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Gift Through Your Will or Trust

Your charitable bequest is the most important type of gift for building the redwoods' future.

Leave a gift to the redwoods through your will or trust.

Leave a gift to the redwoods through your will or trust. Photo by Paolo Vescia

Here are the three most common types of bequests for you to consider.

  • The first, percentage, is most flexible because it allows your gift to appreciate in your will no matter what asset is used.
  • A specific bequest of an asset such as a retirement plan results in no income taxes paid on the plan by your estate.
  • Residual bequests are often made after remembering relatives and friends and usually in combination with a percentage bequest.

In addition, you have the option to dedicate a grove through a bequest. Learn more about this giving option and what language to include in your bequest.

Suggested Language to Include in Your Bequest

Percentage

"I give, devise and bequeath to Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit corporation of the State of California, located at 114 Sansome Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104, (tax identification number 94-0843915), ____% of my estate."

Specific

"I give, devise and bequeath to Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit corporation of the State of California, located at 114 Sansome Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104, (tax identification number 94-0843915),

Choose:
1) The sum of $___________."
2) __________ shares of stock in ________________Company.", or
3) my real property commonly known as _________________."

Residual

"I give, devise and bequeath to Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit corporation of the State of California, located at 114 Sansome Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104, (tax identification number 94-0843915), all the residue of my estate, including real personal property."

Contingent

"In the event of the death of any of the beneficiaries, I give, devise and bequeath to Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit corporation of the State of California, located at 114 Sansome Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104, (tax identification number 94-0843915), (percentage, specific, or residual language as above)."

If you would like your bequest to be used for a specific program, add the following language:

"to be used for _________________________." [describe purpose, for example: the Redwood Land Fund, or the Land Acquisition Program].

If you would like additional information about remembering Save the Redwoods League with your legacy gift, please contact Sharon Rabichow, Planned Giving Officer, at (415) 820-5828 or srabichow@SaveTheRedwoods.org.

Donor Profile

Author Ensures Enduring Support for Redwoods
Author Ensures Enduring Support for Redwoods

Susan Vreeland named the League in her will. Photo by Kip Gray

Susan Vreeland believes everyone needs some engagement with Earth's astonishing natural places. That's why she has named Save the Redwoods League in her will.

"Save the Redwoods acknowledges this human need, for the sake of our national health, our emotional health," she said. "Preserving more redwood groves provides an atmosphere to heal, to consider one's life, to confront the eternal."

Vreeland, an author, is best known for her fictional works about the lives of famous artists. She's written about Vermeer, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh and Cezanne. Three of her five books about painters have made The New York Times bestseller list, garnering praise for their literary merit and historical accuracy.

Part of Vreeland's mission is helping readers see as artists do. "By the attention painters give to, say, light filtering through a canopy of branches, they're sending us a message," she explained. "They're telling us to stop and look and slow down, to observe the millions of delights of our physical world."

Nature plays a role in many of Vreeland's books — most prominently in her 2004 novel, The Forest Lover, about Canadian artist Emily Carr.

"The more she entered into the life of the tree, as one breath moving, in and out like the tide, one heart-drum beating, the more alive her work became," Vreeland said of Carr.

Time spent in nature animates Vreeland's work as well. She's particularly inspired by redwood groves. "My soul needs that reconnection with the forest, the rushing waters, the tranquil meadows," she said. "The girth of the giant sequoia offers an image of sturdiness, stability. The reaching for the sky of the taller coast redwoods is a call for us to keep reaching, growing." With her bequest, protection of the redwoods will keep growing as well.

Read more planned giving highlights:

Your Help Secures Historic Forest

Just a few hours north of San Francisco in northern Mendocino County lies a special place for redwoods, wildlife and American Indians. Known as Four Corners, this 164-acre parcel is covered with beautiful redwoods and offers a home to threatened wildlife. For more than a thousand years, this land has been the meeting place for native and non-native local residents. With your gifts, Save the Redwoods League has protected and donated the property to descendants of the land’s original inhabitants. Learn about our unique agreement.

Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve

HIGHLIGHTS: On the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains, this 3,360-acre preserve has tall redwoods and a lively creek, as well as ferns, berry bushes and wildflowers.

Park Highlights & Visitor Information »