Richmond Christian Foundation

Equipping Ministries, Schools, & Churches

Sustainable Impact

Ministry Growth

Kingdom Impact

An endowment instills confidence in your organization. 

It shows you have staying power and leadership that is well-prepared for the uncertainties of the future. It gives your donors assurance that their intentions will be honored for generations.

Many organizations feel uncertain about how to ask for and receive non-cash gifts. RCF works with you to deepen your body of planned giving knowledge and to strengthen your capacity to grow planned gifts, estate gifts, stock gifts, and a thriving endowment, providing your ministry with a diversified income stream and the stability to fulfill your God-given mission. Here’s how we can help:

Richmond Christian Foundation manages endowment funds for schools, churches, nonprofit organizations, and ministries of all sizes.

  • Imagine a growing scholarship fund that allows your school to weather tough economic times with limited effect on enrollment.
  • Imagine a building maintenance or capital improvement fund that never dries up.
  • Imagine the new resources that could be deployed if 20% or more of your staff salary costs were permanently endowed. 
  • Imagine growing a fund to retire ministry debt, and to then experience the freedom and joy to re-direct those debt payments into active ministry outreach.

In addition to endowment funds, RCF also provides agency accounts where, on your behalf, we receive, and liquidate gifts of appreciated assets to your ministry and forward the proceeds to your general fund.

Will an Endowment Grow Your Ministry?

Learn from these examples how memorial, legacy, scholarship, and other endowment funds give your donors assurance that their intentions will be honored for generations.

Explore stories of how we build bridges between donors and your ministry:

  • Offer Your Donors Gift Options That Pay Them Income

    Richard wanted to leave a meaningful gift to his Christian school that meant so much to him, but he wasn’t sure the best way to do it until he heard about the possibility of establishing a charitable remainder trust. 

    This unique gift option was a great way to earn an immediate tax deduction, secure guaranteed, partially tax-free income for the rest of his life, and leave a large gift to the school when he went to Heaven.

    Richard’s school didn’t have the resources to administer this gifting strategy, so they directed him to the Richmond Christian Foundation, which set up everything on behalf of Richard and the school.

  • Administer & Manage Long-Term Giving Arrangements

    April told her pastor that after her death she wanted to use the majority of her estate to send kids to church camp for generations to come. 

    The church board loved this idea but expressed concern about the burden of administering this arrangement forever. 

    Instead, April and her pastor consulted the Richmond Christian Foundation and put together a plan that would honor April’s intentions, invest the funds, and send a check to the church once each summer. April and her church felt great peace about the everlasting gift plan.

  • Receive Complex, Non-Cash Gifts

    Connie is a part-time Development Director at her community pregnancy support center. Recently a few potential donors called with questions she struggled to answer. 

    One wanted to donate some mutual fund shares, another wanted to know about charitable remainder trusts, and another wanted to know the tax implications of donating a car. 

    Thankfully, the pregnancy support center has an endowment relationship with the Richmond Christian Foundation.  In each case, Connie was able to reach out and get answers to her questions, resulting in three new gifts that month.

He pled the cause of the afflicted and needy; then it was well. “Is that not what it means to know Me?” declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 22:16

The Journey to a Sustainable Future

Planned Gifts Make the Best Endowment Gifts

As a society, we are on the threshold of the largest transfer of generational wealth in history. In the next 20 years, decisions will be made concerning the transfer over 100 Trillion Dollars to heirs and to charities.  We believe the world would be a better place if your ministry was included in those giving decisions.

A gift from an estate, or a planned gift during a donor's lifetime, are by far a donor’s largest lifetime gift to your organization.

Large hospitals and universities are already asking your donors to make an estate gift as well as planned lifetime gifts to their organizations.

History has shown that when donors are asked why they didn’t remember their church, school, or ministry in their lifetime giving, their answers are almost always the same: “No one ever asked me.”

RCF is your estate planning partner, offering training and resources to help you grow your endowment and estate gifts; empowering you to have significant giving conversations with supporters of your outreach.

We Can Help Your Ministry Grow & Manage:

Your organization’s financial strength is best illustrated by a three-legged stool:

  1. Annual Fund—regular cash gifts, gifts from retirement plan assets, and gifts of appreciated stocks and bonds that keep the lights on and your immediate work moving forward. 
  2. Major Gifts—large gifts often given in response to a specific need, such as a capital campaign.
  3. Endowment—transformational gifts are given to ensure your sustainability into the far future. An endowment operated by an independent, third-party foundation (such as RCF) is a compelling feature that your donors look for when preparing their estate plans. It provides them assurance that their intentions will be honored in future generations. 

We have the resources in place to help you help your donors make non-cash and complex gifts to your organization. When you have an endowment with RCF, you receive our full support at no additional cost.  

We can help you receive, receipt, and sell many gift types, including stocks and mutual funds, IRAs, real estate, business ownership, tangible property, mineral rights, life insurance policies, intellectual property, and more.

TIP: If a donor alerts you about their intent to sell an asset and make a gift to your organization with the proceeds, we strongly suggest you invite them to consider gifting full or partial ownership of the item to you, the charity, before they sell it. This will likely benefit you and the donor. For example, suppose a donor tells you he is selling his business in the near future, and he would like to make a gift with the proceeds to offset taxable income. Great! But you might suggest he transfer a percentage of ownership to RCF before the sale. This scenario will almost always increase the donation amount your organization receives while decreasing your donor’s taxable income. 

We will receipt the gift for the donor and the IRS, so you don’t have to. Once sold, you will receive the full proceeds from the sale. 

An estate gift is often a donor’s largest gift to your organization—and it is a gift that won’t cost them anything in their lifetime!

RCF is your estate planning partner, offering training and resources to help you grow your endowment and estate gifts.

 

Popular Planned Giving Options Include:

  • Charitable Gift Annuity—an arrangement between a donor and your organization in which the donor receives regular payments from RCF for life, based on the value of assets transferred to us. After the donor’s death, the remaining assets are put into your endowment fund.
  • Charitable Remainder Trust—an irrevocable trust that generates income for the donor (or other specified beneficiaries) for life, with the remainder of the donated assets going into your endowment fund. 
  • Charitable Lead Trust—an irrevocable trust designed to provide current ongoing financial support to your organization for a number of years, with the remaining assets eventually going to the donor’s family or other beneficiaries.

Your organization’s journey to a sustainable financial future begins with Richmond Christian Foundation.

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