More important for the organization, this committee provides a coherent strategy for collecting digital collections across the organization. This strategy is also extremely useful for the conservation department, which only launches a subset of the collection. The outline detailed in this paper is the part of the strategic plan necessary for formalization and majority vote in the collection or collection, but this focuses on the broader digital heritage idea or at least applies a similar strategic plan format.
The hosting of digital collection is therefore considered a main quantitative process of strategic planning, facilitated by a specific strategic planning process. The SCWG is an inclusive ICT subgroup (inventory Management, Storage, Vaults, all maintenance, recovery, and project management maintenance) that coordinates closely with contemporary organizations.
To some extent, perhaps most recently with a major grant, can transmit even philosophical agreement, at least for brand new collections, while exchanging EAG grants (at least in the US). Grant proposals may require a certain level of personnel, hardware, or software systems that indicate that the organization at least believes in the digital collection’s safeguard construction.
Due to the extreme leveling imbalance between the risks and potential rewards of a permanent ongoing digital collection program, it is no exaggeration to say that the collection itself is in far greater danger of decay before it is built or delivered.
In a museum sense, it is similar to saving an original Degas from theft or decay, as works in the digital collection can disappear, whether through attrition or advancement. However, unlike classic museum art forms, objects of digital collection are not always the same; they can suddenly disappear, succumbing to a broken system, breaking connections to other objects in the database, seeking blinding technology advances, or selfishly invading an original content or system atmosphere, rather than through lighting.
Maintaining the integrity and value of an organization’s digital collection is often more difficult and challenging than building it. In our years of work with museums, libraries, academic repositories, and other cultural knowledge foundation organizations, the phrase “we fear for the permanence of our collection” has been heard repeatedly.
Understanding Legacy Planning
Legacy planning also covers the who, what, when, and how to transfer assets as you pass on toward ultimate asset distribution goals. Planning ground rules or scenarios should be established in advance, before family disharmony and costly probate can institute the family breakup of your estate, to keep the inherited family protected entity whole and under family control. Preplanning, leading to the arrangement of mutual family preservation goals, whether at full funding or just as initial concept reconnaissance homework, becomes an integral part of the estate distribution process. The goal is to transfer an undivided asset and survivor perpetuity-year control of the inheritance or other family wealth-building entities, which may stretch the financial benefits up to nine potential dependents from heavy-handed judgments by property-divorcing non-family or non-dependent single investor children, or protect the inherited safety net appreciation during a second-generation millennial full $200,000 cash college educational funding.
Legacy planning applies to any individual or family that has significant assets and/or a unique entity to pass on to the next generation, such as a business. A team of legacy protection professionals (attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, insurance professionals, etc.) are trained to preserve assets from costly or unnecessary compromise and conversion due to a variety of threats, including lawsuits, divorce, Medicaid spend down, and transfer taxes. These same professionals use a wide variety of legally available strategies over time to minimize asset erosion and build protected equity (net worth) while avoiding any trustees, creditors, or tax penalties.
Importance of Legacy Planning
Cherished traditions and values are entrenched metaphors by which the past teaches the future, which gives rise to continuity and direction for the future. Both physical and intangible cultural heritage items offer a means for individuals to connect with the past and advance this meaningful culture into the future. This meaningful linkage is what allows for the continuity and purpose to living. The planning and preservation of heritage landscapes, traditions, and “history in a box” items are both the record and the keeper of memories—the life moments that once occupied those who lived, loved, created, and cared for the physical connections to their past. These remnants, whether a needles-and-thread technique that renders an intricate pattern seemingly effortlessly, or the first inkling of suffrage, underscore our societal evolution and are the epitome of faith in our understanding, enrichment, and connection to our human story.
The importance of creating and leaving a legacy does not have an omnipotent grip, and not everyone cares about their legacy in the traditional sense. This is not to say that individuals are not interested in leaving something behind, rather that they may place greater importance on the achievement of specific outcomes. Therefore, while a legacy in the traditional sense of a financial inheritance or the leaving behind of something after death is important to many, creating the legacy while living is of equal importance to others; ergo, the connection of the legacy to the person is different depending on their meaning construction. One’s meaning construction ranges from the internal—creating and living life within oneself for oneself, without external scions—to being connected to one’s heritage by making the world a better place for humanity.
Key Elements of Legacy Planning
Legacy is not merely an estate. It is also the generations of your family that will follow you, and the family security. This occurs only if the actual or potential family of the future is the parent, grandparent, child, cousin, or other family of today, and that the family of today shares in the outlook of protective leaders for the family of the future. This occurs if the leaders act and are seen to act justly, charitably, and respectfully to all involved. Philosophy and spirituality can provide both direct benefits, including guidance in complex decision-making, and indirect benefits, such as improved relationships if a generational leader demonstrates understanding of and respect for the attitudes and beliefs of the actual and potential family members.
In order to properly plan for the protection and perpetuation of your heritage, you must take stock of several critical elements. Clearly, the most important of these is family – both in terms of those living with us and those from the next generation or generations. Clearly, one would also be wise to take considerable stock of the range and nature of the business interests and properties to be conserved. If financial resources exist, they must be thoroughly inventoried and understood. Other key elements might include ancillary assets, agents and relationships. These are discussed in the following sections.
Strategies for Effective Legacy Planning
The list of responsibilities is quite extensive for the executor. The heirs will rely on the executor to act promptly and within the rules. Without the will, the town clerk or the family court registrar will know ahead of time what action they need and how the assets are to be distributed. Keep a list of important personal items beneficiaries. Set aside special furniture and specific items such as jewelry, photos, handwritten material, personal items, and any other keepsake items for each family member and friend. Communicate to the beneficiary about the status of the item. These items are not vying with my father but to meet distribution. Be objective at all times. Do these four things to get a proven executor.
This discussion is not for you if you have not arranged for your own interment. While, in theory, funeral arrangements could be for a distant time in the future, meaning you plan to make these arrangements in the near term, they should be in place. If not, it will likely be left to extended family, particularly your executor. One could argue that leaving arrangements undone would be a passive-aggressive statement from you against family members, who may now have to make what they feel are difficult decisions. If, indeed, you personally have taken on this job, review and update the arrangement. The restrictions with COVID-19 provide a good reason to review properly and update your plans. A written, notarized document naming the persons you wish to be the executors of your will is the first step in executing your legal plans. The will, in which executors are legally named, must be filed in the same probate court in which the will is filed within 180 days of the will going to probate. Benefit from your callers’ actions today: with their pumps, forgetfulness, please don’t be disingenuous.
Effective estate planning calls for a comprehensive, broad-minded approach that includes not only the preparation of the will, but also the execution of the will and related planning. The following is an outline of strategies for securing your heritage and reducing family strife by preparing an effective legacy plan. Consider these strategies as you prepare to execute your plans so that your intentions will be carried out quickly and without family disputes.
Identifying Your Legacy Goals
To ensure the success of your legacy plans, we suggest you consider the following. Most of the time, the first step in the legacy planning process is the identification of charitable organizations whose missions and programs are consistent with your family’s charitable values and legacy goals. In many cases, for the thousands of nonprofit heritage institutions across the country, that means finding organizations with a distinct mission in the areas of culture, history, heritage, or preservation, and serving at the local, state, regional, or national levels. If you support with us at the Heritage Nonprofit Alliance, you can be assured your designated organizations are qualified to receive your generous support. Our members are dedicated to ensuring diverse organizations with the common goal of interpreting history are supported through sustainable fiscal policies.
One of the most important steps in legacy planning is identifying and articulating your family’s values and the goals you hope to achieve through your charitable giving. If you have included or plan to include gifts to heritage organizations with funds under management with the Heritage Nonprofit Alliance in your will or other estate plans, please let us know. We would like to thank you for your generosity and commitment to America’s diverse nonprofit heritage organizations by including you in our Century of Heritage Society. In addition, we want to ensure your intentions for your generous support are honored and the resources you leave to the HNA to support your heritage goals are administered and used in a manner that best honors your wishes.
Creating a Comprehensive Estate Plan
Durable Power of Attorney. This document allows you to appoint an agent or “attorney in fact” to act on your behalf and handle your legal and financial matters if you become unable to do so yourself due to lack of capacity or impairment. This durable power of attorney allows the person you appoint to act on your behalf and handle your legal and financial affairs in your best interest whenever you are disabled or only incapacitated. If effective immediately, the agent may act on your behalf whether you are disabled or incapacitated, or only if you are disabled or incapacitated. A “Springing” Durable Power of Attorney is one that only becomes effective upon your actual disability or incapacity. Properly-drafted durable power of attorney documents are essential to providing family members with the necessary authority to manage the principal’s affairs via agents or representatives. If these documents are not available and the incapacitated individual has not already created a revocable living trust, decisions about financial matters will be left to the probate court while decisions about health care are also subject to court oversight if a durable power of attorney for health care is not in place.
Last Will & Testament and/or Pour Over Will. The main instrument in many estate plans is a Last Will & Testament or “Will” which is a legal document that provides instructions on how your affairs should be handled after you die. If an asset is not specifically disposed of by the will, it flows into a trust. In your will, you will name an executor to handle the distribution of your property and care for any minor children, and name an estate trustee (in some states this party is named a personal representative) to file, manage and resolve any pending legal issues after your death, wind up your estate, and make distributions according to your wishes. Wills apply only to probate assets and non-probate assets that do not have a separate beneficiary designation.
A comprehensive estate plan consists of several core components. Some of the core components may include the following:
Establishing Trusts and Foundations
The trust holds that, as a patrimony, its destiny and inclination are permanent, enduring and proper to nature and to the family, almost a filial belonging. Therefore, the trust becomes a true guardian of the family interests, integrating and fueling the sense of historical belonging, since the family would not be legitimately living in the past, present and future, were it not to benefit from the fruit of its past. This concept is held to be the most transcendent and purest meaning that the trust can express, this having been nourished along the centuries, becoming the most dynamic, practical and pragmatic mode of structuring and determining the future from the present, nowhere represented in the legal disciplines, despite the civilizations of civil law, dower, theologies and economic doctrines.
The trust is often considered to be the most important and useful instrument of wealth management and estate planning available today, and is the primary substitute for the traditional means of passing on property to the next generation. Over time, the evolution of this legal concept has been such that, what for centuries was a concern in the realm of family, now resulted in a legal instrument that has increasingly attracted even professionals of civil law, dower, inheritances, donations and testaments, real estate, and so on. The trust is currently a widespread legal instrument in countries with distinct civil law, dower, exchange or common law traditions. The growing popularity of the trust can, therefore, represent an evolution of the testamentary will for some, and a creativity in the use of techniques for the depletion of wealth and goods for others. This evolution was based on a practice in which all manners of people dealt with goods of the most diversified kinds. Despite quite strong criticism, according to which those were fraudulent alienations, the Anglo-Saxon legal and legal economic doctrines have worked towards embracing this institution, less as a means to evade creditors, and more to protect family bundles and in general the interests of the family.
Considerations in Legacy Planning
Long-term care planning (Medicaid planning): Long-term care costs have continued to outpace inflation. Long-term nursing home care right now is about $7,000 per month. Long-term care planning can have two components. The first focuses on determining the level of care desired, based on cost and personal objectives of the retirees. The second major component is the estate tax elimination/funding-of-care issue. Retirees who have high net worth assets or couples to maximize the benefit of creating an irrevocable Medicaid trust fund while avoiding the 60-month Medicaid look-back period.
Lifetime giving: Many of the focal points in a legacy plan deal with post-death gifts and plans, meaning that an individual that uses up the gift tax exclusion on lifetime giving could accelerate the tax planning and achieve offsetting Medicaid impact. However, gifting financings for retirees should be approached with caution because the individual might need continuous support to maintain his or her lifestyle after retirement. In situations where your loved one is receiving public benefits like Medicaid and SSI, how and when assets are transferred to the loved one can have serious implications for losing benefits. Special needs trust can also be used to offset gifting, and these instruments often allow for medical and educational expenses without dollar limitations.
Insurable interests: Policies and contracts can only be legally owned by someone who has an insurable interest in what is being insured. Life insurance policies are common, and pre-death planning serves as the method to fund the eventual liability created by an estate. This is generally offset through a trust such as an irrevocable life insurance trust.
Tax and Financial Considerations
– Reviewing your will to determine whether maintaining your current structure has negative tax implications. Many wills divide assets between a credit shelter trust (also known as a bypass trust or family trust) and a marital trust to leverage the transferable credit of the first deceased spouse. Consider whether this division is still appropriate and whether a formula-based credit shelter trust should be eliminated. – Ensure both spouses together, especially if owning property or other high-yielding assets, do not impoverish them financially. Prior to the unlimited spousal deduction being accessible to both spouses, each spouse should have certain assets in their name to optimize the unified tax credit of both spouses. Reviewing irrevocable allocations and powers of appointment of property can be accomplished to maximize the unified credit. – Management of qualified and unqualified funds. You can enjoy significant transfer tax savings through the placement of life insurance in a life insurance trust (ILIT), the time is now to insure those ILITs are working. This includes paying gifts and refinancing of subtrusts to satisfy premiums for existing permanent life insurance policies. Holding life insurance premiums through life insurance financing is typically more costly but has certain benefits. More permanent life insurance offers the potential value of tax-free and creditor-protected earnings, allows removal of future premium liabilities from the estate, and leverages wealth to protect other non-financed assets.
Many people with high net worth are passionate about their philanthropy or gifting during their lifetime or as a legacy. One should seriously examine doing so not only because it will assist in reducing the effective rate of any applicable transfer taxes (in the U.S., the estate, gift, and the generation-skipping transfer tax), but also because of the satisfaction and fulfillment that supporting worthwhile organizations and altruistic goals will bring to the donor. As a result of the new law, parties with significant assets should examine their estate planning documents carefully to ensure they still meet their goals and are tax-efficient. Consideration should be given to:
Charitable Giving and Philanthropy
Many brackets of the economy are shifting their attention to focus on a combination of impact, outcome, and performance, as reported by UBS 2021 Philanthropy Outlook. As there is more transparency in mission, advocacy organizations are attracting younger U.S. donors. Also, U.S. giving to international causes has increased. By region, donations to the East Asia and Pacific regions have been sponsored by young donors. People are becoming more philanthropic, as the eyes of Americans have been opened to the varied needs across the globe, and they are reacting to help those in need. While the biggest threat to U.S. philanthropy today is upending family fortunes, prudent planning can facilitate meaningful charitable giving during the lifetime of a legacy creator or upon a legacy implementer’s death. Further, by coordinating estate, tax, and charitable gift planning, one can maximize the impact of the donation to the charity (ies) of choice and take significant advantage of the federal charitable deduction rules.
From addressing the world’s most pressing issues to fulfilling the principles on which families build their fortunes, philanthropy can serve as a bridge between generations and between financial resources and fulfilling reform. With careful planning, it can ensure a family’s legacy for generations after giving has ceased. According to the Giving USA 2020 report, Americans gave an estimated $449.64 billion to charity in 2019, which reflected a 4.2% increase over 2018. Philanthropic giving is keeping pace with the growth experienced in the stock market and real estate values, which resulted in increased charitable grants and gifts in kind (non-cash donations).
Communicating Your Legacy Intentions
Some good strategies for how to discuss your intentions follow. First, find common ground or shared values. When legacies intersect with fundamental human values, they are deeply reinforcing the kind of family member or friend you want to be recognized as. An artwork may remind you of wonderful time spent together, or treasure the values that it symbolizes. Some find historic research or material analysis fascinating, or associate them with a certain period, culture, or artistic tradition. Discuss the importance of preserving and showcasing shared properties or culture formation. Museums are as much about affect as they are data – sharing one’s memories of historic events, art, or artists and the concomitant affect is important. Acknowledge your obligations or opportunities for social reform. In the case of substantial gifts or bequests, it might be significant to teach older offspring about the responsibilities that come with maintaining the position of a guardian for their family. Mention whether there are other bequests, designative gifts, or endowment plans, such as funding a conservation and restoration of a work of art or making the collection available to researchers. Start a dialogue and request guidance if desired. Discuss your interests with key museum staff to ensure that your donation comes to fruition in an appropriate context, or even a work of art, and to learn about available options for funding conservation, incubation, or restoration.
As mentioned earlier, communication in legacy planning is important to convey the full significance and intention of the gift. It is wise to have discussions with family members and friends early on, alleviating any potential misunderstandings, disagreements, or hurt feelings and decreasing the likelihood of legal disputes. It is also a good idea to let institutions know of your plans in case they have special procedures or other reasons for refusing a gift. When it comes to cultural gifts, there may be opportunities for the institution to help your intentions come to fruition. Everyone should be informed of all aspects of your plan – who, how much, and when. It is often helpful to provide a legacy letter that explains your motivation, values, or family traditions that have led to your generosity and should also include information that explains when you expect the provisions of the will, trust, etc. to be carried out.
