Endowed Gifts: Your Gift Can Last Forever

An endowment gift to the Sierra Club Foundation today provides a brighter picture for our future. When you make a donation to an endowment, you give a gift with both immediate and long-term benefits.

Endowment donations are invested. A portion of the annual income from the investment is used to address immediate needs at the Sierra Club Foundation. The remaining funds are reinvested to ensure indefinite support.

The minimum gift to establish an endowment is $250,000. To start paying it forward, please contact us at (800) 932-4270 or giftplanning@sierraclub.org.

Charitable Lead Trusts: Protect Your Assets

If you want to make an impact now at the Sierra Club Foundation and also provide for your family later, consider setting up a charitable lead trust. You transfer cash or other assets to a trust that makes payments to the Sierra Club Foundation for a period of time. When the term is up, the remaining trust passes to your family or other beneficiaries you select.

There are two ways that charitable lead trusts make payments to the Sierra Club Foundation:

• A charitable lead annuity trust pays a fixed amount each year to the Sierra Club Foundation and is more attractive when interest rates are low.
• A charitable lead unitrust pays a variable amount each year to the Sierra Club Foundation based on the value of the assets in the trust. With a unitrust, if the trust's assets go up in value, for example, the payments to the Sierra Club Foundation go up as well.

See which type of charitable trust best fits your estate plan with the FREE guide Trusts: Choose From Two Ways to Donate.

Donor Advised Funds: Simplify Your Giving

A donor advised fund, which is like a charitable savings account, gives you the flexibility to recommend how much and how often money is granted to the Sierra Club Foundation and other charities.

You open a donor advised fund with a written agreement at a community foundation or sponsoring organization. You can make contributions to your fund at any time. These contributions are invested by the sponsoring organization, which provides regular accounting to you. You make the recommendations that various amounts be distributed to charitable organizations of your choice, such as the Sierra Club Foundation.

You can also create a lasting legacy by naming your loved ones as your successor to continue to recommend grants to charitable organizations, or name the Sierra Club Foundation to receive all or part of the account balance after your lifetime.

Donor advised funds are an increasingly popular way to give. Discover their benefits in this FREE guide One-Stop Giving: The Convenience and Simplicity of Donor Advised Funds.