Helping Your Clients Show They Care
Money, mortality, and family relationships. Each of those topics alone can be tough for anyone to address head on, and when you combine them, it’s no wonder so many people put off setting up or updating their estate plans. Establishing a will, trust, and beneficiary designations forces a person to confront decisions about the ultimate division of their assets, and many people think estate planning is more expensive or more of a hassle than it really is.
Helping your clients get their affairs in order–well before they need to due to age or illness–is truly a gift to them and their heirs. It’s extremely stressful for surviving spouses, children, and other loved ones to be faced with the emotional stress and workload of financial disorganization and uncertainty, on top of dealing with grief. Updating estate plans also allows clients to make arrangements for gifts upon their death to their favorite charities.
Many people choose to support their favorite charities in an estate plan through a beneficiary designation. As you work with your clients, be sure to review the beneficiary designations on insurance policies and retirement plans. Pay close attention to tax-deferred retirement plans such as 401(k)s and IRAs. Typically, individuals will name their spouse as the primary beneficiary of these accounts to provide income following your death and to comply with legal requirements. But as you and your clients evaluate whom to name as a secondary beneficiary of these tax-deferred accounts, don’t automatically default to naming the children or a revocable trust. You and your clients may determine that naming a charity, such as a fund at the community foundation, is by far the most tax-efficient, streamlined way to make gifts to your favorite causes upon your death and establish a philanthropic legacy. A bequest like this avoids not only estate tax, but also income tax on the retirement plan distributions.
Please reach out to the team at the community foundation as you work with your clients on their estate plans. We can:
–Review the many tax benefits of naming a fund established by your clients at the community foundation as a beneficiary of their IRA or other tax-deferred retirement account
–Provide bequest language for your clients’ wills or trusts, properly describing their fund using the correct legal terms
–Provide language for a beneficiary designation, again properly describing your clients’ funds using the correct legal terms
–Work with you and your clients to update the terms of their donor-advised fund so that their wishes are carried out following their death, whether that is naming specific charities to receive distributions or naming children as successor advisors to the fund
We’ve all heard stories about the sad consequences of someone not having an estate plan, or even having out-of-date beneficiary designations. Estate planning documents, including wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations, often turn out to represent generous acts of clear distribution and conflict avoidance. An estate plan allows your clients to demonstrate how much they care about the people in their lives as well as their charitable passions.
Big or Small, Every Gift Matters
Simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness have long been cornerstones of working with the community foundation to carry out charitable goals. Time and time again at the community foundation, we see how easily donors who’ve established a donor-advised or other type of fund are able to not only fulfill their big-picture charitable goals, but to act quickly to respond to critical needs in the community as they occur..
Indeed, the flexibility of working with the community foundation allows you to support the causes you love at a financial level that meets your charitable giving budget. Early in the year, many of our fund holders transfer highly-appreciated stock to their donor-advised fund, for example, at the community foundation so that they are prepared to activate their annual giving right away.
At every level of giving, philanthropy is a catalyst for improving quality of life. Indeed, anyone with a willingness to give can be a philanthropist. Whether you’re using your donor-advised fund to give $250 to a college or university, $2500 to a food bank, or $25,000 to an art museum’s endowment, you’re making a difference.
Consider that small donations from a large number of people can make a huge difference. This is especially true for responses to disasters and humanitarian tragedies. On the other end of the spectrum, very large donations to an organization can transform its ability to scale and serve a much greater population.
In so many ways, whether gifts are large or small or somewhere in between, philanthropy creates the margin of excellence that helps communities, families, and individuals thrive. The team at the community foundation is here to help you achieve satisfaction and impact with your giving at any level.
A Legacy Continues with the Vernon and Myrtle Webster Scholarship
The Hardy County Community Foundation is pleased to welcome the addition of the Vernon and Myrtle Webster Scholarship Fund.
Myrtle Webster established the Vernon Webster Scholarship shortly after Vernon’s death in 1980. After the death of Myrtle in 2009, their three children, Vernon, Buddy, and Annabelle, added to it and changed the name to the Vernon and Myrtle Webster Scholarship. The scholarship has been administered by the Hardy County Board of Education, but was recently transferred to the Hardy County Community Foundation where it will continue to honor the legacy of two exceptional individuals who valued and supported education.
Vernon Webster was born in 1910 near Wardensville, WV, the oldest of three sons whose father died when he was twelve years old. Myrtle (Shockey) Webster was born in 1917 near Moorefield, into a family of 8 brothers and sisters.
Vernon operated a saw mill for a while then drove a truck for Rockingham Poultry for several years while Myrtle owned and managed a restaurant in the 1950’s. They eventually decided to open a television, appliance, and furniture store known as VW Webster Furniture and Appliances until they retired. Myrtle clerked the store and Webster did the deliveries and television and appliance repair. They were members of Duffy Memorial United Methodist Church in Moorefield. Vernon was a long-time member of the Moorefield Lions Club and served on the Moorefield Town Council.
Both Vernon and Myrtle had only eighth-grade educations, and while they still achieved great success as a result of their initiative, perseverance, and hard work, they always saw the value of a good education. They staunchly supported funding initiatives for the local school system and were strong supporters of higher education. Nearly all their descendants and their spouses have acquired or are pursuing college degrees.
The Webster’s interest in supporting education grew out of attending their children’s sporting events at Moorefield High School. Vernon and Buddy were active in three sports and Annabelle was a cheerleader.
Myrtle had a great love of high school basketball and attended games into her late 80’s. Over the decades she watched her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren play. She also grew to know many of the other players and their parents.
As Myrtle watched the students play, she took an interest in their futures and always enjoyed hearing about them becoming successful adults and reaching their full potential. She wanted to help others further their education and believed in rewarding academic excellence and community involvement. A scholarship seemed like a great way to achieve both. Vernon and Myrtle’s commitment to education has benefitted Moorefield High School seniors for over 40 years, and will continue to do so another 40 years and beyond.
The Hardy County Community Foundation is currently accepting applications for scholarships, including the Vernon and Myrtle Webster Scholarship, now through 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 28th for the 2024-25 school year. Moorefield and East Hardy high school seniors scheduled to graduate this spring are invited to apply using an online application which may accessed online at: https://ewvcf.awardspring.com
Cacapon TNR Helps Feral Cats Lead Their Best Lives
The mission of Cacapon TNR (Trap Neuter Release) is to reduce the community feral cat population in Hampshire County, WV through the humane trapping of stray cats, spaying/neutering/vaccinating, and then returning them to their home (TNR). Their efforts not only help reduce the cat population but also improve the health and well-being of the cats.
“Kindhearted people start feeding a stray cat and that stray becomes 30 cats in just a few years. Breeding cats are prone to illnesses, birth defects, and diseases, which cause great suffering for the cats and a heartbreaking and unmanageable burden for the people trying to care from them,” says Loree O’Hagan, the organization’s director.
With the help of a $1,000 Hampshire County Community Impact Grant, Cacapon TNR was able to help 6 caretakers trap-neuter-return 16 community cats. All of the cats received the standard treatment package which includes spay/neuter surgery, rabies vaccine, FVRCP vaccine, ear-tip, and a dose of Revolution to treat fleas, ticks, ear mites, and some intestinal worms. Five of the cats needed additional treatments, which included a dental cleaning/tooth extractions, various antibiotics, and tapeworm medication.
While the work they do is extremely rewarding, O’Hagan admits that it can be challenging.
“Cacapon TNR is a series of unforeseen circumstances and challenges,” she says. “The biggest challenge is working with community cat caretakers. Trapping cats that cannot be handled requires hunger. Cats have a natural fear of anything new in their environment, like a trap. Their hunger needs to be great enough to overcome their fear of the trap. This requires their feeders to withhold food for a least the meal before the planned trapping. It is often very hard to get caretakers to agree to this. Many times, we have arrived to trap only to find that the cats have been fed within the past 12 hours. Any efforts to trap are usually unproductive. We often wait for hours for cats to go in traps that won’t because they aren’t hungry enough.”
O’Hagan says being a trapper often involves acting as a social worker or a therapist. “We have to listen to the feeder’s concern, respectfully and gently encourage them to participate in the process because the health of their cats depends on their cooperation. We can usually convince them of this. Every once in a while, however, there is a caretaker who just can’t get on board and we have to, unfortunately, walk away,” she says.
While they do experience some setbacks, they also have many success stories. O’Hagan shared one of them.
“A resident of Hampshire County had an exploding cat population living next door. Many of the cats migrated to her house looking for food and shelter. She recognized the writing on the wall and knew that her property would be just as over-run as her neighbor’s if she didn’t do something. She reached out to a rescue friend from Baltimore who found Cacapon TNR. We are routinely overwhelmed with requests for help, so we weren’t going to be able to help her for at least 9 months. We told her that if she was able to do the trapping and transporting to the TNR clinic, and if her network of contacts could help fundraise, we would support her in any way we could. Even with 4 kids ranging from 5 to 13, she took on the challenge. Since January 2023, she has trapped nearly all of the cats on her property AND her neighbor’s property. She took on additional care tasks including the administration of any medications needed and providing food to the neighbor’s cats when needed. She has TNRed fifty-four cats, with only 2 (very difficult cats) to go. The grant we received from HCCF allowed us to help her with 8 of those cats.”
According to O’Hagan, the resident had this to say about Cacapon TNR and Trap-Neuter-Return in general: “When we bought our house 3 years ago, I couldn’t imagine the stress of having a colony next door breeding out of control. The suffering of kittens born without eyes, succumbing to fleas and upper respiratory infections, is too much to take. The diseases being passed back and forth between the adults, the wounds from fighting, the failing bodies of the mothers in a constant state of pregnancy or nursing is heartbreaking to witness. Now that almost a year has passed, it is miraculous how much their health has improved just by being spayed, neutered, and vaccinated! These cats are living their best lives! Although I did much of the work myself, I could not have done all of this without the help of Cacapon TNR. All of their volunteers have been so helpful and supportive. They took over housing and transporting the cats back in March when my other support system fell through. They fundraised to cover the majority of the costs to TNR and treat my neighborhood colony. And they’ll still be there to help with my last two cats. I’m grateful for what CTNR has done for me and my community!”
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- …
- 30
- Next Page »