Not Your Typical Donor
By Will Power
Michael Vechikar is not your typical donor.
He gives when friends have a charity bike ride or when neighbourhood kids sell chocolate for their school. He gives at the grocery store check-out, and whenever there’s a global disaster. But he doesn’t have one specific cause that he is invested in.
“I came to Canada when I was a teenager. My family was focused on settling in and learning a new language. Giving to charity was just not on our minds. It’s not something we talked much about at home.”
“That being said, I care a lot about what’s happening in the world and in my community. It’s always been at the back of my mind – that I need to do more – I just never knew where to start.”
So why start by making a donation in his Will? Not very “typical” right?
Well, he was hanging out with a group of friends, trading parenting hacks as they often did. One of them had just written a Will and, among other things, included a gift to charity. Michael was intrigued. His son was 2 years old and he knew he needed to get his Will together too.
It had never occurred to him to leave a gift to charity in his Will, but it made sense when he heard about it. He saw the opportunity to make that big contribution he was looking to make. To scratch that itch to do more.
“I could be a famous philanthropist like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet” he jokes. “Seriously though, the idea of making any kind of big donation seemed so out of reach…and out of mind for young professionals like us who are just keeping up with the cost of living in this city.”
Michael, being an engineer, and a practical thinker, delved deep into the mechanics of how it all worked. He played around with the numbers and realized that if he and his wife set aside 3% in their Will for charity, that would probably be a 5 figure gift! And they would still leave their son with more than enough.
“It just made too much sense for us to pass up” Michael said. (He is also quick to mention the useful tax breaks that come with this kind of donation.)
“I’m the logic-guy. My wife is the one who is more involved in the issues. I’ve let her decide which charities we include in our Will…for now” says Mike. “But this has all got me thinking about the causes that are important to me, and I’m starting to get more involved too. I expect we’ll need to update our Will again as our family grows. Who knows what will happen then!”
