Donations
Your gifts and membership dues underscore your commitment to the preservation, conservation, and restoration of Madera Canyon, one of Nature’s gems. Through educational programs, volunteer service in the Canyon, and outreach to the wider community, the Friends serve the public today and help to ensure that the wonders of Madera Canyon are preserved for future generations.
Ways to Give
Donate to the Friends of Madera Canyon
Unrestricted Gifts
These tax deductible contributions help us meet our annual operating expenses. When you allow us to use your gift where it is needed most, you give us the flexibility to prioritize your gift based on the board’s needs.
Restricted Gifts
These tax deductible contributions are restricted to specific Friends’ projects — for example the adult/youth education programs (Education Fund) and the annual scholarship we provide to graduating high school seniors (Scholarship Fund).
Questions? Need more information? Please contact us.
Friends of Madera Canyon
PO Box 1203, Green Valley, Arizona 85622-1203
info@friendsofmaderacanyon.org
Qualified Charitable Distributions – a Win Win Way to Give
Changes in the tax laws have all but eliminated deductions for many. However, if you are 70 ½ years of age and have a tax deferred IRA account subject to a Required Minimum Distribution, QCDs are something you ought to consider for all your charitable giving.
A QCD is a way to give some of those tax deferred dollars to a qualified (501 (c)3) non-profit, like the Friends without paying tax on those donations as a withdrawal. At the same time, it reduces your taxable income from your RMD but counts as part of your annual RMD.
For example: Mary has a traditional IRA and has an RMD of $15,000. She decides to give $1,000 to FoMC. Your financial advisor or broker prepares a check for the same in the name of FoMC and either sends it directly to them or to you for distribution. If your former employer still matches funds, you can even double down by sending the proper form to FoMC to complete and submit.
At tax time, the RMD will show $15,000 – $1,000 (QCD) reducing her taxable income. You do not have to file and itemized return and can still use the standard deduction. Anyone who meets these requirements and is not considering a QCD is, in effect, losing part of the purchase power of each dollar equivalent to their tax bracket.
Find more information here: Investopedia.com/articles/financial-advisors/032116/how-use-qcd-rule-reduce-your-taxes.asp. Talk to your broker or financial planner for more details.
Tribute Gifts
Donations to the Friends of Madera Canyon can be made as a memorial gift in memory of a friend or loved one — as an honorary gift to pay tribute to a special family member, friend, or business associate. This is a wonderful way to permanently recognize those outstanding individuals who have left special impressions on our lives.
Bequests
Including the Friends of Madera Canyon in your will is another great way to make a lasting contribution to environmental conservation and education and to the lasting beauty of Madera Canyon. It also makes you eligible to join the Friend’s Madera Society, a small select group of others like yourselves who have included the Friends in their will.
Gifts of Securities
Donating stock or mutual funds can be arranged to support the Friends’ efforts. Either you or your banker/stock broker simply informs us of your intentions to transfer the stock to the Friends’ account. It’s that simple.
Matching Gifts
Matching gifts are initiated by donors whose company offers such a program. If your employer does not have a matching gift program, an inquiry from an employee sometimes helps motivate management to set one up. Matching gifts from your employer are a good source of steady, predictable income for the Friends.
In-Kind Gifts
The Friends often accept in-kind gifts, whose value (determined by you) is tax deductible. Let us know what you would like to offer in support by writing to us: info@friendsofmaderacanyon.org.
Donate to the Friends of Madera Canyon
Another Endowment in our Future?
The Friends of Madera Canyon should build another endowment. Some years ago, Bud and Mary Gode established the first endowment for the Friends, the one that supports the Gode Scholarship Fund. Now we need to consider an endowment big enough so that the operations of the Friends, perhaps even including specific projects, can be funded from the Friends’ own resources.
Over the time the Friends have existed, federal funding for the Forest Service operation in the Coronado National Forest, which includes Madera Canyon, has fluctuated, depending upon the political climate in Washington D.C. Currently, it is safe to say, there is vast uncertainty about the federal budget, but one outcome so far is that, for all of the Coronado, there is only one employee whose job focuses on recreation.
When the Friends are awarded grants for projects like the replacement of the fire grills, it is Forest Service personnel who supervise the installation rather than someone hired with grant money to do so. Fewer Forest Service personnel who work with the Friends on projects has a negative effect on what the Friends can do. Can we envision a time when, because the Friends have their own revenue stream from interest earned on an endowment, projects can proceed because the Friends have the funds to provide the service once contributed by the Forest Service?
My experience as Board President and the experience of some of my predecessors is that, to be an effective President, a person needs to expect to spend an average of 55-60 hours a month on Friends’ business. This is in addition to the accounting work done on behalf of the Canyon and the monitoring of membership and gift contributors. Other non-profit organizations like the Friends have addressed their needs by paying for services now done by volunteers.
Furthermore, there is a trend felt by most every non-profit of fewer volunteers being available. How do we ensure that the Friends will be able to meet the goals of its Strategic Plan which, of course, are focused on activities supporting the “preservation, conservation, and restoration” of the Canyon?
The Friends have benefited from the generosity of corporations and foundations whose funds have enabled us to caretake the infrastructure of Madera Canyon that the Forest Service, because of its unpredictable levels of funding year to year, finds difficult to do. It is hard to find a place in the Madera Canyon Recreation Area that has not been improved as a result of Friends’ activities. What happens when other aspects of the infrastructure, like bridges over Madera Creek, need work? Who will fund? Who will supervise the work?
Building our own endowment allows the Friends to continue its work in support of the Forest Service on behalf of Madera Canyon in the face of uncertainty about federal, corporate, or foundation funding.
Getting started: Develop a plan. Among our membership, there are people with successful experience in planning and operating a campaign. That expertise will be useful to us. Our plan will use the Mission Statement and the Strategic Plans as lodestars for our efforts and establish the case for endowment.
If you have experience and would like to add your ideas, please do not hesitate to contact me. Past experience tells us that giving will come in a variety of forms: cash gifts; gifts of appreciated stocks; contributed Required Minimum Distributions; life insurance policies; provisions in trusts and wills; charitable remainder trusts; and so on. Building another endowment is ambitious. There is much work to be done to be ready to ask for such support. Will we succeed? We won’t know until we try.
Dan White
April 2025