Your Estate Plan Is a Moral Document. Does It Read Like One?

By Veronica Blake, CEO of Placer Community Foundation

I think of Cathy Akana, a Granite Bay resident and longtime member of our Legacy Society, who passed away in early 2024. Cathy was humble and soft-spoken, someone her friends described as having a moral compass set to true north. In 2011, she came to Placer Community Foundation and named a gift in her estate plan with a simple stipulation: use it to support the care and welfare of animals. She did not write a check. She made a decision, then went on living. When she passed, that decision became the Cathy Akana Animal Welfare Fund, a permanent endowment making grants to animal welfare organizations every year, forever. Cathy will never know the full reach of what she set in motion. That is precisely the point.

You are arriving at your own version of that moment. And you are arriving at it during the largest generational wealth transfer in American history, with economists estimating more than $80 trillion passing between generations over the coming decades. That figure can feel abstract until you consider what it means here, in Placer County, in the neighborhoods and open spaces that shaped your family. This is not simply a financial shift. It is a civic one.

What Legacy Giving Actually Is

Most people think charitable giving is something you do during your lifetime, after immediate obligations are met. Legacy giving, through a bequest in a will, a beneficiary designation on a retirement account or a similar planned gift, changes that entirely. It transforms a legal document into a statement of purpose. It extends your values past the limits of your own life.

The more important benefit of legacy giving is the conversation it forces. When families are open about charitable intentions, they pass down not only assets but values. Generosity becomes part of the inheritance. There are practical advantages too — bequests are exempt from federal estate taxes, and retirement assets often transfer far more efficiently to a charitable fund than to individuals — but those are details for an attorney. The decision that matters is whether your estate plan reflects what you actually believe.

Why a Community Foundation?

Different from a single nonprofit, a community foundation can cast a wider net on your charitable intent. At PCF, we hold deep knowledge of this region's evolving needs, from affordable housing and food insecurity to youth development and environmental preservation. We can establish an endowment that supports multiple causes permanently, with local expertise guiding every grant. And when Cathy sat down with us in 2011, what she valued most was knowing that if any of the small organizations she cared about ceased to exist years later, her gift would still reach the work she loved. That flexibility is the promise we make to every donor who is thinking in decades rather than years.

You do not need to have all the answers today. That is precisely why we exist.

Start With a Conversation

Imagine a student from Placer County who attends college on a scholarship funded by an endowment established today. She does not know your name. She never will. That is what legacy giving looks like when it works.

If you have recently inherited, or know that you will, I invite you to start simply. Not with a check or a legal document, but with a conversation about what you believe a thriving Placer County looks like, and whether your estate plan reflects that belief. Reach out to PCF at 530-885-4920 or info@placercf.org to learn more. There is no cost, and no obligation.

Cathy Akana did not wait for the perfect moment or the perfect plan. She just decided what she stood for, and made it permanent.

You can do the same.