Follow These Three Steps to Give to Charity

How do you decide what to give to charity, when, and on what conditions? Here’s a three-step checklist to help decide what elements of your estate to give to charity and how to do so:

Step 1. Determine what are some steadfast, hardcore, and reliable causes that you believe in and that likely can be supported in years to come. While you can’t guarantee that certain charities will still be around, certain causes will have reliable, lasting meaning for you and/or your family. Though no one needs to be vested necessarily, these become your default charities or causes.

Step 2. Consider trusteeing your gift. Allow for your trustee or family donor advisor to substitute their judgment and select which deserving charity organizations to donate to following your passing. This can be useful given that charities come and go and your belief in them can fade over time. You may believe in causes and even your religion with confidence, but as far as which actual institutions can be entrusted may be another matter.

Step 3. Figure out how to relate the gift to your overall estate. This can be done by providing a cap on the gift that is expressed in dollars, percentages, or both. For example, if you decided to give $50,000 to a particular cause, you could cap that by requesting that it not exceed 5% of your estate. That way, if your estate were under a million dollars, your gift to charity would be reduced accordingly. Similarly, you could decide to give a percentage of the estate, but don’t want that number to drop below or go above a certain quantity. An example of this would be to give 10% of your estate to environmental causes but you do not want to give more than $100,000, so you cap the 10% of your estate at $100,000 to avoid an excessive gift.

See how these two estates selected charities and continue to benefit causes that were important to their donors: NEADS Service Dogs Benefit from a Miford Couple’s Estate and Acadia National Park Receives Philanthropic Gift.