Why this may be the perfect time to set up a charitable foundation
The three stages to setting up a foundation with key advantages over simply donating from your operating expenses.
Even if your credit union is well established as community benefactor, in times of intense turmoil you may feel called upon to stand up and make a new, visible act of leadership and service. This maybe a perfect time to create a charitable foundation and to use it as a platform to engage and support your community on behalf of your employees and members.
More Than a Charity
A foundation gives you more than a mechanism for distributing donations. The advantages include:
- It creates a public forum that can shine a light on specific community needs, and the leverage to gather donations from employees, members and other charitable organizations.
- Contributions to a properly set up foundation are tax-deductible. This can be crucial for certain community development or relief causes that don’t otherwise have a channel for tax-deductible contributions. For example, local small businesses affected by the pandemic or another catastrophe probably can’t get tax-deductible contributions directly—but your foundation could accept tax-deductible contributions and distribute them to these businesses.
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