The Designing Your Legacy workshop was developed to assist people at our church in the area of estate planning. National statistics show that approximately 70% of families do not have any type of legal paperwork to cover their passing. We partnered with Financial Planning Ministry (FPM) out of Irvine, California to present a biblically based estate planning workshop.

During the workshop, attendees learned about the various types of planning available, including wills and living trusts. They also learned about the probate process and about federal estate taxes. Finally, they had the opportunity to partner with the church and get all of their legal documents done for them through FPM. Workshop attendance averaged 225 people, with the largest one being 550 people in June, 2005.

The partnership with FPM allowed our church to offer free legal documents to anyone who would leave a gift out of their estates to any one of FPM’s sponsoring organizations, one of whom was our church. If the family left any amount to one of the partners, FPM would give them; a Revocable Living Trust along with Pour-Over Wills and Durable Power of Attorney (living wills) for each person. This partnership allowed us to grow our Planned Giving base, and resulted in expectancies of over $12.8 Million after just 2.5 years. Expected gifts ranged from $100 to 45% of one families estate. Additionally, over 68% of the families who used FPM left the church 5% or more of their estates.

Below are links to some of the bulletin inserts we used to promote the event. Click on the image to open a PDF document.