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How To Get Started with Legacy Giving

Feb 07, 2025

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Legacy giving is a powerful way to ensure that your values and priorities live on long after you’re gone and leave a lasting impact on your family and community for generations. Creating a strategic legacy-giving plan can enable you to make meaningful contributions to causes you care about and benefit society. 

By establishing one or more legacy gifts, you not only help shape the future of your community but you can also create a lasting tradition within your family, ensuring that your generosity and vision will endure for generations.

Continue reading to learn more about how you can start building your legacy today, or contact Greater Houston Community Foundation at 713-333-2210 to get started. 

Key Insights

  • Legacy giving involves making charitable contributions that extend beyond 
  •  your lifetime, aiming to create a lasting impact, preserve personal values, and support causes that align with one’s priorities.
  • Legacy giving provides significant tax advantages, fosters a sense of purpose, sustains vital community programs, and can ensure the continuation of your values and charitable intent. 
  • Common misconceptions about legacy giving include that it is only for the wealthy,  overly complex, or requires large immediate donations. In reality, legacy giving is accessible, can be simple with proper guidance, and often involves future-oriented gifts.
  • Legacy gifts are most effective when incorporated into comprehensive estate and financial plans, ensuring alignment with broader wealth and philanthropic goals.
  • Success begins with assessing financial resources, defining charitable goals, and partnering with organizations that align with your values. 
  • Professional advisors play a key role in ensuring plans are strategic and legally sound.

Table of Contents

What is legacy giving?

Legacy giving is the act of making charitable contributions that extend beyond your lifetime. Legacy gifts go deeper than traditional philanthropic financial planning and aim to create an infrastructure of giving that will create a lasting impact, adapt to changes in the philanthropic landscape, and preserve your values. 

There are several ways donors approach creating a legacy plan. They can include bequests, trusts, retirement plan gifts, forming scholarships, and other types of giving vehicles—these strategies are integrated into your broader estate planning and charitable giving strategies.

Understanding legacy giving programs

Legacy gifts are typically part of a comprehensive estate plan, which should work in concert with your overall financial planning to create a plan for generational wealth preservation. Legacy plans are much more effective when integrated into estate and financial plans and vice versa. 

Venn diagram of the relationship between financial, estate, and legacy planning.

Legacy giving vs planned giving

It’s important to clarify that “legacy giving” is often referred to as “planned giving,” and while these terms are typically used interchangeably, their context can differ. 

The key difference: planned giving includes both current and future gifts that require financial structuring. Legacy giving focuses specifically on gifts made through estate plans, ensuring a donor’s charitable impact continues after their lifetime.

Common types of legacy gifts

Legacy planning involves various methods to ensure your values and charitable goals are reflected in your giving. While many individuals consider making specific gifts directly to charities in their wills and trusts, this approach can be legally cumbersome and less flexible. Instead, we highly recommend establishing a donor advised fund (DAF) at the Foundation as a more straightforward solution for legacy planning.

With a donor advised fund, you can easily direct your charitable giving without the need for frequent updates to your legal documents. When you set up a DAF, you can name it as the recipient of your bequests in your estate plan. This means that upon your passing, the funds will be distributed according to your wishes, allowing you to support various nonprofits without the hassle of modifying your will or trust every time you want to add a new charity or change your planned gifts.

This streamlined approach not only simplifies the legacy planning process but also provides you the flexibility to respond to changing philanthropic interests over time. All you need to do is update your planned gifts on file with the Foundation, ensuring your legacy continues to resonate with your values. 

Incorporating legacy gifts into your financial plan can come in many forms, and each comes with unique benefits. Some popular forms of legacy gifts include:

  • Charitable bequests involve including specific gifts to charities in your will or trust. This can also be achieved by using your donor advised fund to facilitate these specific charitable distributions on your behalf. By naming your DAF in your will or trust, you streamline your estate planning. Additionally, you can easily modify the beneficiaries and amounts of your planned gifts by updating your legacy plan with the community foundation.
  • Charitable trusts include instruments like charitable remainder or lead trusts, which can help balance giving and income needs. Your donor advised fund, scholarship fund, or any other charitable fund you establish at the Foundation, can be the beneficiary of these trusts. Donors can work with our legacy planning team to record and preserve their preferences for how any legacy assets are allocated when received by the fund.
  • Gifts of noncash assets can also be the sources of gifts if you designate your donor advised fund as the beneficiary on the plans. These assets can include vacation homes, real estate, life insurance, and privately held business interests. 

The benefits of legacy giving

  1. Tax benefits. Legacy giving can offer donors significant tax advantages, including deductions on estate and income taxes. This can allow you to maximize the value of your contributions while minimizing overall tax liability.
  2. Impact through sustainability. Supporting charitable organizations helps sustain vital programs and services that can positively affect future generations.
  3. Building a lasting legacy: Donors have the opportunity to create a lasting impact on their community or favored causes, ensuring their legacy continues through future generations.
  4. Encouragement of Family Discussion: If you choose to involve your family, legacy giving can open up important conversations about philanthropy and values between generations and foster a culture of giving.

Continue reading about the benefits of philanthropy

Common misconceptions about legacy gifts

Many donors hesitate to explore legacy giving due to common misunderstandings. Some popular misconceptions about legacy gifts include:

  • “It’s only for the wealthy.” Legacy giving is accessible to donors across all income levels. Contributions can be tailored to fit your unique needs and can benefit those in many different financial situations.
  • “It’s complicated.” While planning may seem complex, setting up legacy gifts can be quite simple—and working with knowledgeable advisors can streamline the process even further.
  • “It requires a large, immediate donation.” Because legacy giving, in particular, involves future-oriented gifts, these gifts may not necessarily impact your current financial resources.
  • “It’s only for the next generation.” Many individuals use their legacy planning to support charitable organizations or causes that matter to them, which can create lasting change in society. This motivation often transcends family ties and focuses on broader social impact.
  • “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime task.” Legacy planning is an ongoing process that requires ongoing updates and review. Circumstances and goals can change over time, so it’s essential to revisit and refine the plan regularly.

If you share these concerns or have other questions you would like to address, don’t hesitate to reach out to Greater Houston Community Foundation (Foundation). We can collaborate with you and your professional advisors to ensure that your giving plan aligns with your overall financial needs and goals and can help make giving easy. 

Assessing your philanthropic goals and values

A successful legacy-giving plan begins with clearly understanding your goals and values. Reflecting on what matters most to you will help you create a plan that aligns with your priorities. If you’re currently just beginning your legacy gifting journey, there are some questions you might want to ask yourself.

To identify your charitable goals and priorities, ask yourself:What causes or organizations have made a difference in your life?
Are there specific issues you wish to address?
Do you want your legacy to support a specific local community, or have a wider reach?
To better understand your values, ask yourself:For example, do you prioritize education, healthcare, or environmental conservation?
Are there social issues that are close to your heart?
Are you passionate about helping underserved communities?
To match your goals and values with a legacy giving plan, ask yourself:What are your top charitable interests?
What organizations do work that you admire?
Can your philanthropic advisors help you make giving to those causes work within your current financial framework? 

The Foundation provides unique, comprehensive planned giving and charitable estate planning support that leverages a variety of giving tools. Together, we can create a legacy plan that will ensure your philanthropic values are carried on in the future.

Legacy giving strategies

Developing a thoughtful legacy-giving strategy begins with a clear assessment of your financial resources and goals. Once you’ve defined the specific impact you want to make, whether it’s supporting educational initiatives, healthcare services, or other causes you’re passionate about, you should take inventory of your resources. As part of this process, take an inventory of your resources, cataloging assets such as cash, real estate, investments, retirement accounts, insurance policies, and any other valuable resources.

To create a more holistic legacy-giving approach, consider how philanthropic institutions like the Foundation can collaborate with you and your professional advisors. By working together, your legacy giving can be seamlessly integrated into your overall financial and estate planning. This collaboration ensures that your strategy is comprehensive and aligned with your goals.

Incorporating legacy giving into your will or estate plan

Incorporating legacy giving into your will or estate plan is a key step in this process. To ensure your plan is financially, strategically, and legally sound, engage with estate planning professionals who will work alongside your existing advisors. Additionally, they can assist in making charitable bequests in your will and naming your donor advised fund or other charitable fund at the Foundation as beneficiaries of your retirement accounts or life insurance policies. 

For those seeking to establish a long-term structure in their giving plans, establishing a charitable trust or donor advised fund can provide ongoing support for the causes you care about most. This partnership not only simplifies the process but also amplifies your impact, ensuring that your legacy continues to support your chosen causes for generations to come.

Interested in getting started with legacy giving? The Foundation can help.

Are you ready to leave a lasting legacy that reflects your values and makes a meaningful impact in the community? At the Foundation, we specialize in guiding donors like you through the transformative journey of legacy giving. With our extensive local expertise and personalized support, we connect you with organizations that align with your vision and amplify your philanthropic goals. We can help you decide what type of charitable vehicles work best for you and your plans. Whether or not you have successors to involve in your legacy planning, the Foundation serves as a central hub where your donor intent is documented and honored—long after you are gone. Let’s ensure that your legacy not only endures but continues to inspire meaningful change in the community for generations to come.

If you are starting to think about your legacy or are ready to create a plan, our team of philanthropic advisors is here to assist you at every stage. We use engaging exercises and discussions focused on your values to help clarify your vision and translate it into actionable steps. Our goal is to assist you in documenting your donor intent. Whether you prefer a straightforward strategy or a more comprehensive plan, and whether you already have specific recipients in mind or are starting from the ground up, the Foundation stands as your trusted philanthropic partner, offering personalized solutions that align with your unique goals and aspirations.

Don’t let your vision for the future remain just a vision. Take the first step toward creating a lasting legacy that reflects your values and makes a meaningful difference in our community. 

Connect with Jennifer Touchet, Vice President of Personal and Family Philanthropy at 713-333-2228 or reach out directly to get started. Your impact starts here!

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