Tampa, Fla.

Americans and nonprofit organizations are currently facing increasingly tough economic times. In light of these circumstances, The Larry King Cardiac Foundation (LKCF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding life-saving cardiac care for individuals with no health insurance, has announced that it is changing the way it does business in 2009.

In 1992, Carole Baskin received a baby bobcat as a pet by her then husband. Neither knew then that it was a bad idea. When they went to buy a second one, they ended up at what they didn’t realize at the time was a “fur farm” that raised bobcats and lynxes to slaughter for fur coats. Once she figured it out, Carole bought the farm’s entire inventory of 56 bobcat and lynx kittens in return for an understanding that the owners would stop making cats into coats. “Initially she thought they could make good pets and believed the breeders who said they

President Andrew Shepherd: Is the view pretty good from the cheap seats, A.J.? It occurs to me that in 25 years I’ve never seen YOUR name on a ballot. Now why is that? Why are you always one step behind ME? There, I’ve saved you the trouble of quoting the movie “The American President” to me when I — a decidedly blog-less journalist — gripe a little about blogs. What has kept me from starting an FS blog? Easy … I don’t want to fall into the quantity-over-quality mindset that seems to permeate the blogosphere these days.

From time to time, the worlds of charitable and private enterprise join forces to create financial strategies that result in success for all parties. You can find one such example in the formation of Charitable Remainder Trusts (CRTs). Besides the charitable benefit to the nonprofit organization and the financial benefit to the donor and the donor’s family, the impact of a CRT is greatly enhanced by the use of an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT). ILITs are funded by life insurance policies, which offsets the loss of the CRT’s corpus asset upon the death of the donor.