Tools for Attracting and Facilitating Gifts of Farmland

The Southwest Initiative Foundation, a community grant maker in Hutchinson, Minn., pioneered a program in 2005 that helps prevent wealth from leaving its rural region. Keep It Growing, the brainchild of local agricultural lawyer Patrick Costello, enables aging farmers to leave their property to the foundation, which vows to preserve it as working farmland.

The farmers donate their land to the foundation, which allows them to remain on their farms during their lifetimes if they choose. But when they die, the property reverts to the foundation, which then rents it to other farmers who want to work the land.

Under Keep It Growing, the Southwest Initiative Foundation, which has $85 million in assets, now oversees 1,730 acres from eight gifts, with an estimated value of $12 million.

About a dozen organizations across the country have replicated the program, says Diana Anderson, Southwest’s president. Because gifts of real estate require more planning than donations of cash or securities, the foundation created two tools:

• A fact sheet to market the program to prospective donors, which highlights three advantages of the program: it keeps the land locally owned, ensures it will be remain farmland, and provides a lasting legacy to the community.
• A screening questionnaire to help determine if the donor’s property is a good candidate for the program.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the amount of farmland owned by the Southwest Initiative Foundation.