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You could also set up 500k endowment funds for the various charities, so that they could use the return on investment for program activities. A small charity such as a needle exchange, school PTA, or neighborhood church could pull off 4% of 500k per year and do very well with $20k as a revenue stream. Another option would be to find a nice charity and kill its debt.
I have to wonder if such small charities could effectively manage an endowment. Your Fail-tastic thread Grim (plus general antimustachian wall of shame and comedy posts) leads me to believe that there are a lot of small charities out there that would find a way to eff it up in short order. I'd have to wonder about a charity that would willingly go into debt - that would be a case by case for me, but would be a good way to make a big donation toward a charity that went into debt for good cause.
Two charities I give to already have endowments / permanent funds - one is on the order of half a century in operation, the other 30 plus years, with robust governance, so I figure they'd be able to handle it. Overall, the endowments are small potato's in their budgets, providing single digit percentages of annual operating budget. But that is something I'd also consider doing, in addition to the previous.
One charity I give to, as part of it's mission, acquires land for preservation, which it ultimately sells to the Government for permanent protection - the charity can move faster than the Government and when a private parcel comes on market, they can move relatively quickly. Their land fund thus rolls - $$$ to buy land....sell land for $$$, money back into the fund for the next acquisition. Fattening up the fund would allow for more parcels to be in that mid stage of being temporarily held by the charity prior to being put into the public ownership.
With 1.5-4.5 mil to give away in a year, I could see doing a 1.5 mil to one of these charities. 500k as described above, 500k to for land fund and 500k to their permanent endowment fund. As nice as a 500k shot in the arm would be to the endowment, at 4% that's only 20k / year, on a 750k-1.5 mil / year charity. Nice, but not charity changing money in isolation.
But, since this is lotto fantasy, I'd keep that up for 5 years and then poof....they'd have their 100k / year in perpetuity.
Other Lotto Fantasies about giving away money I have are this:
Since I'm giving away 1.5-4.5 mil / year, I'd have my attorney hire another attorney (double secret layers of attorney client privilege, since some one could probably figure out that John Smith, Esq at Dewey, Cheatem and Howe is my attorney, but if Smith hired an attorney from another firm...highly unlikely it would be traced back) to deliver checks to smaller but deserving charities. Lets call it having the double secret lawyer walk into the Union Gospel Mission in Seattle (to pick a worthy, IMO, local charity) and hand over a check for $25k about this time of year. Wash, rinse, repeat with other charities where a $5-$25k donation would be a good dose of funding.
Another one I think would be fun is to slip 5 C-notes wrapped in a one dollar bill into the bucket of a bell ringer. Walk around downtown and find every bell ringer out there and do the same. Put 5-15k into buckets in one day.