Leave A Legacy

Individuals who wish to have a long-term impact on South Pasadena schools can work creatively with SPEF to determine the type of gift that will meet their personal needs while fulfilling this philanthropic goal. Bequests, charitable trusts, life insurance, real estate with retained life interests, Charitable IRA Rollover, and endowments are some of the ways to leave a legacy.

Using Your IRA to Support Education in South Pasadena

Looking for new ways to help support our schools? The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, passed on October 3, 2008, permits qualifying traditional and Roth IRA owners to make charitable gifts up to $100,000 tax-free per year directly from their IRA’S to eligible charities including schools and supporting foundations. There are six requirements to be met in order for a donor to make a charitable gift from his or her IRA without having to claim such a distribution as taxable income:

Planned Giving Program

For nearly three decades, SPEF has been raising money for the South Pasadena Unified School District. Although founded to restore cuts caused by the passage of Proposition 13, SPEF is challenged year after year to raise funds not only for the increasing costs associated with the programs it has traditionally supported (such as elementary music and arts), and also to provide new money for vital programs and services that might otherwise be lost to budget cuts.

SPEF sees itself and the hundreds of other local educational foundations in California as long term participants in public school financing, and is looking at means of providing for long term stability in assisting the children of South Pasadena.

Mike Klein Science Endowment

Help Support The Sciences!

SPEF now has a modest endowment fund to support science education in the South Pasadena Unified School District. The inspiration for the endowment, and its initial funding, came from a gift from Barbara Klein, in memory of her husband, Michael J. Klein, a former SPEF board member, who passed away in 2005.

Dr. Klein was the manager of the Deep Space Network Science Laboratory at JPL in Pasadena. He was one of the founders of the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) project in which teachers and students nationwide are able to control a 34-meter radio antenna via the Internet. Data collected by students is submitted to JPL for inclusion in the database of scientific knowledge used by scientists worldwide. The students not only learn about the process of ongoing scientific research, they can make contributions to the field of science. Dr. Klein believed that children learn by doing.