Grey's Star Shows How To Give To Charity The Right Way

For Patrick Dempsey, life really does imitate art.

On March 31 the actor will help open a new ward at the Central Maine Medical Center to benefit cancer patients in his home state. Dempsey, 42, also donated $250,000 towards The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing which will provide education and support programs for cancer patients and their family members.

The Grey’s Anatomy (DIS) star says that his donation was made in honor of his mother, Amanda, who was a patient at the hospital during her bout with ovarian cancer 10 years ago. She successfully beat the disease and is now in remission. "For a family to get a cancer diagnosis is devastating, and all the information out there can be overwhelming," Dempsey told reporters when he recently visited the new ward. "A lot of the websites I went to just didn't have enough information. So, I talked to my sister about a place where people could go for all this type of information and help. Knowledge is power."

Dempsey's sister, Mary, who currently works at the hospital will also benefit from the donation and she will now begin a job as the coordinator of the new center.

Charitable donations can be rewarding both emotionally and financially, especially when made through a charitable trust. Donors looking to place some of their assets in a charitable fund have two choices. They can start either a charitable lead trust or a charitable remainder trust.

The two options are basically a mirror image of each other, according to Beth Gamel, the executive vice president of Pillar Financial Advisors. She says that with a charitable lead trust, the chosen charity receives the interest from the donation for a set period of time. During this time the charity receives a specified percentage of the trust and after the time period has expired, the donor or other beneficiaries receive the remainder of the trust.