I’ve had a good adult life – being a university professor, consultant and author; living part-time in Denmark for 20 years; retiring at 54 and regularly traveling internationally to about 90 countries.
It’s a far cry from my poor childhood. I remember my parents sitting together every two weeks. My father would pull a piece of paper from his wallet with two lists of bills to be paid – the first of the month on one side and the middle of the month on the other side. After going through the list, they would discuss other needed immediate expenses – clothing, school supplies, household items, etc. What was left of the money became my mother’s budget for our food for the next two weeks. Because of that process, I overcompensated later in life when it came to financial planning, especially in terms of saving and investing.
Federal IRS rules allow up to $100,000 a year to be donated from an IRA to nonprofit organizations without paying income taxes. For years, I had been supporting local nonprofits with income left after having paid taxes. My personal investments and my IRA were with Vanguard, so I first checked out Vanguard Charitable. But I wanted to support some small local organizations, and the minimum amounts Vanguard specified per organization were too high.
Then I thought of the San Antonio Area Foundation. It provided the perfect opportunity for me. It’s local, it allows smaller donations (as low as $250) and it is a nonprofit itself, which means I can donate to it and let the Area Foundation funnel my donations to my charities. I set up a Designated Fund for local nonprofit news and entertainment organizations.
The Area Foundation allows me to file a plan every three years designating which charities are to get funding year-by-year and how much. It is such an easy way to support all my charities that I have also revised my will and beneficiary designations so that my estate will go into my fund at the Area Foundation when I die, allowing my chosen charities (and similar ones) to continue to receive support in perpetuity after my death. I’m also looking into donating a former rental property that I own to the Area Foundation to add even more money to my fund.
The staff at the Area Foundation have treated me like family even though I am a “small fry” in terms of my contribution size. I am regularly invited to donor events to learn up-close about causes and nonprofits they support. During the past year, these have included trips such as Lightscape at the San Antonio Botanical Garden at Christmas, a Fiesta luncheon including a boat trip on the River Walk and a reception at the gallery of an artist who is being funded to do work with school children.
I would highly recommend that you consider choosing to donate through the Area Foundation. It’s a friendly one-stop organization for giving. Your gift can go toward the many wonderful local projects the organization supports directly, but there is the option of a personally tailored plan to assure that your gifts go exactly where you want them to be sent.
If, like me, you want to donate unneeded retirement fund money while you are still living, keep in mind that the Area Foundation can advise you how to convert a 401K or a 403B retirement fund into an IRA allowing your withdrawals to be sent directly to them tax-free. Through this process, you will be providing a greater amount of impact on the community than just personally giving directly to charities – the best part is that the Area Foundation does all the work for you!
