Charlie Brumder and his family started the Charles P. Brumder Brumath Family Fund in 1999 with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Brumder said he and his wife, Katie, created the fund because of the values their parents had instilled in them to give back the community, Brumder said.
Brumder is the former owner of Waukesha Cutting Tools Inc., Waukesha. He sold the company in 1999 and used his stocks from the company to start the Charles P. Brumder Brumath Family Fund.
Brumder currently owns Hartland-based Brumath Design LLC. The company builds custom homes.
The Brumder family is using the Charles P. Brumder Brumath Family Fund to make donations to local nonprofit organizations. It focuses on education and land preservation.
Working as a family to choose where to donate is helping the Brumders teach their children how to become effective philanthropists and give back to the community, Brumder said.
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation uses five investment strategies to manage the endowments they receive, said Denise Callaway, director of communications for the organization.
The endowment funds that the Greater Milwaukee Foundation manages experience, on average, 9 percent annual growth rate, and many funds are created so that 5 percent of the growth is donated to charities annually, Callaway said.
When a percentage of the growth rate is donated annually, the funds can appreciate and become family legacies, she said.
The Brumders are more interested in actively disbursing the money, Brumder said.
He and his family plan to use the money in the fund to give to certain charities and when the fund is depleted in the next four or five years, the family will start a new fund that may focus on different types of non-profits, Brumder said.
In the future, Brumder hopes his children will do the same for their families.
"My children should create their own funds so that when I am gone, my foundations are gone," Brumder said. "My children have the responsibility to create funds themselves for their generation."
The Charles P. Brumder Brumath Family Fund has given money to schools for scholarships and made donations to non-profit organizations including Heart Love Place Ministries in Milwaukee, Tall Pines Conservancy in Nashotah and Door County Land Trust in Ephraim.
"I am not doing this only for tax purposes, but for the purpose of supporting those groups," Brumder said. "It is important that there is a tax deduction because it is an incentive for people to do this. But I would not call it a part of my wealth planning or preservation. I would say it is something that we have a responsibility to do."
