Annual Giving
Annual contributions can be made directly to the Law Center through the Annual Fund.

Southern University Law Center’s Greatest Needs
The Annual Fund provides unrestricted support for the Law Center’s core activities. This support is invaluable, and allows the chancellor to respond to pressing needs and create new initiatives in a fast changing and complex legal environment. This year’s goal is $250,000. If 1,000 alumni make an annual gift of $250 we can make this goal!

Planned Giving
A planned gift may enable you to satisfy personal financial planning needs in addition to the Law Center with important, long-term support. Some plans may provide income for life (or a term of years), an immediate income tax charitable deduction, avoidance of capital gains tax, professional asset management (if the Law Center serves as trustee). If a gift is made through your will, you obtain significant estate tax benefits.

Bequests
A provision in your will or living trust that directs a portion of your estate to a named beneficiary (such as the Law Center) is called a bequest. A charitable bequest not only furthers your lifetime commitment to the law school, but also qualifies your estate for a charitable deduction that can reduce estate tax liability. There are several ways to make a bequest: You can arrange to give the Law Center a specific monetary amount, a piece of property, or a percentage of your estate. Residual and contingent bequests provide first for your family, and then, if circumstances permit, for the law school.

Real Estate
A gift of real estate is often an effective way to make a major gift to a charitable organization such as the Law Center, since the gift entitles the donor to an income tax deduction for the property’s full appraised fair market value.

Almost any marketable real estate is suitable for a charitable gift, including personal residences, farms, commercial buildings, forest land, and shares in a cooperative apartment corporation. Unencumbered property is preferable and generates the greatest tax benefit.

Retirement Assets
Older alumni may discover that they have accumulated estates and retirement plans far in excess of anything they ever imagined possible. Tax burdens—sometimes more than 70 percent—can eat away at retirement plan assets when they are left outright to heirs. Making a charitable gift of retirement assets is one way to lessen the tax burden associated with such assets and to support the Law Center at the same time.

If you have any questions about making a gift to the Law Center, please contact Cynthia Buggage, Director of Development, (225) 771-5044, or e-mail, cbuggage@sulc.edu.