Financial Stewardship at Emmaus
There are many ways to provide financial support for the work and ministries of Emmaus.
The most obvious method of providing your financial support is also the most traditional method of leaving an offering in the offering bowl at the Sunday services. However, there is another method that more and more of our members are using due to its simplicity and convenience. It’s called Simply Giving, an electronic method that allows you to make donations on a scheduled, automatic basis. It’s a convenient and consistent way to help our church year-round.
Your gifts to Emmaus can be made using a weekly, biweekly or monthly auto withdrawal from a savings or checking account or by using a credit card. These gifts are then automatically transferred into the church’s bank account.
To set up electronic donations, simply click the “Donate” option at the top of the screen. From there you simply click on the big purple DONATE button. At that point, you can indicate how much you want to give to any, or multiple, funds. If it is your first time giving online, you can set up your profile at the same time.
The Electronic Giving option can also be used for one-time transactions to Emmaus general fund, the Capital Projects Fund, Lutheran World Relief, Camp Lutherwood, ELCA Disaster and Hunger, FISH, FOOD for Lane County, Eugene Mission, and the Emmaus Foundation.
If you need additional assistance in setting up this method of giving or if you simply have questions about it, you can contact Melinda in the church office.
If you have an IRA and are of an age that allows you to make withdrawals without incurring an age-related penalty, you might want to utilize funds from an IRA to make your gifts to the church. This type of gift is called a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD).
A QCD is a direct transfer of funds from your IRA to a qualified charity (Emmaus), in which you can benefit by avoiding the need to report the distribution as taxable income, thereby reducing your taxable income.
This can be highly advantageous in that QCDs provide a tax benefit even if you don’t itemize your deductions. Typically, charitable donations are only deductible if you itemize them on Schedule A of your tax return. However, many taxpayers find that the standard deduction is higher than their total itemized deductions, which means they don’t itemize and, thus, don’t benefit from their charitable contributions.
As you probably are aware, the IRS requires you to begin withdrawing from your retirement accounts after you reach age 73, or 75, depending on your birth year. When these Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) become mandatory, instead of increasing your taxable income, you can opt for Qualified Charitable Distributions which satisfy the Required Minimum Distribution requirement while supporting charitable causes.
In other words, any amount you donate through a QCD counts toward satisfying your RMD for the year, but it doesn’t get added to your taxable income. This can help you meet your RMD requirement without the downside of increasing your tax burden.
It’s important to know that funds must be transferred directly from the IRA custodian to the qualifying charity organization. You can’t withdraw the funds and then donate them because this act will be considered taxable income.
Your IRA provider can help you with these Qualified Charitable Distributions and they can be made for a one-time contribution or for repeating contributions like monthly church offerings.
Planned Giving (Legacy) Considerations
In addition to the more typical means of financially supporting Emmaus throughout the year, some people choose to leave a legacy gift by including Emmaus in their estate plan. For example, long time member of Emmaus, Bob Bower, left a six figure gift in his Will with the stipulation that the funds be used for exterior maintenance of our building and grounds. Our church council makes decisions as to specific projects to fund with this bequest.
While this type of gift can be made by amending an existing Will or Trust, there are other, more simple ways to leave a legacy gift. One of the easiest methods is to simply name Emmaus as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy or other financial asset such as an investment account or even a bank account.
Legacy gifts can be made outright to Emmaus or held in perpetuity through gifts to the Emmaus Foundation.
If you would like to explore this type of gift, you can contact our church treasurer, Dave Frosaker, who can explain these types of gifts in more detail.