A Legacy to Faith and Family

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Ministries. Welcome to engaging truth, the manifestation of God's word and the lives of people around us. Join us each week. As we explore the impact of his message of spiritual renewal from the lesson of forgiveness forges in the crucible of divorce, to the message of salvation, learn earned by an executioner from a condemned killer to the gift of freedom found in the rescue of victims of human trafficking. This is God's truth in action, and

Welcome to another addition of engaging truth. I'm your host pastor John Kane today with us on the program. We have Brian Hamilton and Brian is the chief financial officer of legacy DEO. Welcome to the

Program, Brian. Thanks, John. It's a pleasure to be here with you. So,

Uh, give us the scoop. What is legacy DEO?

That's a, that's a great way to start because people don't often know who we are and sometimes we're called the best kept secret in the Texas district. So I'm glad to share that with you. Um, legacy C DEO is a nonprofit organization and as every good nonprofit has, uh, a mission. So do we, and our mission very simply put is we inspire giving that impacts life forever. Uh, so basically what that means is, um, we operate as a foundation. Our job is to receive charitable gifts and manage them, uh, for our clientele, according to the way they instruct us to do that. So we act as their trustee, we act as their, uh, fiduciary. We do a number of things. Basically what we're doing is we help people with the charitable component of their estate plan. We have certain gifts instruments that allow, uh, our client clients to benefit themselves and their family and their estate plan.

They want to use those vehicles. Um, what we're trying to do is help people to leave a legacy and our vision statement for our organization sums all that up very succinctly. And that simply is God's people each and every one we'll leave a legacy, faith and family. That's what we hope to accomplish, uh, through our ministry and through the exercise of our mission. Uh, basically we're in the business of giving away money to charitable causes. So we, we help, uh, charitably minded people and help them to get connected with their are ministries and their charities of choice. And we use a number of different tools to accomplish that, which I will certainly cover here later today in the, in the broadcast. Um, our largest ministry partner that we work with is indeed the Texas district of the LCMS. Uh, that includes the, uh, district itself.

It's, uh, congregations here in Texas it's schools here in Texas and other, uh, LCMS entities, such as Concordia university, Texas upbringing, and Lutheran outdoors ministry of Texas, also known as camp lone star located in LaGrange. Those are some of our, uh, biggest ministry partners. We also have some other ministry partners in the Christian community that are not necessarily LCMS. So we, we don't limit our services, uh, to strictly LCMS anymore. Uh, there's a great need for these kind of services within the entire Christian community. And we are happy to, uh, provide that to those, those folks, uh, the Texas district, you know, how we connected with them. They, uh, generously have supported us financially over the years. They provide us office space in their headquarters building in Austin, and we work very closely with them since they are our largest ministry partner. So there's a history here.

So basically we were up and running at that point, uh, chartered as a foundation. And we've held that charter here, uh, in Texas ever since. So we've been here for 60 years. We're very quietly doing what we do. Uh, and in fact, for a number of years, we just kind of sat there. The foundation was very small. Our board meetings were rather perfunctory and, um, our CEO, Jerry Keisha likes to tell this story that the board meetings used to be pretty much the following. Did you receive the check? Yes. Did you deposit the check? Yes. Okay. Let's go have coffee end of board meeting. So yeah, uh, over the years we've become much more sophisticated than that. Uh, assets were slowly added and we expanded the services that we provide over the years. Uh, for many years, um, a gentleman pastor by the name of Carl Heckman was the dual CEO of both Lutheran foundation of Texas and the Texas church extension fund.

So today we manage more than 400 accounts. Our clients are individual people, the district to itself, the district's congregation schools, and then various ministry organizations, um, all over the country. Basically we currently manage over 60 million of assets, about 95% of that is assets that we manage in a trustee capacity for other parties. I've mentioned those parties already. The other 5% is the foundation's assets. So we're a pretty small organization. We have four employees and we manage a lot of money for a lot of people. What we do with that money is we distribute gifts each year to people and ministries located in more than 30 states. So in our 60 years of existence, we've kind of become a big deal. That's great. So, uh, what's your professional background? How'd you get into this? Yeah, that's a great question also. Uh, it, wasn't when I started my career again, um, I actually began my career, um, in, in the Houston office of KPMG, which is one of the big four public accounting firms.

Then I spent nearly 20 years in the healthcare finance field in the number of roles, including controller and chief financial officer. And then this November, I will celebrate 12 years with legacy DEO and that entire time I've been the chief financial officer, uh, many, many years ago, I graduated, uh, with my undergraduate degree in accounting, from the university of Texas at Austin. And then I later went on to earn an MBA degree from Vanderbilt university. I hold an active Texas CPA license. And although legacy Dao is not licensed to practice public accountancy. I can give our clients some general direct on tax matters when it comes to their estate plans. Uh, we do encourage our clients to seek the advice of their own CPA, their attorney, or their financial advisor when making decisions about charitable giving. So what do I do in my role as the chief financial officer of legacy day?

Well, that means I have oversight over all of the strategic and operational, uh, financial matters of the organization. As I mentioned, we're, we're a smaller size organization. And so that means I wear many hats around the organization. Um, my role includes oversight of client service operations, our investment program, our tax compliance program, our risk management and insurance program. I actually get into some human resources and staffing matters, uh, information technology matters, and even some marketing and communications activities, including, uh, maintaining our website for the organization. So that's what I do. Uh, that's kind of my, my background and my role in the organization. So if, if you have anything that needs to be done financially, you know, the, the monthly and quarterly financial statements putting together the annual will budget to doing an annual or a periodic strategic plan, those all fall in, into my wheelhouse,

Well helping people to, uh, to leave a legacy so that their life of service to our Lord might to continue on beyond their physical, uh, uh, death here on earth. How does, how does this organization work? You know, uh, what, what services maybe I should say, what services do you provide?

Another great question, John. And, uh, it's, it's easy to sort of bifurcate or divide what we do into two groups. Number one, individuals, and number two organizations and by organizations. I mean that in a broad sense, covering congregation schools, the Texas district, anybody who's a nonprofit Christian based ministry falls into that organization's category. So let's start talk by talking about, uh, what we pride provide the individuals, uh, the there's a number of things there. The main thing is a comprehensive estate planning, uh, service that we provide to individuals. We wanna be able to help them create the charitable part of their estate plan. As I said earlier, we talked about our vision statement. We want people to leave a legacy to faith to demonstrate that their belief in, you know, God's economy is something that, uh, they held true during their lifetime, as well as after their lifetime.

And then, um, also, um, you know, we, we, um, we want them to be able to leave monies to their family. There's a lot of thought about that. Some families, uh, feel very strongly about that. Others feel that no, that's not necessary because my family either they've already made their money and they're fine. They don't need an inheritance. Or maybe the family member is not a good manager of money. And so they either don't want to leave money to that family member, or they see that there's some benefit in doing so, but maybe doing that through some of the vehicles that we use that will help that person to be a better steward, uh, of the money that if the parents might be leaving them. So again, the, the general charitable component of the estate plan is what we really focus upon. And there's other parts of an estate plan, obviously that aren't necessarily, um, our primary focus.

And so we leave that to estate planning attorneys to deal with that. Um, and I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. A, a person may have a business that they created and built during their lifetime, and they need to somehow sell off or divide up that business to other family members. That's not really our, our strong suit. We wanna be working with them on the charitable aspect of their estate plan. So how do we do that? And there's a number of vehicles that we use. Um, I'll enumerate some of those here and describe them to you a little bit, probably the main one we use. And it's about two thirds of what we do is a vehicle called the endowment fund. Basically an endowment fund is a perpetual vehicle that you can give monies to charitable causes, um, into the future. After you pass and go to heaven to be with the Lord, uh, for forever, you could also set it to be for a certain time period if you wanted.

But most of our clients, uh, use the perpetual endowment vehicle and, and endowment basically the is a trust agreement that says I'm going to make a distribution every year. Uh, that will go to the charities that I name in the endowment agreement. Sometimes people leave it to one. Sometimes people leave it to multiples. So another vehicle that we use is trusts. And then they mentioned that just briefly, a moment ago, the main trust vehicle that we use is an IRS, uh, tax, um, a tax favorable trust vehicle called a charitable remainder trust. And the nice thing about a C R T is that it can provide lifetime income to our client slash donor who sets up the trust, and then after he, or she, or both of them pass, um, and go to heaven, then they can leave through that vehicle monies to their family for a period of up to 20 years.

So that's one way that people leave monies to families through trusts. And we have done a number of those over the years, and they work really well. Another vehicle that we use is called the charitable gift annuity. And these are the same kinds of vehicles that colleges and universities use all the time with their donors to provide their donors a lifetime stream of income. The nice thing about a charitable gift annuity is that the payment does not change. It remains the same over the donor's lifetime. And if there's any money, any left at the end, then it goes to legacy DEO or to an endowment fund that we manage. So those are very, uh, valuable vehicles for older folks who aren't getting a lot of income out of the stock market, let's say, or out of the investment markets. And it provides them a much higher rate of, and then what they be able to get through their investments.

Another vehicle that's become very popular in recent years is called the donor advised fund. And basically a DAF is a way for people to set aside money while they're living and your market for charitable purposes is, but they don't necessarily have to Don to distribute monies out of their donor advised fund right away. The monies can sit there for several years. They can grow in value because we invest any monies that we we receive, and then they can make their gifts later on down the road. And we have several families that do that through the donor advised fund. Uh, it's a great way for people who are still working to be able to get some tax benefit, some tax advantage from, from giving and there's fewer and fewer opportunities for that nowadays. So the donor advised funds become quite a popular vehicle in that regard.

Um, and then finally, we often have people say to us, Hey, I would, I would like to give to my church, but I don't have cash. I have a lot of stock that was given to me by a relative, and I've held it over the years and collected the dividends on it, but it's gone up in value so much. If I sell it, I'm gonna be hit with capital gain taxes. Well, guess what? We have a way for a person who has that situation at hand, to be able to donate their stock directly to legacy DEO into our brokerage account, we then turn around and sell the stock for a nominal fee. And then we distribute the proceed to their charities for their instructions. And that's a very helpful vehicle. Um, that also gets used by our organizations as well, cause many of their members and their constituencies are in the same position when it comes to having appreciated stock.

So those are the things that, uh, we, we provide to individuals like to talk a little bit about organizations, again, congregations schools, uh, ministry organizations, what have you. And there's five vehicles that we, we use there. We use the endowment fund, which I've already discussed. The second one is, uh, custodial account. So the custodial account is like a savings account, many congregations and organizations find that they have some excess operating funds, but they're not making much of a return on those funds at the bank or in a CD wherever they may have it. So they, um, they often turn to the custodial account as being a way to get, earn a higher return on their monies, um, and be able to have access to it. As I said, that works like a savings account. Many congregations and schools have opened up and with us and, um, that needs to be, you know, something that is held and not touched in perpetuity and left undisturbed.

If they need to get their monies out and be able to have access to those operating funds, then the custodial account is the right vehicle for them. So we do a number of those with congregations, um, with, um, some of the other organizations that I've already mentioned, ha have those types of custodial accounts with us. A third thing we do for organizations is we provide the state planning education to their members or donors. And for example, uh, we've worked with a couple of congregations to meet with some of their people to explain how estate planning works, educate them on that, explain these vehicles that I'm mentioning here in greater detail, and just basically get them to understand the importance of having an estate plan. And then hopefully that they're going to leave some monies through their estate plan to that organization, congregation school. What have you that they're associated with? Uh, I mentioned organizations, um, often have members who wanna make stock gifts. We talked about that and then fifth and finally, uh, legacy DEO is able to make grants unlimited basis to qualified ministries within the Texas district. And so we've been able to do that over the last few years and, um, it's been great, uh, there's needs out there and people will send in their applications for a grant and often we are able to fund those. And so we find lots of ways to help organiz, um, with all their charitable needs.

That's great. We'll come back to you, Brian, in just a second here, uh, briefly, I'd like to point our listeners to our website, Elm houston.org. And if you go to our website, Elm houston.org, you can learn more about us. You can, uh, find links to our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages can donate online. If you'd like to support the work that we are doing, trying to, uh, share the faith of Jesus by interviewing people who are living the faith and sharing the faith often in very creative ways. We're also a nonprofit organization and our on the air hosts are all of volunteers. So your donations go far in purchasing broadcast airtime. You may write us at M PO box 5 68, Cypress, Texas 7 7, 4 10. Uh, Brian coming back to you, we're down to about the last, uh, three or four minutes here. Uh, tell us how our listeners can, uh, contact legacy Dao for more information.

Absolutely. Uh, I mentioned I maintain our website and I think that it is a wealth of information. So that would be www dot legacy Dao, one word L E G a C Y D E O dot OG.

Very good. Can you share a success story or two with us?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, we, we have a lot of them. I like to think that every client interaction we have is a success story, but there there's a few very notable one. Um, I won't mention anyone's names cuz I know a lot of people listening might know some of these people, uh, but we, we had a lady several years ago, open four accounts with us that, um, paid monies out to relatives, paid monies out to charities for a number of years. And then at the end of a 20 year period, uh, follow her date of death. Everything came together into a, uh, brand new endowment fund that has currently 2 million in it. And um, it provides funding for the missions program, the church planting program within the Texas district. That's one of our most notable success stories. Um, this lady had pretty meager means, but she happened to be blessed with some producing oil and gas properties that, uh, came into production and actually did very well for her.

Um, another endowment fund that I can think of, we, uh, had a gentleman who was actually from the Houston area. He's been a number of years working for one of the, of oil and gas companies. I think he made a pretty modest salary over his, his lifetime, but he lived very frugally and he saved a lot of money. And when he passed his entire state came to us, it was a million and a half, um, dollars. And he actually threw his endowment fund blesses four or five ministry here in the state of Texas. And those ministries are so grateful for what they receive from his account. Uh, finally, I'll give you another success story. Um, I talked earlier about charitable gift annuities and we did have a, um, a lady who attorney who was acting as her power of attorney called us once and said, Hey, I understand you do charitable gift annuities. I have a client who is living in an assisted living facility in the Conroe area. She needs a steady stream of income now that she has sold her home and that steady stream of income will be necessary to pay her monthly living expenses. Fine. We set up a charitable gift annuity for her that defray her expenses of living there at the facility in which she lived. So those are some great success stories on how we help people out every day and how we then bless ministry, uh, after people go home to

Heaven. Those are, uh, some exciting stories about ways that you've helped people to, uh, continue to serve our Lord and serve their fellow Christians even after they've gone on. Uh, and someday we'll see them again. Uh, Brian real quickly as we wrap up here, uh, your website once again, legacy

Day.org.

Thank you for being with us and to our listeners. God's blessings until we meet again.

Thank you for listening to this broadcast of engaging truth. Be sure to join us each week at this time to help support our ministry, contact evangelical life ministries, post office Fox 5 6 8, Cypress, Texas 77, 410, or visit our website@elmhouston.org or find us on Facebook evangelical ministries. Thank you.