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Determine the best way to achieve your charitable vision.

Looking for ways to support organizations and causes you care about? Consider working with the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation to create and implement a charitable giving plan.

Based on your charitable giving goals, our team will work with you and your professional advisors to create a plan that best aligns with your giving vision. We also offer a variety of ways to implement that plan through current or future gifts.

To start creating your plan, we will work with you to answer these three questions:

What are you trying to accomplish?
What’s the right fund type to achieve your goals?
What’s the best way for you to give?

1. What are you trying to accomplish?

When developing your giving plan, it's important to think through what you want to achieve. As a donor, your giving goals may include things like supporting your favorite nonprofits annually or perpetually, investing in the community’s needs or engaging your family or loved ones in giving.

2. What’s the right fund type to achieve your goals?

Depending on your goals, the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation can help you determine what fund option is right for you.

If you want to stay involved in your philanthropy, a donor advised fund is your best option.

A donor advised fund gives you the flexibility to support causes and organizations during your lifetime, while also allowing your family and friends the opportunity to continue to support the community for generations to come.

If you’d like to ensure that the nonprofits you care about receive funding beyond your lifetime, a designated fund might be a good option. Designated funds provide support to one or more charities that you name so that those organizations receive continued and reliable funding. You choose nonprofits to support, and we issue annual grants to those nonprofits forever.

Field of interest funds are similar to designated funds, in that they make an annual grant. Where they differ is that a field of interest fund lets you identify a specific charitable purpose or geographic area to support rather than a specific nonprofit.

If you are interested in supporting the community’s changing needs, unrestricted gifts may be the best option. These gifts allow you to make a permanent investment in the quality of the community. Each year your fund will make grants to worthy nonprofits addressing emerging and changing community needs.

Explore these fund options further

3. What’s the best way for you to give?

Once you have established your fund type, you can determine how to best support it. While many donors give cash, the Foundation can also accept a wide range of non-cash assets. Our team has experience working with each of these options and can help guide you toward the best choice for you to make a gift today or in the future.

Some of the ways beyond cash people choose to make gifts today include:

Supporting Your Fund in the Future

The simplest way to support the nonprofits you care about long-term is by including your fund at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation as a beneficiary in your will. This has the potential to reduce your taxable estate and costs nothing during your lifetime.

You can also support the community with a gift that gives you lifetime income. For example, a charitable gift annuity or charitable remainder trust will provide you with regular payments throughout your lifetime and then support your donor advised fund, designated fund or field of interest fund.

Another easy way to support nonprofits is through your IRA or other retirement assets.

If left to family or friends, retirement assets are almost always 100% taxable to them at their highest income tax rate. If left to charity, though, these assets typically pass tax-free, and you may qualify for an estate tax charitable deduction.

For example, you can name your fund at the Foundation as a beneficiary or partial beneficiary of your retirement account, which may be as easy as submitting a form to your retirement account provider.

During your lifetime, you can also make tax-free qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) annually from your IRA, which can count toward your required minimum distribution (RMD). Donors 70½ or older can give up to $100,000 per year to nonprofits, and these gifts can support several different types of funds.

Contact a Gift Planner

Contact one of our gift planners to help you think through what you want to accomplish, what fund option may be best for you and how you might be able to support your goals. We will work with you and your professional advisor to develop a giving plan that’s right for you.

The Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation does not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. Please consult your own tax, legal and accounting advisors regarding your individual situation before engaging in any transaction.

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