

Planned Giving and Your Community Foundation
Life is busy. You live, you work, you play, you save, you plan, and you grow older. At some point, we slow down and begin to think about our life story, the legacy we want to leave, and what impact it will have on future generations.
Your Giving Plan - Leaving A Legacy of Love and Support
There are many ways you can make a planned gift and leave a legacy of love and support through the DeKalb County Community Foundation. We work with you to learn about your charitable goals and offer suggestions for achieving them. By working with the Community Foundation, you can support the causes you care about most for generations to come.
The Community Foundation partners with donors and professional advisors to help with planned giving through charitable bequests, life income gifts, retirement assets, or other giving options.
Planned Giving Options
The Community Foundation partners with donors and professional advisors to help with planned giving through a variety of planned giving options:
- Bequests (The most common of planned gifts) - Bequests are gifts made in any amount to an individual or an organization as part of a will or trust. When given to the Community Foundation, these planned gifts can detail a specific designation or remain as an unrestricted gift that supports the Foundation’s mission for generations to come. Gifts with a designation can support a particular area of the Foundation’s work, a specific nonprofit or cause, be added to an existing Fund, or used to create a new Fund to align with your charitable interests.
- Life Insurance Policies - Make your community foundation the beneficiary of your whole life policy and the annual premiums are tax deductible.
- IRA/401K Plans - Name your community foundation as beneficiary of a portion or remainder of your retirement plan.
- Charitable Lead Trusts - Provide financial support to one or more charities for a period of time, with the remaining assets eventually going to family members or other beneficiaries.
- Charitable Remainder Trusts - Irrevocable trusts that let you donate assets to charity and draw annual income for life or for a specific time period.
- Charitable Gift Annuities - A contract between a donor and a qualified charity in which the donor makes a gift to the charity. In exchange, the charity assumes a legal obligation to provide you and up to one additional beneficiary with a fixed amount of monthly income that continues until the last beneficiary dies.
Together with you and your professional advisor, we work to help you express your legacy and achieve your goals. Our commitment is to fulfill your philanthropic vision both now and forever.
For Professional Advisors: DeKalb County Community Foundation is located at 475 DeKalb Avenue, Sycamore, Illinois, 60178. The Community Foundation is a tax-exempt charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its tax identification number is 36-3788167.
For questions or additional information on planned giving in partnership with the Community Foundation, please contact Executive Director Dan Templin at 815-748-5383 or dan@dekalbccf.org.
Dinontas Society – Honoring those who have given!
Greek for ‘Giving,’ the Dinontas (Δίνοντας) Society is a special community of donors to the Community Foundation who completed financial contributions as a provision of their will, charitable trust, estate, and/or memorial gift designation.
In honor of these donors who have left a legacy of love and support, we created a special place to tell their stories.
Transfer of Wealth in DeKalb County
The Community Foundation is happy to share state and county results from a 2021 Transfer of Wealth Opportunity Study conducted for the State of Illinois. The study details the potential for generosity across generations within the next 10 and 50 years.
In DeKalb County, the study estimates that $2.5 billion will transfer over the next 10 years and $19 billion will transfer over the next 50 years. We know that we live in a giving society and that individuals and families are interested in giving back to their communities and causes important to them. Preserving a portion of this wealth for the betterment of our communities has the potential to produce economic vitality and truly enhance the quality of life in DeKalb County.