Work with the Community Foundation to support your clients’ charitable giving.

As an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, you’re a key part of every client’s multifaceted team that helps with investments, taxes, accounting, insurance, and estate planning. Services like this are absolutely essential to pave the way for clients achieving their financial goals.

But what about charitable giving? Supporting favorite nonprofits is certainly a high priority for many of your clients, and there are definitely financial implications and opportunities embedded within every charitable giving technique. You are certainly well-versed in the important aspects of charitable tax law and the options for various types of charitable gifts. But what about the nuances? Charitable giving and philanthropy cut a wide swath in terms of subject matter and the expertise required to meet a client’s financial and tax objectives for their charitable gifts as well as client’s goals for meaningful community impact.

As charitable giving and philanthropy have become more complex, and more critical to quality of life in our communities over the years, some philanthropists are exploring adding another type of advisor to the mix–a philanthropy coach. Fortunately, when you and your clients work with the team at the community foundation, you’ve got a philanthropy coach–actually a whole team of them–on speed dial. Community foundations are highly-specialized nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping donors give to the causes they care about, growing philanthropy in the region, and leading on critical community issues. Indeed, our team spends every single day of the week, year in and year out, working with donors like your clients, advisors like you, nonprofits that serve our community, and civic leaders to collectively make meaningful and positive change in the community we all know and love. In other words, the very nature of our role is a coach.

How we can help meet your clients’ objectives:

Here are just a few of many examples of how the community foundation can play the role of coach and facilitator to help you structure charitable giving plans to meet a particular client’s objectives:

• We can help your client establish a fund to organize their giving, in a way that matters to them and is beneficial to the charities they want to support.
• We can work with you to advise the client on the best mix of assets to transfer to the fund to meet certain tax objectives, including gifts of cash, highly-appreciated stock, or interests in a closely-held company.
• Our team is knowledgeable about the wide range of charitable planning techniques, from from IRAs. We work alongside you to optimize the tax benefits of your clients’ charitable gifts while ensuring that your clients are well-positioned to make the best investments possible in the charities and causes they care most about.
• In certain situations, we can help you work with your client to execute a “bunching“ strategy that helps front-load multiple years of anticipated charitable gifts into a single tax year to achieve tax deductibility that exceeds the standard deduction.
• Our team shows your client how to view their fund activity through the community foundation’s online portal, how to make additional contributions to the fund, and how to use a single tax receipt when filing time rolls around.
• Our team can work with your clients to achieve the appropriate level of recognition for their gifts to nonprofits, ranging from anonymity to securing naming rights.
• We help your clients more deeply explore the causes that are important to them and determine the most effective ways they can support the operations and impact of their favorite nonprofits.

So, please lean on us! Think of the community foundation as a coach to help you serve your philanthropic clients to make the community a better place for everyone who lives here. From charitable tax planning to grant making tactics, we are on your team. For more information, please contact Donor Services at DonorServices@cfsem.org.