What are they?
Often the easiest way to support one’s charitable interests, a bequest permits your clients to support their community while retaining complete control over their assets during their lifetime. Bequests can be a specific dollar amount, a percentage of one’s estate, or what remains after other bequests—such as those to family members—are satisfied.

Highlights:

• Through a bequest, your clients may arrange for their heirs to receive lifetime income from their estate, with the remainder going to the Foundation for charitable purposes.
  
  
• They may name a new fund, an existing fund, or a specific group or organization to receive their bequest to the Foundation.
  
  
• Your clients can give cash, appreciated stocks, or other assets.
  
  
• Some of the most tax-efficient assets types to give through one’s will come from retirement plan accounts, since heirs would be taxed on the income in respect of the decedent.
  
  
• Bequests to the Foundation earn a full charitable deduction on estate taxes.
  
  
• Here is suggested language to use when naming the Foundation as the recipient of funds through one’s will or living trust.

For more information about how MCF can partner with you to serve your clients, contact Elizabeth Marlowe, vice president for Philanthropic Services, at 415.464.2517 or by e-mail; or Aviva Shiff Boedecker, director of gift planning, at 415.464.2516 or by e-mail. Or request a copy of You Have a Partner: An Introduction to the Marin Community Foundation for Professional Advisors. This guide provides an overview of the many ways we work with advisors to help them meet their clients' charitable needs.