The Philanthropy Module
The family's charitable giving — structured giving vehicles, charitable bequests woven into the estate plan, charitable beneficiary designations, and where donation records live.
Where this Module fits
E-06 Module 6 of 9 in the Estate area — step 4 of 4 on the dependency ladder (System → At-Home → Financial → Estate).
Completes the unspoken-intentions pair — the values behind the giving.
Adds to The Secure Guide: Giving vehicles, charitable bequests with EINs, designations, records location.
Adds to The Family Guide: The giving summary and an optional statement of giving values.
Every Module adds one section to each guide — that is how the two guides assemble as you work. See what you're building.
Text file — the flexible one. Use it as-is, paste it into a spreadsheet, open it in any editor, or paste it into an AI tool to reshape the blank form to fit your family: rename a field, add a row, drop one you don't need.
Print / PDF — the ready-to-use one. Print it and fill it in by hand, or choose Save as PDF and complete it in your own offline PDF app. Either way it stays with you — the finished Secure Guide template goes inside your Vault.
One rule: only ever give an AI tool the blank template. Never paste your real information — passwords, account numbers, anything you'd keep secret — into an AI tool, an online service, or anywhere outside your own Vault. Customizing an empty form is fine; filling it in happens privately, offline. That's the same rule this site follows: nothing sensitive ever leaves your hands.
Secure Guide Starter Template — Philanthropy
This template belongs in The Secure Guide, stored within The Vault. Update when giving vehicles, bequests, or designations change.
Charitable giving touches the FIRM System at three points, and each needs a different kind of documentation. Ongoing donations are tax records — they live with the Tax Planning and Documentation Module. Structured vehicles — a donor-advised fund, a charitable trust — are financial instruments, and they are documented here with the same care as the accounts they resemble. And the values behind the giving belong in The Family Guide, where they can inform the people who carry the estate forward. Keeping the three distinct makes each one manageable.
The most common failure point in charitable bequests is identification. A bequest to “the local food bank” is not executable — every named organization should be verifiable against a legal name and EIN (the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search confirms both). And a donor-advised fund passes outside the probate estate entirely: it needs its own succession designation, separate from the will, and that designation is recorded here.
| Vehicle | Institution / Sponsor | Account Number | Advisor / Administrator | Access | Beneficiary / Mission | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donor-Advised Fund | ||||||
| Charitable Remainder Trust | ||||||
| Charitable Lead Trust | ||||||
| Private Foundation | ||||||
| Other |
| Organization | Legal Name | EIN | Contact | Bequest Type | Document Where Specified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
For full estate document inventory, see the Estate Plan Module. For gift tax records and contribution documentation, see the Tax Planning and Documentation Module.
| Asset | Named Charity | EIN | Percentage / Amount | Document Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Where annual donation receipts and year-end tax summary documents are stored. For retention guidance, see the Tax Planning and Documentation Module.
Family Guide Starter Template — Philanthropy
This template belongs in The Family Guide. It tells the family where giving has been directed and why.
In the matching Secure Guide section: giving vehicles, charitable bequests with EINs, designations, records location.
That detail is what makes recovery possible — and it is protected in the Vault, which opens with The Vault Key. The key is never written here, by design. The people listed on this page know how it is kept, and the steward's job is to keep that path current, so this page never leads to a locked door.
| Organization | Cause / Mission | Why It Matters to Us |
|---|---|---|
Note any donor-advised fund, charitable trust, or other vehicle with the institution; details are in The Secure Guide; the administrator contact (name, phone).
Note that estate documents include charitable bequests; the executor and attorney are aware; details are in The Secure Guide and the estate documents.
Optional personal statement about giving values and what the planner hopes continues.
Anything this page's reader should know that the sections above didn't ask for — the exceptions, the house quirks, the thing you would say out loud while handing this page over.
For more information on how to use these templates, see The Recoverable Family book.
Worked example — Frank's family
The Mercers' giving has run through the same three doors for a decade — Westvale Community Church, the Westvale Food Bank, and the first-generation scholarship fund at Westvale State, the kind of scholarship that put Sarah through school. It lived in the checking-account history and a receipts folder until this Module gave the “why” a page of its own — and the June estate update turned one of the three into a bequest.
All details are fictional and illustrative. The assembled example guides live at the example Secure Guide and the example Family Guide.
Secure Guide — Frank's entry
The Philanthropy section of the Mercers' Secure Guide:
| Vehicle | Institution / Sponsor | Account Number | Advisor / Administrator | Access | Beneficiary / Mission | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donor-Advised Fund | None yet | — | Elena Vargas raised it, 2026-06 | — | — | Revisit at the fall review if the giving grows — recorded so the “no” is a decision, not a gap |
| Organization | Legal Name | EIN | Contact | Bequest Type | Document Where Specified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-Generation Scholarship Fund, Westvale State | Westvale State University Foundation | 84-5550162 | Foundation office, 555-0186 | Specific bequest — $10,000 in each will | Wills, 2026-06 — Ruth confirmed the legal name and EIN against the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search |
| Asset | Named Charity | EIN | Percentage / Amount | Document Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | — | — | — | Reviewed 2026-06 with the beneficiary coordination pass (see Estate Plan) |
Family Guide — Frank's entry
The giving page of the Family Guide.
| Organization | Cause / Mission | Why It Matters to Us |
|---|---|---|
| Westvale Community Church | Our congregation for twenty years | It's home — and Pastor Hollis has shown up for this family every time it mattered |
| Westvale Food Bank | Local food security | Sarah's monthly volunteer shift — the giving followed the Saturdays |
| First-Generation Scholarship Fund, Westvale State | College access for first-generation students | Sarah was that student once. This is the debt we repay forward |