Every Little Bit Adds Up: Charitable giving is for everyone...

I had the wonderful experience a few weeks ago thanks to my friend Pete Lafferty of Merril Lynch, to volunteer for a day at a Habitat for Humanity site and help build a house in North Minneapolis. You will all think that I am crazy, but I and 6-7 other volunteers spent about 5 hours swinging hammers and staple guns and the other hour was spent eating lunch and "putting a few things" together. It was fabulous!!!! The wall sections of the house were pre-made for us and we sheathed them with plywood (the hammering) and then we covered the plywood with water barrier paper( the staple guns). The "putting together" was putting up the walls that we had finished. The lesson here is that after 5 hours of nailing and stapling - we had a framed house. Ok.... so just the first floor - but still each little nail and staple helped us to put up the four walls of a house! Of course there was a foreman there to help us and his intern. They were great and so much fun. They had the plans and guided us to our goal. It didn't get the whole house built in a day but we got a great start.

Often times when we think about charitable giving, we think that we cannot make a difference with our small gifts of 10 dollars or even 100 or 1000 dollars. But you can, every bit helps and overtime those donations add up. You can even take those small donations and turn them into some larger ones with planning. make a blue print for your charitable giving goals.

There are several tools you can use to plan out your charitable giving strategy.

You can use the piggy bank method, putting a little aside each week or month and give annually,

You can give by setting up a charity as a or one of the beneficiaries of your will,

You can gift to a charity and to your family by using a Charitable Remainder Trust ( a trust that pays your family the income from the trust for a period of up to 20 years, and then the remainder of the trust goes to charity), or you can use a Charitable Lead Trust ( A trust that pays a charity the income from the trust fro a period of up to 20 years and then the remainder of the funds in that trust go to your family) - you can use a combination of them as well to continue the cash flow for both the charity and your family.

You can really leverage you dollars by using them to purchase a life insurance policy and putting that into the trust to begin to start paying out at your passing. This way your dollars buy much more than you might be able to give yourself.

If you are concerned about cash flow for yourself, many charities use a Charitable Annuity as a vehicle for making a gift to a charity... but also creating a steam of payments for you, the donor. Once your donation is annuitized you receive a stream of payments from the charity until such time as the termination of the agreed upon annuity period or until your passing. The remainder then stays with the charity as a gift. You benefit twice by receiving a deduction for your charitable gift upon setting up the annuity.

Another type of legacy charitable giving is to establish a family foundation that operates during your lifetime and beyond, giving you a chance to interact and give with younger generations as a family and teach them about planful giving and about the charities that are important to you,

No matter whether you use your hands or your dollars Charitable giving benefits everyone. Make a plan for yourself and see what you can accomplish>

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Every Little Bit Adds Up: Charitable giving is for everyone...

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