to make sure you are achieving your goals financially and personally. Different tax benefits accompany all of these strategies, so it is important to be clear on those and make sure they match your personal financial goals.
Legacy gifts are often set up to give in perpetuity, but not always. Legacy giving is really giving people the opportunity to continue their generosity after they are gone. To continue to support the causes that were important to you in your lifetime. If people have no heirs or children that have achieved a level of success and they do not need your entire estate, legacy giving is a great option to perpetuate your generosity for generations to come.
Give us a call if you would like to discuss these options or need some additional information. These gifts are a process and take some time to consider thoughtfully.
We are here to support you in any way that we can.