Honoring Your Loved Ones' Legacies: Memorial Giving

When someone you love passes away, it can be intensely difficult to deal with the loss, especially around meaningful times like birthdays and holidays. But making a charitable gift in memoriam can be the perfect way to honor your loved one’s legacy.

“When someone dies, you feel as if their life may end, but who they were as a person can live on,” says Dr. Robin Goodman, bereavement expert and director of A Caring Hand, an organization dedicated to helping children deal with loss. The act of memorial giving “shows that that person meant something, and can continue to mean something to other people and do good in other ways.” Here are a few suggestions for honoring the lives of those you love through charitable donations.

Make memorial giving an annual event. When Sandi Gregory, a home staging expert, was growing up in Tacoma, Washington, her family housed some unusual pets: a family of goats. Her mother, Katherine Garnett, adored goats, and some of Gregory’s fondest childhood memories involve the family pets, including a first grade field trip to her own home. Years later, when Gregory learned about Heifer’s program to provide livestock to poor people in developing nations, she purchased a milking goat to be given in her mother’s name as a Christmas gift. “She was thrilled, to say the least,” says Gregory.

So when Garnett died two years ago, Gregory pledged to donate a goat to charity in her mother’s name every year for the rest of her own life. “Who knows how many of ‘her’ goats will make a difference in families of third world countries during my lifetime?” she asks.

Establish a charitable fund or scholarship. Creating a memorial legacy can ease the pain of even the most heartbreaking tragedies. For Vicky Mlyniec, a freelance writer from Los Gatos, California, charitable giving helped her to cope with the devastating loss of her 18-year-old son Nate, who died in a car accident last year. Memorial giving satisfied “the need to see something positive come from our tragedy and the desire to let Nate's kind and generous spirit continue to make the world a better place for others,” she says.

Because Nate had been a burgeoning gourmet chef headed for the food science program at University of California, Davis, the family established a memorial scholarship at the school, which brought in more than $20,000, and is now endowed to provide a $1,000 grant to a deserving student each year in Nate’s name.

“I found that friends, relatives, and acquaintances who all wanted to do something to help when there really isn't much one can do in a situation like this, were grateful and excited to hear that they could do something by contributing to a fund in Nate's name,” Mlyniec says. “It’s really a good thing for all concerned.”

Mlyniec also opened a charitable account called “Nate’s Good Works” through the Schwab Charitable Fund with $5,000, and adds Nate’s allowance and lunch money to the fund each week, as well as the money that she would have spent on gifts for him at Christmas and on his birthday. Mlyniec plans to use the funds to build a school in a developing country through a program called Room to Read. “I knew it would take a long time, but over time, we could do something that would truly positively affect the lives of others, and Nate would love the idea.”

Today, thanks to her own contributions and those of friends and family members, Mlyniec is only $4,000 short of the $15,000 necessary to build a school. But she doesn’t plan to close the account once the goal amount has been reached: “‘Nate’s Good Works’ is a fund I plan to continue doing good with forever,” she says.

To establish your own charitable legacy for a loved one, consider following Gregory’s and Mlyniec’s examples by finding organizations that would be meaningful to the person you’ve lost. “It’s a way to have the positive, good things about the person live on beyond them,” says Dr. Goodman.

If you’d like set up a charitable trust that friends and relatives can contribute to for years to come, open an account with a financial services institution such as Schwab Charitable or create a donor-advised fund with a group like the National Philanthropic Trust to watch your charitable donations grow.

Donate to an organization dedicated to fighting the disease that took your loved one's life. Memorial giving can also serve as a form of empowerment. By making a contribution to a disease-fighting organization, you can help prevent others from meeting the same fate. For the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, nearly 80 percent of all charitable donations are memorial gifts, and thousands of others have honored their loved ones through non-financial means. Individuals and groups have created more than 100 unique panels for the AFA’s “Quilt to Remember” in tribute to victims of Alzheimer’s disease. The organization also hosts the National Commemorative Candle Lighting event each year, where “community residents gather to light ‘candles of care’ to remember those who have passed from the disease and honor those who are living with it,” says the AFA’s president, Eric J. Hall.

Hall also notes that the AFA is receiving more contributions from grassroots fundraising events every year: “The increase, in part, might mirror the escalating incidence of the disease,” he says. “As more families are touched by it, more want to give back.”

Donating to a disease-fighting organization can be a powerful way to pay tribute and take action at the same time, and there’s even greater power in numbers: sites like FirstGiving.com can help you to build awareness of fundraising events like charity bike rides and marathons, and make it easy to collect money from sponsors to help the cause.

Ask others to donate instead of sending flowers to a funeral. Memorial giving can help to keep a loved one’s memory alive, fund a worthy cause, and even fight disease—but at its most basic level, the act can also be a source of solace at a time when families need it most. To commemorate a loved one’s memory, ask grieving friends and relatives to make a donation to a charitable organization in lieu of sending flowers to a funeral or memorial service. “Flowers are wonderful, but they may not change a life, whereas donating money can change a life,” says Dr. Goodman.

Photo: Nate Mlyniec, whose death inspired his family to establish a scholarship and a charitable fund in his name.