Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

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Compassionate Conversations of Care: Protecting all you cherish

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The conversations we have with those around us help care for the people and causes we love—just like we care for the chimpanzees at the sanctuary. Whether it’s Jamie, with her many interests and endless curiosity, or Cy, who loves magazines and sitting quietly with his caregivers—our goal is to provide those in our care with a safe, nurturing home that honors their individuality and helps ease them into different stages of life.

October 21-27 is National Estate Planning Awareness Week, and we encourage you to have compassionate conversations of care with your loved ones.

As I’ve gotten older and lost many relatives and friends, I know that that these discussions might feel overwhelming, but it’s a crucial step in ensuring your wishes are known and honored. To help, we’ve gathered a checklist of questions to talk through with the people close to your heart:

  • Guardianship: Who would be the designated guardian for any minor children or pets?
  • Financial Management: Who would we want to help manage our finances? Who would be our financial power of attorney?
  • Health Decisions: Does our medical power of attorney know our health concerns?
  • Readiness: Are the chosen family members or friends aware of these roles and willing to take them on the responsibility?
  • Legacy: What causes do we want to support long into the future?

Our partner, FreeWill, provides free, intuitive tools to help you create a will and other estate planning documents. You can also plan your beneficiaries for non-probate assets like an IRA or 401(k).

By including a gift of any size to CSNW in your will or designating us as a beneficiary of one or more non-probate assets, you can build a legacy that gives a second chance to deserving chimpanzees for years to come. Past legacy gifts have enabled the chimpanzees to thrive in their sanctuary home and have helped us work towards big goals for the sanctuary.

Start these conversations today, and craft a plan that cares for all that matters to you. 

If you have included us in your will, please fill out this brief form so we can recognize your generosity!

Auctions and Legacies

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I’m not sure how to start this post.

Ultimately, it is about the legacy of support that’s possible and how that ties into the fast-approaching Sweet 16 Online Auction, with some history behind some of the pieces of artwork featured in the auction.

The reality is that we’ve lost several donors over the past few months. It can be a strange experience to know someone by name because they are a supporter, often never having met them in person, and to receive notice of their passing. I’m not sure why there’s always an element of shock to learn someone is no longer here. I think I need to create some sort of ritual to mark the passing of donors and to celebrate their support.

For some donors, we’ve had the privilege of getting to know them on a more personal level. Diane Mattis was one of these people. She was a Level I volunteer in the chimp house for several years, sometimes picking up donated produce on her way. In my mind’s eye I can still see her folding blankets and smiling. She was always so upbeat, and she loved being able to help. We talked about her ailing mother who was under her care and eventually passed, and her job at T-Mobile, from which she eventually retired. She frequently talked about the chimpanzees and the sanctuary with her friends, creating more supporters with her enthusiasm.

Diane enjoyed participating in our in-person auctions, first as a volunteer, and then as an attendee. She began collecting chimp-focused art at these events, and she made a big impression at HOOT! 2019 with her winning bid of $9,000 (!!) for the gorgeous Negra in the Sun mosaic by Lisa Wathne, inspired by artist Margaret Parkinson’s painting of the same name.

When Diane hung the mosaic on her wall, she sent me an email with a picture of it, saying:

Hi Diana. I just had to share this with you. I feel so fortunate to have her in my home. It’s really special to me. Last night was great fun. Glad your fundraising goal was met and then some. Can’t wait to meet Honey B, Willie B, and Mave. So exciting. That was the best news of the night.

Thanks for all that you do.

Diane

In 2020, during the pandemic, I had a zoom call with Diane just to catch up. She showed me more of her prized auction art that was hung around her condo. Shortly after our call, we had a virtual event and online auction, and Diane bid vigorously on another mosaic created by the talented Lisa Wathne, this one of Jody, inspired by a painting by the equally talented Cheryl Feng. Diane won that mosaic for the bid of $5,375. I packed it up and shipped it to her and received this email message when it arrived:

Oh my! Just got her. I’m speechless. She’s even more beautiful than I expected. The colors are beautiful. I’ll take a photo as soon as she finds her place. Thank you very much.

Diane passed away in November of last year. Her friend, who is also named Diane, let us know. She wanted to make sure we knew that Diane had specified that all of her primate artwork be gifted to the sanctuary. Last week, J.B. and I met up with Diane G. and picked up these very special donations in time to put them in the Sweet 16 Online Auction. Diane Mattis would be thrilled to know that someone else will get to enjoy these pieces, and that they will raise more funds for her chimpanzee friends in Cle Elum.

Art is far from all that Diane left the sanctuary. She named Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest as the direct beneficiary of her IRAs and one of several beneficiaries of the remainder of her estate. We don’t know yet the total of her final gifts, but we think we can use the donations towards our next big project – a support building for staff and volunteers that will give us more room to prepare enrichment, which is one of the tasks that Diane did as a volunteer ten years ago.

The Sweet 16 Online Auction celebrates birthdays and anniversaries, which reflect the passing of time and all that’s happened in between. Sixteen years of donors and volunteers like Diane who have have created, nurtured, and supported the sanctuary, even after they are no longer here. Register for the auction now, and keep an eye out for more items being added before it starts on June 10th.

If you haven’t already, please consider naming Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in your will like Diane did. You can create or update your will with ease for free with this tool  from Frewill or let us know here if you’ve named or intend to name the sanctuary in your will already.

What does legacy mean?

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I think about that word a lot. Legacy. What does it mean, exactly? Why do we strive to leave something behind when we pass on, and how do we go about doing that?

While legacy means different things to different people, I think that almost everyone wants make a difference and feel that their life added to the world in some way. I don’t think I could co-run a nonprofit without coming to that conclusion.

I am in the privileged position of seeing, everyday, the generosity and caring within people.

Over the years, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest has been the beneficiary of the last act of generosity from several donors. Some of these donors were very close to the sanctuary. I knew of their health struggles and was aware that they had planned to leave something behind for the chimpanzees. We mourned their passing and have been honored to be a small part of the bigger-than-life legacy they created, which included the uncountable acts of kindness they gave during their living years.

More surprisingly, the sanctuary has also received small bequests from people we were not familiar with at all. They named the sanctuary in their will without having made contact with us. I always try to gather information about these donors to find out more about them as I marvel at their surprise gifts.

I consider bequests in any amount to be very special gifts because they are an expression of the trust in a nonprofit to carry on the legacy of the donor. It’s a responsibility that we take very seriously.

You may already know that August is Make-a-Will Month. For you, blog readers, I wanted to throw out the market-tested appeal language and share the above, my rather raw thoughts, with you.

Whether you name Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in your will or not, I do hope that you will seize the day and create a part of your legacy by sitting down and planning your will if you haven’t already or updating it if you have new causes you’d like to support. You can use this tool to do that. It really is very easy and walks you through all of the steps.

If you have an IRA, 401(k), life insurance policy, or any other asset that your will does not cover, you can plan beneficiaries for those non-probate assets separately. Use Freewill to learn more about how to go about that.

If you’ve already named the sanctuary in your estate planning, you can let us know here, and you will be counted as an official member of the Primate Family Legacy Circle.

Your legacy could make a huge difference for the future of sanctuary or for others you care about.

Thank you.