Bill and Anita Kearns

Bill and Anita Kearns
Townsend, Montana

A small rural town like Townsend has few opportunities to receive grants but the tax credit for gifts to charitable endowments has helped us obtain funds for our local hospital, museum and restoration of an historic church among other thins. This made a huge difference to our area.

The cost of these gifts to the Montana treasury has been relatively small, and the long term benefits of these gifts will be immeasurable in terms of the positive impacts they will have in strengthening the ability of our local non-profits to meet important community needs forever in the future.

Further, many of these gifts are providing taxable income to their donors for their life, which is an important offset to the credits claims on the Montana treasury. This last statement is often overlooked by people who are asking how much the credit costs. Montana historically has lagged behind the other states in the USA in terms of our endowed philanthropy. We don't have wealthy charitable foundations that people in other states use to get important new community projects started. However, as the benefits of Montana's tax credit for endowed philanthropy continue to be distributed to the permanent treasuries of our local community based organizations - - our schools, our churches, boy scouts, girl scouts, etc. - - we will better equipped to meet the future. We hope that Montana will keep the tax credit.

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