Starting in January 2025, the Franklin Weinberg Fund began a ten year “wind down” to increase the Fund’s philanthropic giving and spend down the Fund by the end of 2034. This will allow us to significantly increase our family philanthropy, while creating more short-term energy around the Fund to help serve as a point of family connection as the generations beyond the founders continue to grow and spread out. Annual giving is going from $85,000/year to roughly $215k/year over the next 10 years!
The Fund’s trustees (Jeanne, Sarah and Zach) have been discussing how best to structure this expanded giving, and landed on a two-pronged approach:
Expanded resources for individual family members to donate to the charities of their choosing; and
One larger annual collective gift from the family every year.
For individual family giving, adult* descendants of Charles and Edith Weinberg will now be able to request up to $5,000/year** for one or more charities of their choosing. Gifts can be made to any nonprofit organization in good standing that is tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Trustees will be able to designate up to $20,000/year each as their “compensation” for their work managing the Fund. Family members will continue to submit their donation requests online at franklinweinbergfund.org. Donations are accepted January 1st-November 30th.
Additionally, the Trustees will make one larger collective gift on behalf of the family at the end of each fiscal year in November. The amount each year will be determined by how many of us “max out” our individual giving that year. Ideally a gift between $90,000-$100,000 will be made annually.
The process for identifying each year’s large family gift will be relatively informal - family members are welcome to suggest charities to the Trustees at any point during the year, and we plan to continue to hold regular family video calls when we can discuss this collectively. The Trustees will all have to agree unanimously on the beneficiary before a gift can be made. The final collective gift will be made in November 2034, at which point the Fund will be “retired”. The only remaining asset will then be the Fund’s share in the Weinberg Denbe partnership, which will be donated to non-profit entity TBD, who will receive the Fund’s current share of proceeds until the oil is capped and the land is sold.
*Adults are anyone second or third generation from Charles & Edith. Fourth generation family members can make requests, but their parent(s) will be credited with the gift amount.**Wayne Franklin will continue to be able to designate $10,000/year for his long standing support of Emerson Hospital.