Make Time to Make a Will

August 9, 2023

August is National Make-A-Will Month and, if you are among the 70% of Americans who do not yet have a will, now is the perfect time to protect the people and causes you care about. amfAR has partnered with FreeWill, an online estate planning tool, to make it easy to do so.

Damion Hänkejh, a technologist and longtime amfAR supporter, recently discovered the benefits of FreeWill.

“Like most people, I had put off making a will for many years because the process of sitting down with a lawyer just seemed so onerous,” the Smithsonian Laureate (he co-developed the virtual operating room) and IBM Watson Developer challenge winner said. “Then a friend introduced me to FreeWill, and I was immediately intrigued by the potential of its technology not only to make writing a will quick and easy but also to democratize the process and make it accessible to everyone. I also greatly appreciated the way FreeWill built charitable giving into its online tool as an opportunity to create a legacy that will benefit future generations.”

FreeWill guides you step by step through the 20-minute, no-cost process of writing or updating your will, resulting in a downloadable PDF, with instructions for signing and witnessing to make it official. You may edit and update your will at any time. So far, more than 800,000 people have used FreeWill.

“So much about the FreeWill process resonated with me because it was analogous to the reason I became involved with amfAR back in the mid-1990s, when the Internet was in its infancy,” Damion told amfAR. “I understood the vital importance of amfAR’s AIDS research and policy programs at the time, particularly their efforts to educate people about current treatments and experimental clinical trials. So I worked with amfAR’s staff to craft a new and much more versatile website for them and to translate their HIV/AIDS Treatment and Clinical Trials Directory (the first and only one of its kind) into an online searchable database available to everyone. I’ve been an ardent amfAR fan for almost 30 years now.”

Damion’s support for making AIDS history continues. By generously including a charitable gift to amfAR in his will, he became part of the amfAR Legacy Circle, a select group of far-sighted people who have included donations to amfAR in their planned giving financial instruments in order to help advance our efforts to cure AIDS.

Celebrate the people and causes you care about now that it’s August, National Make-A-Will Month, and now that amfAR and FreeWill have made it so easy.

For more information, log on to: www.freewill.com/amfar.