Leaving a Legacy:
A LOVE LETTER to Future Generations
It is the greatest pleasure of parents and grandparents to experience the joy and celebration of Jewish festivals, meaningful days, and learning experiences with their children. You have invested your time, resources, heart, and soul to ensure that l’dor v’dor is a reality. Your family, together with SAR, has been privileged to be active participants in the transmission of our values and practice to the next generation.
A LOVE LETTER TO FUTURE GENERATIONS:
If we would each be asked what our top lifetime priorities are, surely family and living a Jewish life based on Torah values would be among our top five. And if we were to write a LOVE LETTER to our children and grandchildren to communicate to them what matters– we would include those values and priorities.
Ensuring that your values live forever is our One More Child* to protect. And we each have a unique opportunity through this One More Child to pass our values onto the next generation while not truly taking away from our children.
That One More Child is Jewish education– and caring for that One More Child can be accomplished through a Legacy Gift to SAR– which becomes your Love Letter to future generations. Telling your family, through your actions, what matters to you.
A legacy gift makes a tremendous impact and clearly communicates your priorities. It gives a shape and a clear voice to your values. Through a legacy gift, your values live forever.
Directing Your Legacy Gift to the Endowment
Legacy giving is a deeply personal act of selflessness. Directing your gift to the SAR Endowment is a way to help ensure that Jewish education is accessible to future generations. The annual funding from the endowment is directed to the tuition assistance program, helps to minimize increases in tuition, and ensures the financial stability of SAR.
Consider making your legacy gift by:
- a bequest to SAR in your will
- naming SAR as a beneficiary of your IRA/retirement plan or one of your retirement accounts
- naming SAR as a beneficiary of your life insurance policy
Your tax advisor or estate attorney is the best person to give you guidance.
HOW DO YOU MAKE A LEGACY GIFT?
LEGACY GIFT Q&A
What is a bequest?
When a donor makes a “bequest,” they commit a gift through their will or living trust that takes effect after their lifetime. This is the most common way that people make a gift to charity at the time of death.
An increasing number of people are making planned charitable gifts through beneficiary designations of individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Withdrawals from a traditional IRA account are generally subject to ordinary income-tax rates. This rule applies to withdrawals made by heirs who inherit IRAs, as well as for the original account owner. However, leaving a gift to charity out of an IRA eliminates the income tax and provides the full amount to the charity. Another beneficiary designation gift includes life insurance.
How do bequests help SAR?
When the donation is made to SAR, the funds will follow any specific designation of the donor– whether the funds are directed to scholarship, Israel programming, alumni education, or any other specific program. If no designation is made, the donation will be used to help provide scholarship funds to families that qualify.
Who can make bequests?
Everyone can participate and make a bequest either through a will or beneficiary designation on a retirement account. You should speak with your tax advisor or estate attorney,
How do I make my Legacy Gift?
A Legacy Gift can be made via a bequest in your will, designating SAR as the beneficiary of a retirement account or life insurance policy, or by creating a trust. You should speak with your tax advisor or estate attorney,
See more Questions and Answers in the SAR ENDOWMENT info section.
Questions?
Please call or email Heidi Greenbaum, Director of Development if you have questions about SAR directed giving. For advice regarding your bequests, please contact your estate attorney, tax advisor, or retirement account custodian. SAR cannot offer tax or legal advice.
- Carol Karsch, an experienced Legacy Giving professional, and an SAR Grandparent, describes the act of planned giving in the most beautiful way– as One More Child. Carol has been instrumental in helping families leave the most beautiful legacies in the United States and Israel.
Here is an excerpt from one of Carol Karsch’s blogs:
“We are each endowed with different talents and advantages. Children, in particular, are a blessing that comes to some and not others.
But whether we have ten kids or none at all, we all have One More Child to worry about and protect. We each have a unique opportunity through this Child to pass our values on to the next generation. That One More Child is ‘community’, however we may wish to define it.”
Carol Karsch, a legacy expert, and SAR grandparent