How to start a charitable foundation in USA

- G
- goyald
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Oct 19, 2006 8:59 AM

Hello I usually contribute some amount (2-3K per year) to charitable organizations, but want to do something closer to my heart, i.e setting up a library in USA dedicated to my native language from India. I know that 2-3K will not do much. I am willing to put 10K per year (a substantial part of my annual salary) for few years in a charitable trust or foundation and in few year, use that to implement my dream of establishing this.

My question is -

How to setup such a foundation trust etc? Can I contribute tax free to this?
Do I need professional help in setting this up? Typically what should I expect to pay for such help? Will it be a recurring expense?

Any suggestions will be welcome and appreciated.

- P
- po.ning
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Oct 19, 2006 5:40 PM

Do you have a community foundation in your area? If so talk to them about setting up a charitable trust.

- D
- dumbstruck
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Oct 19, 2006 11:11 PM

You might google up a discussion of finding and rating existing tax deductable charities in this forum. One web site (IRS?) lets you identify local charities and find their tax number, such as you need to direct your IRA to pay upon your death (a handy way for folks to fine tune such things without changing wills).

So you can find folks to confer with, and see the official jargon such as the type of tax number you probably have to request with an online IRS form. Was pretty eye opening to me, for other reasons. Many of the local charities appeared to be kook or sick jokes - maybe that means they aren't hard to set up. Others may be familiar/respectable, but you can now tell from context they are not exactly what they claim. Oh, and now some charities may get scrutiny for possible funneling of money to certain hostile causes...

- R
- rick++
  
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posted
17 years ago

Fri, Oct 20, 2006 2:27 PM

Brokerages such as Fidelity will set up charitable trusts for you. (Probably because they get to invest the money in the meantime.) A more important issue is that nioether you or the trust can take a tax deduction for organization not registered with the US government as a charity. This came up during recent large international disasters when only some charities qualified.