The PEGG

January 2002

A Gift That Educates

Editor’s Note: Following is the regular monthly column on the Education Foundation, which operates independently of APEGGA and Council.

BY DENNIS BROOKS, P.ENG., P.GEOPH.
President, APEGGA Education Foundation

Atthis season, we traditionally give gifts to family and close friends. But for a gift that keeps on giving, consider a donation to our foundation for scholarships. These are gifts that can change lives.

Tax Planning
Year end is a time to do tax planning, including choosing which charities you wish to support and making a donation in the tax year 2001 to maximize the benefits of tax credits. Although a tax credit can be used in ensuing years, it may be to your advantage to claim it for this year.

The Income Tax Act requires the foundation to spend 80 per cent of its tax receipted donations on our charitable purposes, namely scholarships and awards, and the rest can go to endowment funds. APEGGA contributions have sheltered us up to now so our endowment could grow fairly quickly, but that sheltering is now near its limit.

This means we must look to other categories of donation that can go directly to endowment - bequests, “10-year gifts,” and gifts from other registered charities or foundations. Other special types of giving include insurance policies and gifts of securities that have had capital gains. If you are in a position to consider gifts of this kind, we would be happy to discuss it with you.

Celebration
A few weeks ago, our foundation and APEGGA had a joint celebration in which we recognized scholarship and award winners together with deserving teachers. The latter are 14 of those (out of many nominees) who make math and science fun. It is always a pleasure for me to take part in student awards. It leaves me with a feeling that our future is in the hands of bright, energetic, and capable young people. We can also celebrate a pretty good year of growth of our foundation: more donations, more donors, and the groundwork
laid for more growth next year.

Planning for 2002
In the last few months, our board of directors have been doing some soul-searching about our future. We seem to be reaching the limit of what we can do as a board of volunteers with a
foundation membership that has largely been inactive. We also need to address the issue of a campaign aimed at major donors if we are to have a significant endowment fund. The board feels the first need is to revisit our vision and to create one that our donors will embrace. We will also look at the practicality of a part time manager who can give day-to-day leadership
and keep us moving ahead in our goals in a timely way. We also need to develop our foundation membership to give ushuman resources needed to attain the goals.

Here’s wishing all our supporters the best of the season, and to the world, Peace on Earth.

Special Note: In a previous column, I explained how to use APEGGA’s website to make an online payment. I felt quite confident, because I had tried it! Unfortunately, the computer
went down before completing the transaction so it never went through! So as a note of caution, wait for the “Thank You” screen which tells you the transaction was successful and gives you a screen to save as a temporary receipt. I tried it again today and got this acknowledgement.)