Donations, bequests feed library endowment

By JOHN HOWELL
Posted 1/2/20

By JOHN HOWELL The Warwick Public Library has many friends who have taken steps to ensure they keep giving to the institution today as well as long after their deaths. Library endowments - which now approach $1 million, according to library executive

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Donations, bequests feed library endowment

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The Warwick Public Library has many friends who have taken steps to ensure they keep giving to the institution today as well as long after their deaths.

Library endowments – which now approach $1 million, according to library executive director Christopher LaRoux – annually spin off about $30,000 that the Board of Trustees uses for library materials. In some instances, use of the funds is restricted by terms defined in bequests.

In the last two months, the library has been the recipient of donations from the estates of Janice DiFranco and Pia DeConcilis.

DiFranco was hired in 1964 to work in the newly built Warwick Public Library. By the time she retired in 1990 she was the deputy director as well as the founder of the Rhode Island Film Cooperative, which was housed in the Warwick Library. She passed away this year, at the age of 91, and bequeathed $29,000 to the library. The Board of Trustees established the Janice Percie DiFranco Endowment, from which money will be withdrawn annually for the purchase of books and materials.

Pia DeConcilis, a Warwick resident, was an avid reader who visited the library weekly. She too passed away this year and left instructions for a large donation from her life insurance to be made to the library. Her gift, which was not made public, will be used to purchase large print books annually.

LaRoux said endowments are managed by the Rhode Island Foundation, which not only in many cases restricts how they are spent based on the donor’s wishes but also makes it impossible for the city to scoop up the funds for other purposes.

For Mary Johnson, past president of the Library Board of Trustees, naming the library in a will or making use of other mechanisms is a great method of “set it and forget it” giving.

“I think we as a community have a responsibility to support the library,” she said. She sees giving to the library as not restricted to those who have fortunes but including “ordinary people who have a little bit of a nest egg.”

According to the flier “Planning giving: Plan now to give later,” which is available at the library, donations can be made directly to the Warwick Public Library Endowment Fund or through bequests; retirement fund assets from qualified plans or IRAs; charitable gift annuities that guarantee a certain fixed income for life with the asset supporting the library after death; charitable remainder trusts; and life insurance.

LaRoux said the library receives many “memorial type of donations” where the family of the deceased suggests a donation to the library in lieu of flowers or other gifts. Those memorial gifts flow into the trustee account, LaRoux said. He has found “a lot of loyalty” to the branch libraries with bequests earmarked specifically for a branch library.

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  • Justanidiot

    dont waste this money on books. buy more computers for all the unemployed reprobates that hang out all day there.

    Thursday, January 2, 2020 Report this