Legacy Giving
A Legacy Bequest or Legacy Gift is an excellent way for supporters of The Redside Foundation to make a significant impact and be remembered by the community for their care and support.
Making a legacy gift creates financial security for The Redside Foundation and provides the necessary support to build programs that give guides tools and resources to enhance their well-being. Legacy giving means that our fellow guides, our ‘family,’ have a support system in perpetuity.
Donors who cannot make a significant gift during their lives can make the impact they want through a legacy gift. Legacy giving, also known as planned giving, refers to donations that supporters plan to give after their passing. For many donors, legacy giving consists of monetary donations. Other standard options are real estate or a charitable annuity or trust.
These gifts are meaningful funds that mean long-term financial stability for The Redside Foundation, increase the impact of one or more of our core programs, or fund dream projects the donor can help plan. All of which honor the life and legacy of the donor who made the contribution.
Legacy giving benefits the donor:
The ability to cement their legacy. Legacy giving ensures donors will be remembered for their generosity and commitment to the guiding community long after their passing. This can be especially important to donors who lack the funds to make a significant gift during their lives but can make the impact they want through a legacy gift.
Tax breaks. Legacy bequests are made not only out of a commitment to a favorite nonprofit but also for the tax benefits that can benefit their families.
Control over their donation’s use. With legacy giving, a donor can add stipulations in their wills for how their gift will be spent. Rest assured, your legacy will be preserved through your desired wishes.
How a legacy gift can help The Redside Foundation:
Helps secure fiscal stability.
Builds an endowment to provide an ongoing source of income each year in perpetuity.
Augments other “asks.”
See a dream project come to fruition.
Our Legacy Gift: Yeah, I never heard about it, either. Despite our having lived The Dream as outdoor guides all our lives, my lovely wife & I are lucky enough to have a bit of coin in the ammo can as our lives draw to a close and we sit on the deck, sipping coffee (or scotch) and listen to the river of our lives whispering. We have no children, and as we scout perhaps our biggest rapid ever, we at least wanted to know what Plan A was gonna be. We agonized for the last few years, trying to figure out to whom we’d like to leave what was left, besides the cat shelter, wild cousin Hortense, or heaven forbid, the government out of default. On yet one more long drive to somewhere wild and beautiful, the solution popped into our heads. Who else? Our fellows, colleagues, “Pards,” mates. The ones we shared our river lives with, the ones to come. It took some effort, but we’re used to paradigm shifting.
So here we are, having set up a Legacy Bequest. We’re relieved to have found a way for whatever we end up leaving behind to help support our community. Camaraderie and sharing are what it’s all about in our world. This just fits. We ran a lot of rivers all over the world, but our hearths and homes were always The Middle Fork and the Colorado. Guide’s ability to interpret the magic and power of rivers in Idaho and the Grand Canyon for our guests is supported through Redside, Whale, and GCRG’s efforts.
We remember all those river evenings, both gentle and thundering, light fading, and dinner done at the end of another long, hard, awesome day on the water. We smile, thinking of this being a way for us to be a tiny part of hanging on the boats with our pards forever. We humbly encourage others to consider this if you’re at “that age” and have a similar concern. We’ve all closed our eyes in relief in the tailwaves of many a rapid, thanking the Great Spirit in our own way for once again letting our worthless behinds through relatively unscathed. If Carrie & I get a few seconds to reflect before we close our eyes in the tailwaves of our lives, I hope to be able to picture some raggedy young, super excited guide at the oars with that new life jacket, some old geezer getting some much-delayed back care, or any of us at any age just getting a much needed arm around the shoulder, and smile.
-Jeffe and Carrie Aronson
