brown on green, A Regular column about finances

The Future Is Now

Free Will Baptist Foundation has been involved in helping families set up estate plans since 2013. So far, almost 1,900 estate plans have been delivered. Around 35% of these estate plans are leaving a gift to Free Will Baptist ministries. We have tracked information that tells us the average estate is around $300,000, and families typically leave a tithe on their estates to ministries through the plan.

Therefore, our calculations indicate almost $20 million will come in time from the estates that have been delivered. Some estates leave much more than a tithe as childless couples tend to leave their entire estates to ministry. Even families with children sometimes choose to leave half, or even more, of their estate to Free Will Baptist ministries. While many of these gifts will not come for ten, 20, or even 30 years, the financial success of our ministries requires we build a bequest pipeline today to generate these types of future gifts.

Many charitable organizations have emphasized estate gifts for hundreds of years. Harvard University has the largest academic endowment in the world, at almost $41 billion. Just to be clear, that is billion with a “b” not million with an “m.” They have a 5% spending policy, which means more than $2 billion a year is distributed to support the university. At least two reasons exist for such a large endowment. Harvard has encouraged estate giving since their founding in 1636. And, as one of the most prestigious universities in the world, their alumni are among the richest in the world.

Every year, over $30 billion is left to charitable causes. Free Will Baptists are a little late to embrace this type of giving. Our current Free Will Baptist membership and estimated net worth calculates to a potential of $1.5 billion in estate gifts to ministries. That $1.5 billion will never be realized if we do not start constructing a giving pipeline today. However, it is not just about what is coming, because over $300,000 has been realized by FWB ministries from the estate plans already in place.

If we all commit to building this giving pipeline, the trickle we are receiving today will become a flood to benefit every Free Will Baptist ministry in the years, decades, and centuries to come. If we want a flood of future funding, the future is now.

About the Columnist: David Brown is director of Free Will Baptist Foundation. To learn more about the grants program, visit www.fwbgifts.org.