Giving through your estate plan to the Foundation for Accelerated Vascular Research benefits you, your loved ones, and the fight against vascular disease. Estate planning, typically called planned giving, can allow you to give a charitable donation at a level that you might not have thought possible, while maximizing the tax benefits to you and your family. Planned gifts often come from assets rather than income. Some types of gifts include:
- Wills or Bequests
- Real estate
- Life insurance
- Mutual funds
- Donor Advised Fund
You can make a contribution to FAVR by carefully planning your will, trust, insurance policy, stocks or other financial or property documents. While you may want to confer with your legal and financial advisors, here are some basic planning tips to help you start the process.
How to Make an Estate Gift
To make a gift to FAVR from your estate, you should contact a trusted legal or financial advisor, who can help you develop a plan for making charitable gifts that complement you current investment and estate plans. Your advisor can help you determine:
- The type of gift to make (bequest, trust, mutual fund, etc.)
- The appropriate gift level based on your circumstances
- The tax implications of your gift
- How to structure the gift to benefit both you and FAVR
Bequests - Wills and Trusts
Property that you leave to FAVR through your will is exempt from estate taxes and counts as a deduction when calculating your taxable estate. You can give a specific dollar amount, a percentage of your estate, or specific assets such as marketable securities, stocks or retirement accounts.
Bequests can either be specific or residual. The typical legal language for a specific bequest is:
“I leave (dollar amount) to the Foundation for Accelerated Vascular Research, whose national office is currently located at 400 Oyster Point Blvd, Suite 130, South San Francisco, CA 94080, to be used for general purposes.”
For residual bequests the typical legal language is:
“I give to The Foundation for Accelerated Vascular Research, whose national office is currently located at 400 Oyster Point Blvd, Suite 130, South San Francisco, CA 94080, (all or ___ percent) of the rest, residue and remainder of my (estate or trust or retirement assets), to be used for general purposes.”
Life Insurance Policies
When a paid-up life insurance policy is no longer needed to serve its original purpose of providing security for loved ones, you can still put the money to good use either by giving the policy outright or by completing a change-of-beneficiary form designating FAVR as a beneficiary.
