Today was the big day. I’ve been committed to acquiring a legacy plan, now, for almost a year and a half. Of course, I don’t merely want a plan; I want to implement a plan. But simply to get a proposal in hand so Sarita and I can look at it and (hopefully) say, “Yay, verily, this is what we want to do . . . ” –It’s been just shy of a year and a half.
So our legacy planner and his assistant came to our office and we spent about 3 1/2 hours going through their proposed plan. And it includes:
A homeschooling acquaintance of mine who goes by the online moniker “Prairie Chick” posted a story that inspired me about how to pass on and reinforce family values even among elementary school-age children (let alone older children and adults).
I saw her story on the Sonlight forums. When I asked her permission to share it here, she noted that she had also posted it on one of her blogs, The Prairie Schoolhouse.
The majority of foundations defrauded by [Bernie] Madoff had four or fewer trustees. More than 80% of foundations that lost between 30 to 100% of their assets to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme had
As I prepare for the inevitable, I am realizing how important it is to consolidate my records. I haven’t done this. I have plans. . . for what is to happen with my estate when I die. I have all the paperwork in order. Or so my advisors tell me.
But I haven’t prepared the kinds of records that will enable my survivors easily to tie up whatever loose ends my death will create. And that’s where
I’ve been writing about some tools that can help you record your personal, family history.
I recently finished Bill Gates, Sr.’s book Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. It’s not a particularly remarkable book among all the books one might read. But it struck me, as I read it: It is one man’s testament, one man’s summation of “lessons from life,” and it’s a good model of the kind of thing parents might do for their children in terms of memorializing family history, values, purpose, and so forth.
I described the technical differences between donor-advised funds (DAFs) and private foundations back in June of 2007. Frankly, at the time, I saw no compelling reason seriously to consider creating a DAF.
Following the FoundationWiseSM conference, however, I’m seeing more reasons than I did back then to consider this alternative.
I had the privilege of attending the first FoundationWiseSM conference at Focus on the Family the week before last.
FoundationWiseSM is meant to help people who “own” and operate private foundations to do a better job.
As I looked at the various workshops available for participants, it seemed to me that there were to primary tracks: one having to do with succession planning–passing on the vision and purpose to the next generation, and one having to do, more, with success on the “business” end of things–keeping good corporate records, ensuring your within the bounds of the law, investing successfully, and so forth. I followed the “succession planning” track.
One of the key questions I hoped to answer had to do with passing responsibility to the next generation: How can I know that they will carry on pursuing a vision that I would want them to pursue? Put another way: if I’m leaving them significant funds for charitable purposes, how can I ensure that they won’t take those funds and potentially turn them to uses possibly diametrically opposed to those for which I would have given them?
I mean, it is so common for nonprofits to wind up doing things very differently than their founders intended!
Intermixed in this larger question: How do we encourage our children in the ways of generosity?I thought some of the answers were very insightful. Here are some of the things that people suggested (not necessarily in order):
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I recently finished Bill Gates, Sr.’s book 
