For donors
Your life's work can keep working here.
You don't have to be wealthy to leave a legacy. A 5% charitable share of an ordinary Central Wisconsin estate — a home, a farm, a retirement account — becomes a permanent fund that supports the place that shaped you, every single year, forever.
01
The 5% idea, in plain terms
Keep 95% for your family. Direct 5% to your community through your local community foundation — in your will, as an IRA or life-insurance beneficiary, or with a gift of farmland or appreciated stock. Your foundation invests it as permanent endowment.
02
Endowment is the gift that compounds
An endowed fund pays out about 5% in grants each year while the principal keeps growing. A $100,000 bequest grants roughly $5,000 a year — over $250,000 back to your community in the first fifty years alone, with the fund still intact.
03
You choose what it supports
Name a cause (youth, conservation, the arts), a specific nonprofit, a scholarship in your family's name — or leave it unrestricted so your foundation can meet the needs of the moment, decade after decade.
04
Simpler than you think
One sentence in your will is enough to start: 'I give 5% of my estate to [my community foundation].' Your attorney or adviser can add it in minutes, and your local foundation staff will help — confidentially and without obligation.
Ready to see what 5% could do at home?
Enter your ZIP code to connect with the community foundation serving your area.