A planned gift is a great way to enhance your legacy and support the organizations, including Christ Church, that have impacted your life and the lives of your family and friends. Making arrangements for a gift is often part of the will and estate planning process, where we communicate our wishes and allocate our final assets, to our families, executors/trustees, and favorite charitable organizations.
A gift to Christ Church can be incredibly impactful, given the Church budget is almost entirely reliant on individual gifts: annual pledging/giving, one-off gifts, gifts made to the Endowment and gifts received from a donor’s estate. A gift to the Church Endowment is a great way to expand one’s legacy, as it can generate income to fund Church ministries in perpetuity, can be managed by professional investment managers along with the rest of Endowment assets and grow through capital appreciation. Gifts in excess of $100,000 can be directed/restricted to fund a specific Church ministry that is particularly important or meaningful to you, be it worship, music, youth ministries, building maintenance, outreach, pastoral care, Forum speakers, among others. The list is long! All of us have benefited from some or all of these programs over the course of our lifetimes, so this is way that we can perpetuate them.
In some cases, adding a charity to your will can be as simple as executing a brief codicil agreement to your will; as always, please consult your estate attorney regarding legal matters such as writing a will or preparing an estate plan.
“I have served for over five years as your Rector. I love Christ Church Greenwich and intend to add it to my will. Please join me in the Christ Church Arbor Society to make sure we are here for the next 275 years. We understand that this decision is deeply personal, and we are here to answer any questions you may have and provide all the information you need. Feel free to contact me or Susan Kelly, Director of Planned Giving.” - Marek P. Zabriskie, Rector
The Arbor Society presented a panel of experts at a Sunday Forum in the Fall of 2024.
