Bill and Jill Agnew are one of Top of the South Community Foundation’s regular “living giving” donors. They have also created an endowment fund to benefit the community in their Wills.
Bill and Jill recently wrote about why they donate. “…we are both very passionate about philanthropy. During our time abroad we got to see how this works in some of the countries we lived in. For example, in the US it is very common for people to donate a percentage of their salary and gift part of their estate to various local charities. This is not quite the culture in NZ but as individual wealth grows we see it becoming more prominent and we saw the Foundation as a great vehicle to do this…
Also, we were fortunate to experience life in some of the wealthiest countries (Hong Kong, US, Qatar) and one of the poorest (Chad). Firsthand we saw that wealth is not distributed evenly or fairly around the world and often this is driven by where you are born and what side of the tracks you come from. A lot of people need the help to get a start through no fault of their own.
We both felt that Community Foundations are in tune with the needs of our local communities.
We hope this legacy we leave will make a big difference to people that have not been as fortunate as we have. The gift of giving feels right to us and gives us both a great deal of satisfaction.”
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