Brokerages such as Fidelity will set up charitable trusts for you.
(Probably because they get to invest the money in the meantime.)
A more important issue is that nioether you or the trust can
take a tax deduction for organization not registered with the US
government as a charity. This came up during recent
large international disasters when only some charities qualified.

goyald[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -

If your gift is to an IRS qualified charity, you can set up a trust
through Fidelity Investments:

http://www.charitablegift.org/basics...itable%20trust

Others financial companies may have similar services.

If your gift is not to an IRS qualified charity, then you can't deduct
the gifts anyway. You can reduce taxes on the growth of the gift
through index funds or tax free funds.

If you cannot find the IRS qualified charity you want today, then you
may want to accumulate the money in the Fidelity (or other) trust now,
with the hope to find it or form it in the future.

Frank

- quote -

You might google up a discussion of finding and rating existing tax
deductable charities in this forum. One web site (IRS?) lets you
identify local charities and find their tax number, such as you need to
direct your IRA to pay upon your death (a handy way for folks to fine
tune such things without changing wills).

So you can find folks to confer with, and see the official jargon such
as the type of tax number you probably have to request with an online
IRS form. Was pretty eye opening to me, for other reasons. Many of the
local charities appeared to be kook or sick jokes - maybe that means
they aren't hard to set up. Others may be familiar/respectable, but you
can now tell from context they are not exactly what they claim. Oh, and
now some charities may get scrutiny for possible funneling of money to
certain hostile causes...

goyald[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -

Do you have a community foundation in your area? If so talk to them
about setting up a charitable trust.

Hello
I usually contribute some amount (2-3K per year) to charitable
organizations, but want to do something closer to my heart, i.e setting
up a library in USA dedicated to my native language from India. I know
that 2-3K will not do much. I am willing to put 10K per year (a
substantial part of my annual salary) for few years in a charitable
trust or foundation and in few year, use that to implement my dream of
establishing this.


My question is -
1. How to setup such a foundation trust etc? Can I contribute tax free
to this?
2. Do I need professional help in setting this up? Typically what
should I expect to pay for such help? Will it be a recurring expense?

Any suggestions will be welcome and appreciated.