Philanthropy

Tom and Carol have been with WFS for a while now.  However, as they have matured, and as their nest egg has grown, they began to feel secure enough to start increasing their philanthropy.

For many years, they have been attending a church near by which has been undergoing a building plan.  From the start it was an ambitious plan.  However, Tom and Carol have always been very involved in their church life.  It has been important to them and helped them throughout their marriage, empty nest years, and golden years.

Now, it just seemed right to start giving something back.

Obviously, Tom and Carol are still concerned with leaving a nest egg for their children and grandchildren.  However the portfolio had grown enough over the years to allow them to do more to help out in the church.

With some help from WFS, they decided to open up a Charitable Gift Trust.  They had $1million in their investment portfolio and they decided that a good plan would be to siphon off all their gains over the next couple years to fund the Trust.

That way, the kids would still end up with at least $1million and they would be able to pledge $400,000 to their church building plan.

Tom and Carol's point of View:

We don't believe in making a big splash with our giving.  We simply wanted to give something to the Lord's work in our community.  We felt there was no better use for our philanthropy funds than giving to support the Christian mission around the globe, and also help our church to help our local community.

We're just grateful that the Lord has blessed us with enough resources to make a difference here on this earth.

We didn't really know how to accomplish our goals, but we knew that WFS would have the answers.  We've been working with them for years, and they always seem to come up with creative solutions to any goals we throw at them.

WFS Point of View:

Tom and Carol are very generous people.  But they were concerned with anonymity.  They wanted to be generous to the community, but didn't want a big show, or to have a new wing of the church named after them.  It's just not their style.

We were able to set them up with the appropriate trust to meet their needs.

Over the past couple years, we have been able to siphon off quite a few dollars to their Charitable Trust.

In fact, they just recently met their original goal.  We were able to fully fund their giving with $400,000 in gifts to their church.  In addition, the original $1million is still completely in tact.

In some small way, we feel like we helped the local church too.  Together, as a team with Tom and Carol's assets and our management, the church is growing by leaps and bounds.  The community is a much richer place these days.

Tom and Carol's Point of View after meeting their goals:

We simply can't believe that we were able to meet those aggressive giving goals and still provide a nice nest egg for our children.

Thanks WFS!

But most importantly, we praise God for his generosity to us.  We would never be able to give so much to help our community if God had not blessed us to begin with.  We feel very good about what has happened here.

WFS Point of View:

It's a good feeling to meet a goal.  Even more importantly, it's a good feeling to help people.  That's why we're in this business.  We thoroughly enjoy working with people like Tom and Carol.  We're glad to be one small part of helping their community.