My nephew was born 8 weeks premature and had suffered with various health problems since his birth. He had epilepsy and Chiari but was not able to qualify for the corrective surgery because it “wasn’t bad enough”.
…whatever that means.
Well he died this past Sunday morning in his sleep from an apparent seizure and was only 6. The Medical Examiner is almost done with all that, so its not 100% officially (yet).
So my wife (its her brother’s child) wants to do a Spaghetti dinner to help Jonathan’s mother and father out. They have from what I assume vast medical bills, and just overall have had a lot of bad luck. Her brother suffers from MS (cancer survivor too…thanks God!).
I think a benefit dinner like that will defintely be helpful, but I want to look into doing some more to help them out at least financially for what I assume to be a substantial amount of past medical debt. Of course I don’t know the extent of their financial woes, but I just thought it would be nice to try and find a way to do…more…and not be so burdened with these bills. Watching that Extreme Make Over show always made me think that Jonathon and his parents should have been on there years ago because of all the lousy stuff he/they have had to endure.
So my question(s) are what is realistically possible to do for them a situation like this? Is it too late? Should we just stick with a spaghetti dinner for now, or perhaps do something more in the future after some careful planning?
In my ignorance I imagine that I could somehow create a charity or foundation, but then I would need to make sure it is legit with a IRS tax ID# and all that. But is that what I really need for this to be successful?
If you create a charity or foundation, you can’t get an IRS tax deduction unless it’s for more than one recipient.
You certainly can set up a fund to pay his bills, but donations would not be tax deductible. I’m not sure if the money given to the family would be considered taxable income or not.
Rather than creating your own foundation, what about doing some research into foundations that provide assistance to families in similar circumstances? Many foundations are set up to offer assistance while the child is alive, but you may find some that offer assistance after he has passed as well. You may want to check with organizations specific to your nephew’s issues such as the Epilepsy Foundation. This Chiari support page has a good list of resources.
It’s great that you want to do something to help, but you may be better off turning to experts who have dealt with these situations and have resources available, rather than trying to do it on your own.
OK I will do some more digging. I was earlier but it just was so much and I didn’t know where to start so I started a thread because there are so many people on here that know an unbelievable amount of stuff.
When you fill out the forms to get your foundation recognized by the IRS (so donations to it are tax-deductible), there are specific questions about this.
What you are trying to do (the tax-exempt foundation part of it) is precisely something that the IRS tries hard to catch. For years, people have been setting up fake ‘charities’ that benefit only them or their family members, fake ‘scholarships’ that only get awarded to their relatives, fake ‘disaster’ charities that only rebuild their relatives homes, etc. And for years the IRS has been catching them at it. They have much more experience at this than you do.
You can certainly raise funds to help these relatives. But you can’t set this up as a tax-exempt public charity (not legally) .
Oh ok. I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one or anything like that. I just felt that since my nephew’s mom and dad are so hit financially because of all this that the best way to help them out financially would be to make sure it was blessed by the IRS so someone could donate money and be able to write it off 100%. I also wanted to make sure that if people donated X that they would be able to know for certain that their donation would go entirely to my nephews parents. I naively thought that getting the tax exempt status from the IRS would provide that peace of mind.
I think what we are going to do is solict local businesses in the community that we and others patronize to donate whatever they can and then have a spagetti dinner, road rally, and a silent auction for anything that we can get our hands on. I was thinkerng too big earlier…
I still think you should be contacting some local organizations that are already in existence. They’ll have far greater ability to attract donations from businesses, since those donations would be tax-deductible. It’s not guaranteed that they’ll be available to help, but a) they might and b) they might have additional contacts/resources.
My wife really kicked Ass. She organized a spaghetti dinner with a road rally. Also there were 50-50 raffles and all kinds of gift baskets donated by very generous people. All told $8700 was raised and given to my brother in law and his wife.
The road rally was a lot of fun. They had to do things that Jon used to love. Like they had to color a Barney picture and then sing that show’s theme song to a stranger with a picture documenting the activity.
Thanks all who offered their advice. You all are in my thanks.