April 3, 2003 | Read Time: 1 minute
Donor Intent: Preserving the Mission of Charitable Foundations, by Lloyd H. Mayer, offers advice on how a donor can ensure that his or her foundation will never deviate from its mission. Mr. Mayer, a lawyer in the Washington office of Caplin & Drysdale, gives an overview of state laws that regulate the ability of future trustees to amend the governing documents of the philanthropies they oversee. He suggests that philanthropists carefully craft bylaws to reflect their charitable values and outlines other structural ways to help ensure that those priorities will be maintained. For example, he suggests that a donor setting up a foundation find a charity with a similar mission and designate a certain number of seats on the foundation’s board for representatives of that charity. He also explains how a donor can require a foundation to distribute all its assets and shut down either by a certain date or after the foundation achieves its goal, such as finding a cure for AIDS. The publication concludes with sample language that can be used to draft a foundation’s bylaws.
Publisher: Washington Legal Foundation, 2009 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 588-0302; 43 pages; $5.
