Madison Preservation Legacy Circle
The Madison Trust for Historic Preservation (Madison Trust) is dedicated to the rehabilitation, restoration and preservation of our community’s historic places through advocacy, education and celebration.
Historic places are tangible links to our history-places that we can see, touch, and explore, offering a sense of what was important to the people who lived here and who guided development to make our community what it is today.
To ensure that Madison Trust will continue in the future to provide opportunities to learn about the cultural, social and economic benefits of historic preservation, we have launched the Madison Preservation Legacy Circle.
Get started today by filling out or mailing in the pledge form.
2022 Historic Preservation Awards at The Tinsmith | 2022 Award Recipients for Gates of Heaven Synagogue Project | Photo by Nick Wilkes Photography
Why join?
To promote continued viability of our historic places and our vibrant mix of neighborhoods and cultures
To broaden Madison Trust’s outreach to non-dominant neighborhoods and to add more programs - outdoor walking tours, indoor tours of historic buildings, specialty tours, seminars
To help renew and deepen our understanding of places and people from the past
To educate developers how they can meet their goals while maintaining the history of local buildings
To support future projects that rehabilitate historic buildings in the Great Madison area and, as a result, enrich and brighten the community
What are the benefits of membership?
Knowing you are supporting the long-term goals of the Madison Trust
Saving on income and capital gains taxes - your donation is received at its full value, particularly important for assets that have significantly appreciated in value
Posting your name, with your permission, in the Madison Preservation Legacy Circle honor roll on the Madison Trust website
Recognizing you at Madison Trust annual events
Sheltering from taxation the required minimum distributions from your qualified taxable retirement accounts (IRA, 401k, etc.)
Mansion Hill East Historic Architecture Walking Tour | George & Mary Keenan House (1857) | Madison Landmark
“After addressing the needs of your family and loved ones, you may want to make gifts that will support the organizations you care about most. We hope that you will consider making a gift to the Madison Trust.”
Your legacy gift can be:
A bequest to Madison Trust in a will or living trust
Madison Trust as the designated beneficiary of an IRA, other retirement plan, CD, life insurance policy or a charitable remainder trust
Publicly-traded stock or other securities
A Donor Advised Fund
Tribute and memorial gifts are welcome
Barbara Hochberg Center for Jewish Student Life, 2010 award recipient for Future Landmark Award for Innovative New Design
How can your Legacy Gift to the Madison Trust help preservation work in Madison?
Let’s count some ways:
Improve Community Engagement
By offering more tours to our community, we showcase our history and engage interest and support going into the future. Tours are often the entry for new members and donors.
In particular, we’d like to create more tours that better serve underrepresented community sites. The geographical challenges of serving these communities (many of which cover large areas of the city and neighborhoods that weren't designed to be walkable) would make them better suited for multimedia tours or tours that require modes of transportation other than walking (buses or bicycles).
Let’s teach new folks how to write more great tours, increasing the number and variety of tours available. In terms of equity representation, this democratizes the selection of what parts of our built environment is considered “tour-worthy”. Other organizations could also learn from us how to write their own tours, and we could each cross-promote the other’s offerings, helping promote representation across organizations.
Advocacy support
We’d like to offer more support to individuals and businesses who are exploring landmark designation, historical marking, and so on. This could include the services of a historic preservation architect, a tree expert, an engineer to talk about the impact on the site of a new house, and/or a lawyer or lobbyist to help with navigating the city committee/Common Council process.
Let’s create and follow a 10-year plan for local and/or national landmarks, many of which would be derived from the Underrepresented Communities survey, including protection for State Street.
The Madison Trust is working on a nomination for the Kathryn Clarenbach residence. Photo by Gary Tipler.
Oral History Project
We’d like to document place-based interviews with a focus on underrepresented communities. In the past these histories were not considered important enough to gather, and a commitment to produce more interviews on an ongoing basis pins down these oral histories, letting us catch this information before it is lost to time.
Creation an ongoing podcast, which would be named "Madison Preserves: Jam Sessions on What's Worth Saving."
As you can see, our community can benefit in so many ways by supporting the Madison Trust. Here’s how.
Complete our Madison Preservation Legacy Circle Pledge Form to let us know your plans and so that we can thank you for your generosity!
Complete Pledge Form online
Download PDF Pledge Form to submit by email or mail
A discussion with your financial advisor or estate planning attorney is the best way to determine the legacy gift most appropriate for you along with associated savings and tax benefits to suit your needs.
Madison Trust does not provide legal or tax advice. Madison Trust encourages donors to seek guidance from their own professional advisors. For more information on our policies, please read our Gift Acceptance Policy.