Advising frugal clients, passing wealth to children, and steps to give real estate

Greetings from the community foundation! 

It’s hard to believe August is upon us. And that means the hectic fall season is just around the corner. The team at the community foundation is here to support you as you help your clients update their charitable giving plans. We’re already hearing from many of you that you expect the next few months to be very busy as clients reach out with questions about possible tax law changes and how charitable giving can fit into estate and financial planning strategies. 

Here are three examples of the many ways the community foundation can help you serve your philanthropic clients. 

–We’re constantly on the lookout for ways to help your clients who want to leave a bequest to their favorite causes. That’s the case all year round, and especially during national Make-A-Will Month. Now is a great time to evaluate how best to help clients who may lean toward the frugal end of spending practices but who still want to support local charities.   

–Structuring estate and financial plans to leave just the “right” amount to children can be tough. The community foundation can help you incorporate charitable giving into the plans you are developing for parents who want to provide for their kids but don’t want to demotivate children’s own quest for financial independence. 

–Gifts of real estate to a fund at the community foundation can work wonders for both the charitable causes your client supports as well as the client’s tax situation. Please reach out to the community foundation to learn more about each critically important step in the process and how to comply with tax laws. 

As always, thank you for the opportunity to work with you! We are honored to help you serve your charitable clients and we appreciate the opportunity to do so.

–Your community foundation

Counting pennies: How to counsel frugal yet charitable clients

Over the years, you’ve no doubt experienced a wide range of what clients perceive as “wealthy.” You’ve likely also observed that clients have different assumptions about what it takes to be a “philanthropist.” The interplay between a client’s perception of personal wealth and charitable giving capacity presents interesting opportunities for client engagement. You may find yourself helping a client get comfortable with pursuing their charitable objectives while remaining secure in the knowledge that their financial plan is on track.

Whether clients choose to give to charity or not depends on a lot of factors. Here are a few themes to keep in mind as you work with clients who skew toward the more frugal end of spending practices, especially during national Make-A-Will month when estate planning may be top of mind.

Stay within budget. A client’s fear of running out of money may be preventing them from investing more meaningfully in the causes they care about. When savings-minded clients express charitable intentions, you can certainly guide the conversation toward showing them that their assets, income sources, expenses, and long-term projections are in good shape and leave them plenty of room to make charitable donations. When you lay out the big picture, even your historically cautious clients may see that they truly have more flexibility than they realize.

Every gift counts. Some clients who watch every penny are concerned that giving modestly doesn’t really rise to the level of “philanthropist” and might not make a difference. These clients may not realize that everyone can make a difference through small gifts, large gifts, and everything in between. The community foundation team is happy to help your clients get started with charitable giving at a level that makes the most sense for them, whether that’s setting up a donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation, arranging for a bequest to a fund, or, for your clients who are 70 ½ and older, structuring a gift from an IRA to a designated fund to support a favorite nonprofit. 

Bang for the buck. The team at the community foundation can help show your clients how gifts of highly-appreciated stock to a fund at the community foundation can avoid capital gains taxes, thereby freeing up more resources to support favorite charities than if the client had sold stock, paid the tax, and then given the proceeds to charity. Our team can also help identify meaningful giving opportunities based on each client’s budget and areas of interest. 

See results. By activating philanthropy plans during their lifetimes, your clients can experience the joy of giving and witness tangible returns on their investments. The community foundation team can arrange for a client to meet with nonprofit leaders and hear first hand the impact their money is making to improve peoples’ lives. This real-time feedback also allows your client and the community foundation team to adjust giving strategies to more closely align with your client’s evolving intentions. 

We look forward to working with you and your clients. Philanthropy is meant to be fun and rewarding for everyone involved. Our team is here to help make that happen! 

Less can be more: Charitable giving helps parents pass wealth to children

How much is too much? That’s a question many parents ask as they structure lifetime gifts and bequests to children in their financial and estate plans. Wealthy clients are sometimes concerned that leaving millions of dollars, or even hundreds of thousands, to their children could backfire and hinder their kids’ ability and motivation to achieve financial independence. 

In addition to concerns about fostering entitlement and dependency, many parents are concerned that their children will miss out on the satisfaction of knowing they built wealth on their own. These parents believe that the challenges and struggles along the way will ultimately enrich their children’s lives with intangible benefits that are far greater than the obvious benefits that come with gifts or an inheritance of significant financial resources.

As you work with clients who feel this way, please reach out to the community foundation. Every day, our team works with families who are in this exact situation. We’ll help you evaluate strategies such as:

–Establishing philanthropic components of an estate plan so that children receive only the amount that can pass to them free of estate tax, with the rest passing to a charity, such as a donor-advised fund at the community foundation.

–Setting up a donor-advised fund at the community foundation to allow your clients to support favorite charities during their lifetimes, with the terms of the donor-advised fund providing that the children step in as successor advisors following the clients’ deaths.

–As successor advisors to the donor-advised fund, the children can work with the community foundation to recommend grants to favorite charities, support interest areas pre-selected by their parents, or both. 

Many clients are attracted to this type of structure because not only could it avoid estate tax, but it also allows their children to stay involved with all of the family’s wealth, work together and keep sibling bonds strong, and get involved in the community. 

Please reach out to the community foundation team anytime. We look forward to exploring strategies to help your clients meet their financial and tax goals, as well as honor their wishes for children to live happy and productive lives. 

Gifts of real estate: Watch every step

We’re hearing from more and more attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors that your clients are expressing interest in giving real estate to charity. This is wonderful news! 

You’re certainly aware that gifts of real estate to a fund at the community foundation, just like gifts of other long-term capital assets, can be extremely tax-efficient. That’s because your client is typically eligible for a charitable deduction based on the fair market value of the property. Because the community foundation is a public charity, when it sells the donated property, the proceeds will flow into the fund free from capital gains tax. 

To achieve the best tax outcome and overall charitable result, though, it’s critical to undertake a careful process along the general lines of the following (depending of course on the specific situation):

–First, you’ll need to determine that the real estate is a long-term capital asset (held for more than one year). That may sound obvious, but we’ve talked with advisors and their clients in the past about a potential gift of real estate and it turned out that the property was only recently purchased. The fair market value deduction (versus cost basis deduction) is available only for a long-term capital asset. 

–Next, you’ll want to work with the team at the community foundation to structure a donor-advised or other type of fund to receive the asset, if your client does not already have a fund in place. The deductibility rules are different for real estate gifts to a public charity (such as a community foundation fund) versus a private foundation. Again, clients may not be aware of the pitfalls here. Sometimes we meet with advisors whose clients are very close to transferring real estate to a private foundation, which could be devastating in terms of missed tax savings. 

–You’ll need to verify that the property is not subject to a mortgage or other debt. Transferring encumbered property triggers important considerations with potentially significant tax consequences. The lender might not even allow a transfer in the first place. If you’re dealing with commercial property, you’ll also need to check to be sure that the property is not subject to “recapture” if your client has previously taken depreciation deductions. 

–You will need to determine whether the property produces income and discuss this with the community foundation. Income-producing real estate can potentially trigger “UBIT” (unrelated business income tax) for the community foundation. Although there are exceptions and strategies to minimize UBIT’s impact, it’s important that this issue be dealt with up front. 

–You may need to work with the community foundation to determine whether an environmental audit is required for the property. 

–Verify that the client has not entered into any discussions about an imminent sale of the property. Even if the community foundation will sell the property shortly after receipt (so that the proceeds can flow into the donor-advised or other fund to support the client’s favorite causes), your client cannot have pre-arranged this sale. Doing so could trigger the IRS’s step transaction doctrine and wipe out the tax deduction.

–Importantly, ensure that the client obtains a qualified appraisal to determine the fair market value of the property. This is critical to obtain a tax deduction, and the appraised value must be reported to the IRS on a Form 8283 in strict compliance with the IRS’s rules.

–Finally, transfer the property with the appropriate legal documents, including a deed. 

Whew! That’s a lot! The bottom line here is that gifts of real estate can be a wonderful tool for both your client and the charities they want to support through their fund at the community foundation. Our team can help you through the process, every step of the way. We have professionals in house, as well as on-call experts with whom we work regularly, to ensure that your client’s real estate gift is handled without a hitch, opening the door to bring their charitable goals to life.  

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Picking favorites, mixing business with charity, and locking in the exemption

Every year, the Giving USA study released in June reports the status of charitable giving in America. Adjusted for inflation, 2023 numbers were down, which means it’s been more difficult for our region’s charities to meet the needs of the people they serve. This is relevant to your clients because for many of them, philanthropy is an important part of financial plans and family traditions. 

In this issue, we’re sharing insights to help with your client conversations about charitable giving.

–As an advisor, you’ve certainly experienced clients’ emotions running wild! Confronting mortality, addressing complex family relationships, and discussing money all come with financial planning’s often rocky terrain. The community foundation can help when you encounter a charitably-minded client who is devoted to a particular stock and may be reluctant to take the tax-savvy step of giving it to charity.

–”Doing well by doing good” is a popular notion in corporate giving programs. Many of your clients may be in positions to influence corporate giving strategies. The community foundation can support you as you advise clients about avoiding tax pitfalls and conflicts of interest as clients and their work colleagues create charitable giving strategies that align with business purposes. 

–If it feels like the topic of the estate tax exemption sunset is heating up, you are right! More and more of your clients are becoming aware of the change in the law that is slated to occur at the end of 2025 unless legislation intervenes. Be sure you know the basics about how this change could impact your clients, including the ways charitable giving and the community foundation can fit into smart planning. 

Of course, please reach out anytime! It’s our pleasure to work with you as you help your clients achieve their charitable giving goals for this year and many years to come.

Gifts of appreciated stock: Picking favorites

You’re well aware that donating highly-appreciated stock to a fund at the community foundation offers significant advantages for your clients over making cash gifts. Communicating this benefit, however, can be challenging when clients have emotional attachments to their shares. 

How can you overcome this hurdle and help optimize your clients' charitable giving strategies?

Start by understanding the reasons a client might be reluctant to part with certain stocks in the first place:

–Legacy: "These shares have been in my family for generations."

–Professional: "I worked at this company for decades; it's the source of my wealth."

–Simple preference: “I just love this stock.” 

Emotional ties like these can create psychological barriers to effective charitable planning. There is, however, a potential solution that can satisfy both your clients' emotional needs and their philanthropic goals: The client donates shares of the highly-appreciated, emotionally significant stock to their fund at the community foundation, and then the client purchases shares of the same stock in their personal investment portfolio. 

Here’s why this can be such an effective strategy:

–Maximize tax deductions: Publicly-traded securities are typically deductible at fair market value (and the tax savings could potentially help fund the repurchase).

–Reset cost basis: This transaction effectively resets the cost basis of the stock in the client’s personal portfolio to its current market price, potentially reducing future capital gains taxes.

–Emotional satisfaction: Clients can support charities while maintaining their shareholder status in the company they like.

–Community impact: The community foundation can sell the donated shares tax-free, thereby maximizing the proceeds flowing into the client’s fund, and the fund in turn can be used to support the client’s favorite causes.

As you share this strategy with a client, be sure to acknowledge the emotional value of the stock and emphasize the client’s opportunity to maintain ownership in the company. Building on this, you can show the client how the tax benefits of giving stock allow the client to make an even bigger difference than if they’d given cash instead. 

As always, the community foundation can help you assist your clients with selecting the best assets to give to charity, evaluate tax implications of various giving strategies, and structure gifts to achieve strong community benefit. We look forward to a conversation! 

Mixing business and charity: Keep it ethical, legal, and transparent

Your clients who are corporate executives have likely wondered at some point about the benefits of aligning their companies with philanthropy, whether specific causes or particular organizations. 

In general, a community engagement strategy can be good for business, if well-executed. For example, almost half of consumers view a brand favorably when the brand supports a charitable cause. Community engagement programs can help with employee retention, too. 

But what are the risks involved in mixing business with charity?

In the spirit of aligning doing good with doing well, some companies would love to set up their own nonprofit organizations as “charitable arms” of their enterprises. Corporate leadership may like the idea of efficiency, control, and tight alignment between the company’s offerings and the charity’s mission. For example, a company that makes swimming pools might think it’s a great idea to set up a charity to build swimming pools at community centers to give more kids access to water sports. The company would like to donate tax-deductible dollars to the charity and ask its suppliers and customers to do the same. The company’s executives would serve on the board of the charity, and the charity would purchase swimming pools from the company to carry out its mission. 

Is this a good idea? 

No. This strategy plays fast and loose with the rules. Beyond setting up an obvious conflict of interest, this practice would mean that a company effectively would be using charitable funds to benefit itself. This is not a “charitable purpose” in the eyes of the IRS and could result in the loss of the charity’s tax exemption. Plus, if the news got out about this structure, the company could suffer reputational damage.

The company, its executives, and the community are all better off if the company pursues more transparent and ethical charitable strategies such as establishing a corporate fund at the community foundation, setting up a volunteer program for employees, establishing a matching gifts program, or aligning with wholly-independent charities on cause-related marketing partnerships.

Reach out to the community foundation to learn more about effective corporate philanthropy strategies. We are here to help as you work with your clients to achieve their charitable goals both at home and in the workplace.  

Planning for a sunset: Lock in higher exemption, unlock a legacy

Without legislation to prevent it, the sunsetting of current estate tax laws at the end of 2025 will dramatically reduce the federal estate tax exemption from $13.61 million per person in 2024 to approximately $7 million in 2026 (this includes adjustments for inflation). This change would affect many high net-worth individuals and families, likely exposing many more estates to federal estate taxes.

It is impossible to predict whether or not legislation will prevent the sunset. Even so, it is important for advisors to prepare for client discussions and start considering estate planning strategies now, especially techniques that incorporate multi-generational gifts and charitable planning.

Indeed, for a client who is charitably-inclined, making larger lifetime gifts to charity and arranging for charitable bequests will help reduce the client’s taxable estate because of the charitable estate and gift tax deduction. Donor-advised, field-of-interest, designated, unrestricted, and endowment funds at the community foundation are flexible and effective charitable recipients of both lifetime and estate gifts. 

For some clients, you may wish to begin exploring a comprehensive, multi-generational wealth transfer plan, potentially using key tax-planning vehicles:

Charitable lead trust

Charitable lead trusts (CLTs) may be particularly effective in the current environment. These trusts can provide income to your client’s fund at the community foundation for a set period of time, with the remaining assets passing to family members. Right now, the higher exemption allows for potentially significant initial funding of such trusts. This is because the value of the remainder interest counts toward the client’s estate and gift tax exemption.

Generation-skipping trust
A generation-skipping trust is an irrevocable trust that can benefit a client’s grandchildren and later generations. This trust utilizes a client’s generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption (which parallels the estate and gift tax exemption). This type of trust could allow a client to take advantage of the higher exemption before it potentially decreases in 2026. It is possible under some states’ laws for these trusts to go on for many generations in a “dynasty” format, such that each generation benefits from the trust’s income (and potentially principal for health and education) without the trust’s assets being included in the beneficiaries’ estates for estate tax purposes. 

Multi-generational fund at the community foundation

Alongside a charitable lead trust or generation-skipping trust, or as a standalone, a client can establish a donor-advised fund at the community foundation that can function much like a family foundation, with successive generations serving as advisors, or the community foundation stepping in after the first or second generation, to recommend grants from the fund to carry on a tradition of supporting the causes that have been most important to the client during the client’s lifetime. 

The team at the community foundation looks forward to working with you to achieve your clients’ long-term charitable goals, even in the midst of uncertainty concerning the estate tax laws. 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

401(k) millionaires, charitable giving for corporate executives, and IRS updates

Greetings from the community foundation! 

As always, our team welcomes the opportunity to be your first call the minute you begin discussing philanthropy with a client. It is our honor–and our mission–to help you develop charitable giving plans to meet your clients’ philanthropy goals while also supporting the important tax and estate planning objectives you’re establishing for those clients.

And a lot of you are taking us up on this invitation! We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to talk with attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors to help set philanthropy in motion for your clients. Recent conversations are very much reflected in the three articles we’re sharing in this issue,

–As clients’ retirement accounts continue to grow, so does the opportunity for clients (and the community) to benefit from careful and intentional charitable planning. The community foundation can help you serve clients who may be among the newly-minted “401(k) millionaires” as well as clients who crossed that threshold years ago. 

–Clients wear many hats. They are children, parents, siblings, and volunteers for charities. Many of your clients are also corporate executives or small business owners. Addressing your clients’ corporate giving needs alongside their individual and family philanthropy priorities is sometimes an overlooked component of estate and financial planning. The community foundation can help. 

–A common theme during conversations with advisors is the importance of the community foundation’s ability to help clients take a holistic approach to charitable giving. This is especially relevant in light of the steady drumbeat of news about the IRS’s focus areas. Our team is always on top of the issues and happy to share insights. 

We look forward to continuing the conversation! 

Your community foundation

Advising the charitable millionaire next door

At the end of 2024’s first quarter, an estimated 485,000 Americans could count themselves among the so-called “401(k) millionaires,” meaning the balance in their employer-sponsored retirement plans has reached the $1 million level. Thanks in part to stock market rallies during the first part of the year, that’s a larger number than ever before. Many of these 401(k) accounts will be rolled over into IRAs after retirement and the assets will continue to grow. 

With so many of your charitably-inclined clients holding large sums of money in 401(k)s and IRAs, now is an important time for a brief refresher course on the benefits of deploying these accounts toward achieving clients’ philanthropic goals. Indeed, although a charitable bequest of any type of property can help achieve a client’s estate planning and legacy goals, retirement accounts are especially powerful. When your client names a public charity, such as a donor-advised or other fund at the community foundation, as the beneficiary of a traditional IRA or qualified employer retirement plan, your client achieves extremely tax-efficient results. Here’s why:  

–First, the client achieved tax benefits over time as the client contributed money to a traditional IRA or to an employer-sponsored plan. That’s because contributions to certain retirement plans are what the IRS considers “pre-tax”; your client does not pay income tax on the money used to make those contributions (subject to annual limits).

–Second, assets in IRAs and qualified retirement plans grow tax free inside the plan. In other words, the client is not paying taxes on the income generated by those assets before distributions start in retirement years. This allows these accounts to grow rapidly. 

–Third, when a client leaves a traditional IRA or qualified plan to a fund at the community foundation or another charity upon death, the charity does not pay income taxes (or estate taxes) on those assets. By contrast, if the client were to name children as beneficiaries of an IRA, for example, those IRA distributions to the children are subject to income tax (and potentially estate tax), and that tax can be hefty given the tax treatment of inherited IRAs. 

So, if your client is deciding how to dispose of stock and an IRA in an estate plan and intends to leave one to children and the other to charity, leaving the IRA to charity and the stock to children is a no-brainer. Remember, the client’s stock owned outside of an IRA gets the “step-up in basis” when the client dies, which means that the children won’t pay capital gains taxes on the pre-death appreciation of that asset when they sell it. 

Speaking of savvy giving techniques using IRAs, a client who is 70 ½ or older can make tax-efficient gifts directly from an IRA to a qualified charity (including certain types of funds at the community foundation), up to $105,000 per year! This is known as a “Qualified Charitable Distribution.” 

The community foundation is always happy to work with you to ensure that your clients are maximizing their assets to fulfill their charitable giving goals, both during their lives and through legacy gifts. We look forward to the conversation! 

Left behind? Why companies need philanthropy advice, too

It’s relatively straightforward to see how philanthropy figures into the financial and estate plans you build for individuals and families. After all, many of these clients are already supporting their favorite community causes, and it’s your job to make sure they know about all the options for structuring both their near-term and long-term plans to give to charity using techniques that achieve both philanthropic goals and tax goals. The community foundation works with attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors every single day to help meet clients’ needs. 

What you might not always consider, though, is that many of your clients are executives in companies whose leaders want the company itself to lean into charitable giving. That’s why it’s wise to be aware of best practices in corporate philanthropy and know the ways the community foundation can help. 

For example, establishing a corporate donor-advised fund–essentially functioning and named as a corporate foundation–helps corporate executives organize the company’s giving in a convenient, 501(c)(3)-qualified structure, avoiding the time and expense that would be required for the company to establish and maintain a separate foundation entity. The company can fund the corporate donor-advised fund each year (especially in really good years!), thereby organizing charitable donations to a wide range of nonprofits through a single source of funds. This structure can help maintain historical corporate giving levels even when the company experiences a down year. 

What’s more, many companies coordinate with the community foundation to offer donor-advised funds to employees, especially to take advantage of company stock gifts. A program like this is a perk for employees who’ll enjoy organizing their giving and using the community foundation’s many tools and services. The program also helps inspire employees to get more involved in the community, which is good for everyone. 

In many instances, the community foundation takes on a back office role for a company’s matching gifts program, grant administration, and giving strategy. For example, the community foundation can help guide corporate leadership in creating and administering a program that matches employees’ volunteer time with dollars. In addition, the community foundation can help a company create and implement a strategy for responding to and evaluating funding requests to align with the company’s goals for supporting and prioritizing causes.

Finally, the community foundation can help establish and administer employee giving and disaster relief campaigns. The community foundation’s tools to receive and process donations can help a company and its employees respond quickly and meaningfully to disasters and other urgent community needs. 

Note that many companies appreciate the community’s foundation’s infrastructure, reporting practices, and compliance protocols to ensure that all tax laws and other IRS requirements are met. Instead of the company bearing these responsibilities, it’s the community foundation’s job. Corporate executives regularly view the relationship with the community foundation as a very wise outsourcing move, 

The team at the community foundation looks forward to working with you and your clients who are corporate executives, or even local small business owners, who are excited to give back to the community where they’ve built businesses and developed lasting relationships with employees and customers.

Legal developments: We’re watching! 

As your go-to resource for charitable giving techniques, the community foundation team pays close attention to best practices in addressing the broad range of your clients’ charitable intentions to support both near-term and long-term community needs. This includes tracking legal developments that may impact philanthropy broadly, impact specific giving vehicles, and everything in between.

For example, we pay attention to the IRS’s plan to increase audits of wealthy taxpayers so that our team is better positioned to help you and your clients understand the requirements of valuing gifts to charity. And we’re gearing up to help you and your clients incorporate charitable giving vehicles as a way to blunt the potential impact of the anticipated estate tax exemption sunset. And we’re watching the IRS scrutinize aggressive techniques using annuities inside charitable lead trusts. And so much more. 

Another issue we’re watching closely is the latest news on the IRS’s proposed regulations of donor-advised funds. We’ve studied the transcript from the public hearings in early May, and it was inspiring to see so many community foundation leaders share their recommendations urging that any new regulations not disrupt the positive and productive working relationships between community foundations and advisors who are helping their clients achieve philanthropic goals. At this point, no one can predict what will happen with the proposed regulations--whether and how they will be revised or when they might become effective, if ever. As always, our team is staying on top of the issues. We’ll keep you informed. 

Of course, a donor-advised fund is just one of many types of funds your clients can establish at the community foundation. We offer donor-advised funds, endowment funds, field-of-interest funds, scholarship funds, designated funds, and a wide range of planned giving and legacy options for clients who want to invest in the community’s long-term needs.

The donor-advised fund is popular because it allows your client to make a tax-deductible transfer of cash or marketable securities that is immediately eligible for a charitable deduction. Then, the client can recommend gifts to favorite charities from the fund to meet community needs as they emerge.

What’s especially rewarding for our team is to work with you and your clients to explore a diversified portfolio of giving vehicles. It’s possible that a client's portfolio would include a donor-advised fund, and perhaps also one or more of a variety of other tools, such as a bequest, unrestricted gift, charitable trust, and endowment gift. Above all, we are confident in our ability to continue to work collaboratively with you and other advisors for years to come to help fulfill your clients’ philanthropic wishes. Thank you for the opportunity to work together! 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Asset varieties that make great charitable gifts, proposed regulations, and election year updates

Greetings from the community foundation! 

Every day, our team appreciates the opportunity to work with attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, and other professionals who are helping clients achieve their charitable goals. We know your relationships with your clients are in many cases very personal, and you take your responsibilities seriously. We respect that, and our team strives to do everything we can to help you structure charitable giving plans to meet your clients’ needs.

To help keep the community foundation’s resources at your fingertips, we’re covering three topics that have been the subject of many advisors’ inquiries over the last few weeks. 

–Last November, the Treasury released proposed regulations related to donor-advised funds. Although these proposed regulations are just that–proposed and not final–nevertheless, in recent weeks the media coverage has gained momentum, especially now that Ways and Means members have weighed in. The community foundation is on top of the issues, and our team is always ready to share the latest insights.

–Following every tax season, many advisors share with our team at the community foundation that they wish they’d been aware of the many asset types that make great gifts to a fund at the community foundation. We’re happy to provide a list of the wide range of property that your clients can deploy to meet both their tax goals and their charitable goals.

–Election-year dynamics are on your clients’ minds, and we’re sharing a few items of recommended reading to provide perspective on political contributions’ impact on charitable giving, as well as articles that you and your clients might find useful related to “check out charity” trends and legal issues that may confront clients who serve on charities’ boards of directors. 

Thank you for the opportunity to work together! We appreciate so many of you reaching out with questions and insights from your practice, as well as referrals of your clients for which we–and the community–are so grateful.

–Your community foundation

What’s bubbling up: Need-to-know updates on the proposed donor-advised fund regulations

The community foundation is committed to providing timely updates on legal and policy developments to help you and other professionals who advise philanthropic clients stay on top of best practices in charitable planning. In that spirit, donor-advised funds and the rules governing these vehicles are topics that are popping up more frequently in financial and even mainstream media. Our team is closely watching these regulatory developments.  

As background, in November 2023, the Internal Revenue Service issued proposed regulations that would change the way donor-advised funds are defined and how they operate. Especially leading up to the May 6, 2024 public hearings, the proposed regulations have created quite a buzz. If you’d not yet heard about the proposed regulations, the April 19, 2024 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, signed by 33 members of Ways and Means, might have grabbed your attention. The letter lays out concerns that “these regulations could have the unintended consequence of impeding charitable giving in our communities, particularly at our local community foundations.” You’ll hear from us when (and if) the proposed regulations, or some version thereof, go into effect and what to do about it. 

As you track the issue, however, it’s important to remember that a donor-advised fund is just one of many types of funds your clients can establish at the community foundation. Consider: 

–Certainly the donor-advised fund is popular because it allows your client to make a tax-deductible transfer of cash or marketable securities that is immediately eligible for a charitable deduction. Then, the client can recommend gifts to favorite charities from the fund to meet community needs as they emerge. 

–Other types of funds at the community foundation can be just as effective as a donor-advised fund depending on the client’s objectives. In some situations, these other fund types are even more effective than a donor-advised fund to achieve a client’s goals. 

–Field-of-interest funds and designated funds, for example, allow your client to support a charitable cause or organization they love. Unrestricted funds help your clients support future needs in the community that can’t be predicted and can only be addressed through the community foundation’s perpetual structure and mission to serve the community as a whole. 

–A major advantage of field-of-interest funds, designated funds, and unrestricted funds is that they are eligible recipients of the popular and tax-savvy planning tool called the Qualified Charitable Distribution, or “QCD,” available to your clients who have reached age 70 ½.  

We look forward to helping you serve your charitable clients regardless of where the proposed regulations ultimately land. And we’ll keep you posted!

Celebrate variety: Many assets make great gifts to charity

When your client is getting ready to make a contribution to a fund at the community foundation or other charity, remind them not to automatically reach for the checkbook! Here are other (and typically more tax-savvy) options to consider. 

Marketable securities

Gifts of long-term appreciated stock to a donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation is always one of the most tax-savvy ways to support favorite charitable causes because capital gains tax can be avoided. Gifts of publicly-traded stock, for example, are easy to transfer to a fund. The community foundation team can provide you and your clients with transfer instructions to make the process simple. 

As is the case with a cash gift, the community foundation will provide a receipt for tax purposes, and the gift of stock will be valued at the shares’ fair market value on the date of transfer. When the community foundation sells the shares, the proceeds flow into the client’s fund without any reduction for capital gains taxes. This is because the community foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and therefore does not pay income tax. That would not have been the case, however, if the client had sold the stock first and then transferred the proceeds to a fund at the community foundation; the client would owe capital gains tax on the sale. Especially in cases where the client has held the stock a long time and it’s gone up significantly in value, the capital gains hit can be big.

Closely-held business interests

The community foundation team is happy to work with you and your client to explore how the client might give shares of a closely-held business to a fund at the community foundation. Not only will transfers be eligible for a charitable deduction during the year of transfer (and at fair market value if the shares are held for more than one year), but also these gifts could potentially reduce income tax burdens triggered upon a future sale of the business. Be sure to talk with our team well before any potential sale is in the works; otherwise, you could lose out on tax benefits. Gifts of closely-held business interests are powerful but can be tricky to administer. 

QCDs from IRAs

As always, keep in mind that the Qualified Charitable Distribution (“QCD”) is a very smart way to support charitable causes. If your client is over the age of 70 ½, the client can direct up to $105,000 (in 2024) from an IRA to certain charities, including a field-of-interest, designated, unrestricted, or scholarship fund at the community foundation. If your client is subject to the rules for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), QCDs count toward those RMDs. That means your client avoids income tax on the funds distributed to charity. Our team can work with you and your client to go over the rules for QCDs and evaluate whether the QCD is a good fit. 

Real estate 

Your client’s fund at the community foundation can receive a tax-deductible gift of real estate, such as farmland or commercial property, in a variety of ways. An outright gift is always an option; lifetime gifts of real estate held by the client for more than one year are deductible for income tax purposes at 100% of the fair market value of the property on the date of the gift, which also avoids capital gains tax and reduces the value of your client’s taxable estate. Other ways to give real estate include a bargain sale or a transfer to a charitable remainder trust which produces lifetime income for the client and the client’s family.

Life insurance

Don’t overlook life insurance as an effective charitable giving tool, whether by naming a client’s fund at the community foundation as the beneficiary or, in the case of whole life policies, naming the fund as beneficiary and transferring the policy itself. If your client transfers a policy, the client may be able to make annual, tax-deductible contributions to the community foundation to cover the premiums. 

Other “alternative” assets

The community foundation is happy to work with you and your clients to explore options for giving other non-cash assets to funds at the community foundation, including:

• Oil and gas interests

• Negotiable instruments

• Cryptocurrency

• Artwork

• Collectibles

We look forward to working with you to explore all the options! 

What’s caught our attention

Charitable giving in an election year

While charitable giving historically has been resilient in the midst of elections, it’s worth bearing in mind that some sources predict that political donations will eat into your clients’ budgets for charitable gifts. As you talk with clients about their philanthropy plans for 2024, you might pass along these trends so your clients can factor into their target gift amounts the potentially greater demand for funding community organizations. This is also a good time to remind clients that political donations are not tax deductible. This may seem elementary, but it still trips up some people who don’t track the rules closely. 

Rounding up at the register

Although the majority of your clients’ charitable giving is likely strategic, including giving through a donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation, there are definitely exceptions in any household. One of those exceptions for many of your clients may be a form of giving called “checkout charity.” The spare change really does add up–to the tune of $749 million nationwide in 2022 alone! 

Legal pitfalls for nonprofits

As you counsel your clients who are on the boards of nonprofit organizations, or perhaps even lead them, be aware of a handful of legal issues that are surfacing as areas of concern, including the always-relevant topics of employees versus independent contractors and unrelated business activities, as well as emerging issues related to artificial intelligence. 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Numbers talk, the benefits of flexible funds, and what's trending in philanthropy

Happy spring from the community foundation! 

As the weather warms up and people begin to venture outside, your clients' already busy schedules start to get even busier. Even if your clients are tempted to log off and enjoy the sunshine, we encourage you to help them stay the course. Your clients’ 2024 financial and estate planning goals are important, and now is the time to start tackling those strategies, especially after the tax season dust settles. 

In this issue, we’re covering three topics that can help you counsel your philanthropic clients:

–No matter what words you use to express the advantages of giving appreciated assets, it can be hard for clients to truly hear it. Consider showing clients–using numbers and examples–that it really is better to support favorite charities by giving appreciated assets instead of cash.

–Help your clients get ahead in their estate planning by leaning into the flexibility and benefits of a fund at the community foundation, including your clients’ ability to leave permanent legacies to support the community for generations to come. 

—There’s lots going on in the world of charitable giving! We’ve curated several articles that are worth reading if you’d like to dig deeper into springtime issues that are trending in philanthropy circles.

Gifts of appreciated stock: Let the numbers do the talking

No matter how frequently you remind clients to pause before they automatically reach for the checkbook to make their charitable gifts, many clients still give cash! As an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, you are well aware that giving long-term appreciated assets is often one of the most tax-savvy ways your clients can support their favorite charities. Nevertheless, it’s sometimes hard to convey that message to clients with words that stick. Next time, consider using illustrations to help clients see the benefits. 

Below are three simple examples* to help you show your clients the benefits of giving appreciated stock. 

Sally and Bob Jones give $100,000

Sally and Bob Jones plan to give $100,000 to their donor-advised fund at the community foundation to organize all of their giving for the calendar year. Let’s assume Sally and Bob have a combined adjusted gross income of $600,000, which lands them in the 35% federal income tax bracket. If they gave $100,000 in cash to their donor-advised fund, they could realize an income tax savings, potentially, of $35,000.

What if instead of giving cash, Sally and Bob gave highly-appreciated, publicly-traded stock, valued currently at $100,000, to their donor-advised fund. Let’s assume they’ve been holding the stock for many years, and the shares have a cost basis of $20,000. Not only are Sally and Bob eligible for a potential income tax deduction that will save them up to $35,000, but they have also potentially avoided $12,000 of capital gains tax that they would have owed if they’d sold the stock (using a long-term capital gains tax rate of 15%). So, it’s easy to see why Sally and Bob should consider giving highly-appreciated stock instead of cash.

Jenny and Joe Smith give $1 million

Jenny and Joe Smith plan to give $1 million to community causes this year. They’ll do that by adding $500,000 to their donor-advised fund at the community foundation, which in turn they will use to support their favorite charities. They’ll also be making a $500,000 gift to an unrestricted fund at the community foundation to help address the region’s greatest needs for generations to come. Let’s assume that Jenny and Joe are in the highest federal income tax bracket because they earn multiple seven figures. If they were to give $1 million in cash, they could save, potentially, up to $370,000 in income tax. If they gave publicly-traded stock instead of cash, assuming a $200,000 cost basis in stock valued currently at $1 million, they would still potentially save up to $370,000 in income tax, and they would also potentially avoid $160,000 in capital gains tax (based on a long-term capital gains tax rate of 20%).

Tiffany and Brett Thomas give $5 million

Tiffany and Brett Thomas plan to give a target amount of $5 million to charity as the cornerstone of their overall philanthropy plan. They would like to use publicly-traded stock that they’ve held for many years, valued currently at $5 million. They would love to receive a lifetime income stream from these assets, so that the remaining assets will flow to their fund at the community foundation after their deaths. In this case, you’ll explore setting up a charitable remainder trust that pays out an income stream to Tiffany and Brett while they are both living and then to the survivor for the survivor’s lifetime. 

Let’s assume that TIffany and Brett are both 55 years old. And let’s assume that the stock has a very low cost basis–just $500,000–because the Thomases have held it for so long. Depending on the IRS’s applicable rates, and assuming a 5% annual payout rate paid at the end of each quarter, here’s an approximate tax result if you worked with the community foundation to help Tiffany and Brett establish a charitable remainder trust:

–$1,042,550 approximate potential income tax deduction based on the present value of the gift of the remainder interest to charity 

–$4,500,000 in capital gains that may not be subject to tax

–$250,000 in total payments during the first year

–Annual payments of 5% of the value of the assets in the trust, which means the income stream will fluctuate depending on the value of the assets

Following the death of the survivor of Tiffany and Brett, the remaining assets will flow to the Thomas Family Fund at the community foundation, which Tiffany and Brett have already established and which, upon their deaths, will split equally into two funds. The first fund will be a donor-advised fund for which their children will serve as advisors, and the second fund is an unrestricted endowment fund to support the community foundation’s priority initiatives in perpetuity. 

Of course, no client’s circumstances will exactly match those of Sally and Bob, Jenny and Joe, or Tiffany and Brett. The net-net here, though, is that the community foundation is happy to discuss the various tax-savvy options for charitable giving in any client situation. Please reach out. We’re here for you! It is our honor to help you serve your charitable clients. 

*These examples are for illustration purposes only. Every client’s situation is different, and therefore the tax strategy and tax impact will be different for each client. For example, these illustrations are based on federal income tax rates only, and you’ll need to evaluate, among many other factors, the impact of state taxes.

“Shell funds” and other handy tools for charitable clients who are planning ahead

Getting a jump on a future “to do” list is always such a good feeling. The team at the community foundation can help you with your clients’ long-term charitable giving plans by putting in place the structures to receive bequests decades from now.

Consider a case where you’re finalizing an estate plan for a client who would like to leave bequests to multiple charitable organizations, but the identity of those specific organizations may be a moving target over the years because of the client’s evolving level of engagement with various charities as a donor, volunteer, or board member. In other words, this client likely will want to make small changes to the estate plan’s provisions for charitable giving but leave everything else as is. For example, a client’s trust could be drafted to provide that 10% of the remaining estate be divided equally among five charities, which of course could be listed in the trust document. But what if, a few years from now, the client wants to add another charity to that list? Even a small change like this would require an amendment, which can be time-consuming for both attorney and client. 

Instead, the client’s trust document could name a fund at the community foundation as the beneficiary of 10% of the remaining estate. Then, the client can work with the community foundation to draft a fund agreement that lists the charities that will share the 10%. When the client wants to add new charities or switch out charities from the list, the client can reach out to the community foundation and execute simple documentation of the client’s updated intent for the fund. This process is fast and simple, and it allows clients to ensure that their bequests are in line with ever-changing needs in the community. 

In some cases, the client may not intend to use the fund during their lifetime. That’s perfectly fine; the community foundation can establish a “shell fund” to sit dormant and receive assets only after the client passes away. Your client can still name the fund whatever they’d like, and the shell fund agreement can be modified anytime before the client’s death. 

Please reach out to the community foundation to learn how shell funds and other planning tools can help your clients achieve their charitable goals both during their lifetimes and beyond. 

Charitable planning for wealthy clients: In the spotlight

As you read up on techniques to structure philanthropy plans for your high-net worth clients, we recommend reviewing the potential impact of the estate tax exemption sunset, as well as making sure you’re one of just half of advisors (!) who are truly helping their clients with charitable giving in the first place. The team at the community foundation is happy to help you start the philanthropy discussion with clients; we understand that it’s not always easy, but it is so important. 

Tax return reviews help clients level up charitable giving plans

Hello from the community foundation! 

Tax time is just around the corner, which means your clients may be taking a closer look at charitable giving options as they pull together information for 2023 filings. In this issue, we’re covering three topics that may capture the attention of philanthropic individuals and families this year while they’re talking with advisors about tax preparation.

–Reviewing tax returns with a client can feel like an administrative task that simply needs to get done. But don’t overlook the value of the review process to point out planning opportunities for this year and beyond, especially related to charitable giving and working with the community foundation.  

–Each philanthropic client’s goals are unique, and charitable planning is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The community foundation offers charitable giving vehicles to meet a wide range of clients’ needs. Discover the many types of funds available through the community foundation and how each may be a fit for certain client situations.

–We’re always on the lookout for trends and legal updates that may impact charitable planning and the work you do for your clients. To that end, we’re sharing recent developments related to donor-advised funds and offering suggested reading materials to help you stay informed. 

As always, we appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your clients during tax time and every other time of year. We’re your partner in charitable giving, and it is our pleasure to help you serve your philanthropic clients as they support the causes they love.

Wishing you all the best for tax season! 

The Community Foundation

Tax return reviews help clients level up charitable giving plans

Tax time has its silver linings! Going over a tax return with a client helps start a productive conversation about ways to plan gifts to charity more effectively. As you scan 2023’s charitable contributions, talk with the client about whether those charitable gifts were made with cash or with other assets and then steer the conversation toward discussing the most effective assets to give to charity during 2024 and beyond. 

Here is a four-point checklist that can help you advise your clients about the range of charitable giving options. 

–Remind clients that cash is not king when it comes to charitable giving. Cash is typically not a tax-effective form of charitable giving. Instead, encourage clients to consider giving highly-appreciated assets, including publicly-traded stock, to their fund at the community foundation to support their favorite charities.   

–Think even beyond stock. Encourage clients to explore not only highly-appreciated stock as a potential gift to charity, but also the various forms of “noncash” assets that can make great charitable gifts. After all, American households’ most valuable assets are retirement accounts and personal residences, not cash. Examples of assets that could be excellent charitable gifts depending on the client’s circumstances include gifts of real estate, closely-held stock, collectibles, and, for clients who are age 70 ½ and older, direct transfers from an IRA (known as a Qualified Charitable Distribution) to a field-of-interest or unrestricted fund at the community foundation. 

–Make it easy on yourself and your client. Reach out to the team at the community foundation for assistance! We are happy to help you and your client evaluate the best assets to give to a donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation to achieve the client’s charitable goals.

–Close the loop on IRS reporting. Remember that the reporting requirements are different for noncash gifts to charity versus cash gifts. Make sure you are familiar with IRS Form 8283, which must be filed with any tax return claiming a deduction for noncash assets valued at $500 or more. The IRS expects strict adherence to the terms of the form, especially the requirement for a qualified appraisal. On our end, the community foundation will file a confirmation of receipt and a commitment to document and notify the IRS if disposition occurs within three years.

Opening up the full range of charitable giving options for a client can help you structure a holistic estate and financial plan that meets the client’s objectives for family wealth, philanthropy, and tax effectiveness. Reach out anytime to the team at the community foundation to discuss techniques and strategies. 

Fund types tailored to your client’s charitable goals

Just as each of your clients has a unique estate plan and financial plan to meet the client’s particular situation and goals, each of your philanthropic clients needs a unique charitable giving plan. For example, for some clients, giving shares of highly-appreciated stock consistently every year to their fund at the community foundation makes the most sense for their charitable goals and their mix of assets. For other clients, leaving a bequest to the community foundation to support specific areas of interest is the best fit for the client’s financial situation and community priorities.  

The community foundation offers charitable giving vehicles to meet a wide range of clients’ needs. In many cases, a single client can benefit from setting up multiple funds of different types. 

Here’s a quick primer on a few of the most popular fund types.

Donor-advised Fund

A donor-advised fund enables your client to establish a specific account for charitable giving. Your client makes tax-deductible contributions of cash (or, ideally, stock or other highly-appreciated assets) to the fund, and then recommends grants to favorite charities. 

Unrestricted Fund

The community foundation has its finger on the pulse of the community’s most pressing issues. An unrestricted fund gives your client the opportunity to support community needs that can’t be identified until the future. One of the biggest benefits of a community foundation is its perpetual structure that allows clients and their families to offer support to nonprofits that evolves over time as priorities in the region shift. 

Field-of-interest Fund

Clients who want to target their giving to specific areas of community need (such as education, health, environment, or the arts) can set up a field-of-interest fund to establish parameters for grant making under the ongoing guidance and expertise of the community foundation’s staff.  

Designated Fund

A designated fund allows a client to direct giving to a specific agency or purpose. Over time, the community foundation's staff manages the distributions from the fund according to the terms established by your client.

Agency Fund

An agency fund is similar to a designated fund, except in the case of an agency fund, the source of the initial contribution is the beneficiary nonprofit organization itself, not a donor or donors as is the case with a designated fund. If your client serves on boards of directors of charities, they’d likely be interested in learning more about agency funds. Indeed, if you represent nonprofit organizations and their board members in your practice, it’s helpful to keep in mind that organizations frequently establish agency funds at the community foundation to set aside endowment reserves or rainy day funds. The team at the community foundation is adept at navigating the specific accounting standards that are unique to this type of arrangement.

Scholarship Fund

Clients can set up funds to support students’ educational pursuits based on the parameters and application requirements they outline with help from the experts at the community foundation. 

Here’s a pro tip: If you represent clients who are age 70 ½ and older, consider recommending a Qualified Charitable Distribution from a client’s IRA to a fund at the community foundation. All of the fund types noted above are eligible recipients, with the exception of only the donor-advised fund.

We look forward to working together to discover the type of fund (or funds!) at the community foundation that could be a good fit for each client’s unique charitable giving needs. 

Donor-advised funds: Recommended reading

As just one of many types of funds your clients can establish at the community foundation, the donor-advised fund is popular because it allows your client to make a tax-deductible transfer of cash or marketable securities that is immediately eligible for a charitable deduction. Then, the client can recommend gifts to favorite charities from the fund to meet community needs as they emerge.

On an ongoing basis, the team at the community foundation tracks legislation, legal developments, trends, news, and innovative strategies for all types of charitable giving so that we can keep fund holders and their advisors up to date. 

Recently, donor-advised funds have been the subject of conversation within financial and estate planning circles, as well as a trending topic in philanthropy, related to a set of proposed regulations issued by the IRS late last year. The IRS has scheduled public hearings on the proposed regulations, set for May 6, 2024.

Our team has compiled a list of articles we’d recommend if you’d like to dig deeper into the topic of donor-advised funds. Of course, we welcome your questions and comments, so please reach out anytime!  

–The Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative’s recently-released study of donor-advised funds reported that the majority of donor-advised funds make at least one grant per year, and the average “pay-out rate” for all donor-advised funds is 18%. Donor-advised funds are frequently deployed as a tool to help philanthropists who have a wide range of financial capacity organize their charitable giving; consistent with that function, the study found that nearly half of all donor-advised funds carry balances less than $50,000. 

–Proposed IRS regulations related to donor-advised funds are attracting significant interest in legal circles. To dig into the legal issues, we recommend this article in Financial Advisor and its commentary from experts in the field, as well as this article if you are a Bloomberg subscriber. You can also check out the Council on Foundations’ comments on the proposed regulations for additional insight. 

–For a big-picture look at the state of donor-advised funds, including the relevance of recent research and the status and implications of the proposed regulations, check out this article in Wealth Management and this article in Think Advisor. 

As always, our team is staying on top of the issues. We’ll keep you posted! 

Tax time tips, reminders about CGAs and artwork, and loving local

FAQs: A snapshot of clients’ tax-time charitable giving questions

The year is in full swing. Attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors are asking clients to start gathering tax documents and related paperwork for 2023 tax returns and 2024 planning. Now is a good time for advisors to review a few basic tax principles related to charitable giving. Here are four questions that are top of mind for many advisors, along with answers that can help you serve your clients. 

How important is it to high net-worth clients to get a tax deduction for gifts to charity?

Among clients who own investments of $5 million or more, 91% of those surveyed reported that charitable giving is a component of their estate and financial plans. In another study, most affluent investors cited reasons for giving well beyond the possibility of a tax deduction and would not automatically reduce their giving if the charitable income tax deduction went away. What this means for your practice is that it’s important to be aware of your clients’ non-tax motivations for giving, such as family traditions, personal experiences, compassion for particular causes, and involvement with specific charitable organizations. This also means it’s critical to talk about charitable giving with all of your clients because it’s likely that most consider it to be important. 

Why do clients so often default to giving cash?

Many clients simply are not aware of the tax benefits of giving highly-appreciated assets to their donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation or other public charity. Even if they are aware, they forget or are in a hurry and end up writing checks and making donations with their credit cards. It’s really important for advisors to remind clients about the benefits of donating non-cash assets such as highly-appreciated stock, or even complex assets (e.g., closely-held business interests and real estate). When clients give highly-appreciated assets in lieu of cash, they often can reduce–significantly–capital gains tax exposure, and they can calculate the deduction based on the full fair market value of the gifted assets. 

What are the basic deductibility rules for gifts to charities?

It’s important to know that the deductibility rules are different for your clients’ gifts to a public charity (such as a fund at the community foundation) on one hand, and their gifts to a private foundation on the other hand. Clients’ gifts to public charities are deductible up to a maximum of 60% (s0metimes limited to 50%) of AGI, versus 30% for gifts to private foundations. In addition, gifts to public charities of non-marketable assets such as real estate and closely-held stock typically are deductible at fair market value, while the same assets given to a private foundation are deductible at the client’s cost basis. This difference can be enormous in terms of dollars, so make sure you let your clients know about this if they are planning major gifts to charities.

So what’s the first step? Reach out to the team at the community foundation! We really mean it. Make it a habit to mention charitable giving to your clients. From that moment on, whatever the clients’ charitable priorities, consider our team to be your behind-the-scenes back office and support department to handle all of your clients’ charitable giving needs.

Psst: Don’t forget about charitable gift annuities

Certain charitable clients may wish to structure a gift to charity so that the client retains a lifetime income stream. Keep in mind that a charitable gift annuity (“CGA”) could be an attractive option for these clients. Plus, if the client is 70 ½ or older, the client can take advantage of the one-time Legacy IRA opportunity to give $53,000 to a qualified charity such as an unrestricted or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation.

A CGA, like any other annuity, is a contract. Your client agrees to make an irrevocable transfer of cash or assets to a charitable organization. In return, the charitable organization agrees to pay the client (or a designated beneficiary such as a spouse) a fixed payment for life. Your client is eligible for an immediate income tax deduction for the present value of the future amount passing to charity. 

The team at the community foundation can help you stay up-to-date on the latest CGA rate changes (including the rates that took effect at the beginning of this year). We’ll work with you to evaluate whether and when a CGA is a good planning move for your client. 

Use caution when advising clients about donating works of art

Your clients who own highly-appreciated works of art certainly can consider making gifts of this property to a charity. Use caution, though, when helping clients structure gifts of artwork. To be eligible for a charitable deduction at fair market value, the nonprofit recipient’s use of the donated artwork must meet certain qualifications, in that the artwork has to be used for its charitable purpose (think art museums). On top of that, be wary of techniques that recently have come under severe IRS scrutiny and have been determined to circumvent the rules for tax deductions. 

Tips for serving clients who love local

Your charitably-minded clients certainly have no shortage of options for their philanthropic dollars. Many clients use their donor-advised funds, for example, at the community foundation to support favorite charities across the country, including alma maters, organizations in the communities where they’ve lived in the past or have a second home, or charities in communities where their grown children are now living. 

Many clients, though, are also deeply committed to the local community where they’re living now, where they’ve raised their children, and where they’ve built a business. That’s why it’s helpful to remind clients that they can reach out to the team at the community foundation when they want to make sure their dollars are making the biggest difference possible, right here in our community. Indeed, local giving satisfies many clients’ commitment to “take care of our own.” The unfortunate steady flow of crises and even disasters, coupled with decreasing state and federal funding to local nonprofits, means that philanthropy is playing an increasingly important role in our region. The community foundation, through its wide variety of fund types available to your clients (including endowment funds to support the community in perpetuity), can help your clients achieve their goals for local support, whether that takes the form of disaster recovery, supporting families in need, funding critical workforce development, or paving the way for historic preservation initiatives.

The community foundation team is always happy to provide insight into the challenges our community is facing right now and which organizations are delivering services to alleviate those needs so that your clients can provide immediate support through their donor-advised funds. 

In addition, an unrestricted fund may be a good fit for clients who want to improve lives, right here in this community, for generations to come, whatever challenges our region may face at any given point in time. An unrestricted fund may be particularly compelling for your clients who are 70 ½ or older. These clients may be eligible to make annual distributions up to $105,000 per spouse from their IRAs directly to an unrestricted fund at the community foundation. This transfer is called a “Qualified Charitable Distribution,” or “QCD.” Not only do QCD transfers count toward satisfying Required Minimum Distributions, but your client also avoids the income tax on those funds. Furthermore, those assets are no longer part of the client’s estate upon death, so the client can avoid estate taxes, too.  

Please reach out to the team at the community foundation for more information on how your clients can support both current and future local needs, and also meet their own financial, tax, and generational legacy goals. 

Spotting client opportunities, unrestricted giving, and tax trends to watch

Happy New Year from the community foundation!

We appreciated the opportunity to work with so many of you at the end of 2023! Your work with philanthropic clients is inspiring. It is our team’s honor to serve as your behind-the-scenes partner to help execute your clients’ charitable giving plans in the most tax-savvy, community-minded way possible.

In this issue, we’re covering topics that are important to you and your clients as you kick off a new year.

First, we’re offering suggestions for how to spot potential planning opportunities within your client base. Clients who gave large year-end gifts, families whose grown children are spread out geographically, and clients whose portfolios jumped in value are examples of types of clients who may benefit from proactive charitable planning. As always, we are here to help!

Second, we’ve continued to see an uptick in the number of families who are interested in diversifying their charitable giving portfolios by adding unrestricted giving components to their work with the community foundation. From gifts to the community foundation’s operating fund, to gifts to support community foundation grant making initiatives, the options are plenty. We look forward to exploring the possibilities with your philanthropic clients. 

Third, the team at the community foundation is constantly on the lookout for trends and developments in the tax laws that govern charitable giving. We’re sharing five of the hottest topics that could impact the way you work with your philanthropic clients. 

As always, the team at the community foundation is just a phone call or an email away to help you and your clients build charitable plans for 2024 to support the charities that are keeping our community afloat. 

Thank you for the opportunity to work together.

Your community foundation

Big gifts, bullish portfolios, and kids who move away

If you’re not talking about charitable giving with your high net-worth clients, 2024 is the year to start doing it! Recent studies show that 85.1% of affluent households give to charity. Certainly many of your clients are among them. 

Take a few minutes this month to scan your client list for three common scenarios and related opportunities for charitable giving solutions.

Clients who made significant charitable gifts at year-end. 

You’re probably aware of at least a few clients who increased their charitable giving at the end of 2023. Perhaps you worked with a client to establish a donor-advised or other type of charitable fund at the community foundation, or maybe you helped a client structure a Qualified Charitable Distribution to a field-of-interest or designated fund at the community foundation. Now that the dust has settled on year-end planning activities, go back to these clients to find out more about their overall philanthropic plans. You may discover that a client would like to work with you to update their estate plan to include a bequest to their fund at the community foundation, set up a charitable remainder trust with highly-appreciated stock, or proactively plan their charitable gifts for 2024 to get a jump on tax strategies. 

Clients whose stock portfolios have rallied.

2023 brought good news and record highs for the stock market  As always (and perhaps especially now!), giving appreciated, publicly-traded stock to charitable organizations is a highly effective tax strategy. This is because capital gains tax is avoided when your client transfers long-term, marketable securities to a fund at the community foundation or other public charity. The client is typically eligible for an income tax deduction at the fair market value of the securities, and when the charity sells the securities, the charity does not pay capital gains tax. This is a win-win for your client and the charity. Scan your client list for clients who are holding long-term stock positions that have appreciated substantially since they bought them, especially with the market’s latest rally.

Clients whose children have moved away. 

Children of affluent parents tend to move away. This means many of your clients may be seeking ways to stay in close communication with their children. Remember that while the community foundation can help your clients maximize the impact and tax benefits of their local giving, the community foundation’s tools are also very geographically flexible. This means, for example, that your clients can use their donor-advised fund to support 501(c)(3) organizations across the country, including in communities where their grown children are living. When you demonstrate your interest in your clients’ charitable giving priorities, you not only are strengthening your client relationships, but you’re also helping clients strengthen relationships with their children. 

Unrestricted giving, the trust factor, and why it matters to your clients

The gifts Americans give to charity every year provide critical support for more than a million organizations that are helping sustain the quality of life in our communities. Philanthropy equates to 2% of GDP–that’s a little more than the home health care services sector! And, trust is growing as a must-have prerequisite before your clients decide to give to an organization, increasing from 63.9% to 69.9% between December 2021 and December 2022.  

With trust in charitable organizations driving so many giving decisions, it’s important for you and your clients to be aware of the community foundation’s role and commitment to stewardship. Every day, the team at the community foundation works with members of our board of directors, civic leaders, and nonprofit organizations to deeply understand the areas where the people in our community need the most help. Today, the most pressing needs might be for emergency assistance in response to a disaster. Tomorrow, our community might need scholarships for inner city youth, or investments in research to improve access to healthcare for the underserved. Indeed, the needs of our community are ever-changing. The community foundation always has its finger on the pulse of the community’s top priorities and the best way to address them. Through its convening power, community knowledge, and perpetual mission, your community foundation is an unparalleled resource to make our community better for everyone.  

As you talk with your clients about their philanthropic plans, keep in mind that many individuals and families establish multiple funds at the community foundation to meet all of their various charitable giving needs. For example, a family might establish a donor-advised fund to organize their regular annual giving, making it easy to track gifts of appreciated stock and support for a large number of individual charities. A member of this family might also set up a charitable remainder trust with the community foundation to accept a gift of highly-appreciated real estate and retain an income stream for life. And, this family might also establish an unrestricted fund or make gifts to existing funds that are specifically designated by the community foundation and its board of directors to address the most critical needs of our community. For example, your client may decide to:  

–Contribute to an unrestricted fund at the community foundation to support the foundation’s long-term grant making. 

–Donate to the community foundation’s operating fund to support the foundation’s mission for years to come. 

–Support a special initiative fund to help people who need assistance right now to get back on their feet, relying on the community foundation’s network and expertise to invest the dollars where they’re needed most critically. 

Whatever ways your clients choose to get involved, you’ll know that you and your clients can trust the community foundation to make a lasting difference in the community we all love.

Tax law twists and turns: Five developments impacting charitable giving

2023 was a busy year! We understand that charitable giving topics may not always be at the top of your reading list. That’s why we're here! The team at the community foundation is committed to keeping you up-to-date on what you need to know. Here’s a recap of five key developments last year that are most certainly worth keeping an eye on in 2024.

NIL Collectives

The IRS has had a lot to say lately about NIL collectives. In addition to offering insights for athlete recipients of NIL (name, image, and likeness) dollars, the IRS has also issued guidance pertaining to organizations that help develop NIL opportunities for athletes, suggesting that the activities of these entities, known as “collectives,” may not qualify as “charitable.” This development could be problematic for your clients who believe that their contributions to NIL collectives will qualify for a charitable tax deduction.  

Donations of Cryptocurrency 

It’s still a thing! At least a few of your clients are likely still invested in cryptocurrency, despite the whirlwind in that industry over the last year or so. You should know that in early 2023, the IRS published guidance confirming that a taxpayer cannot take a charitable deduction for a gift of cryptocurrency over $5,000 without submitting a qualified appraisal. Cryptocurrency, in the eyes of the IRS, is treated as property, not cash. And it is not a security, either. Note that the IRS also said that a price quotation from a cryptocurrency exchange (such as FTX!!) doesn’t count; a qualified appraisal is still required. 

Charitable Act

Senate Bill 566, which is still pending, was introduced in early 2023 to address what is sometimes called the “universal charitable deduction,” meaning that even taxpayers who do not itemize their deductions would be able to claim a charitable deduction, potentially in an amount up to one-third of the taxpayer’s standard deduction. Keep an eye on this; the bill enjoys broad support and, if it becomes law, could be a real perk for both your clients and the charities they care about.  

Exempt Purpose

It seems that at least once a year, the IRS issues guidance on what it means for an organization to be organized for an exempt purpose under Section 501(c)(3). In Private Letter Ruling 202349014, we are once again reminded that personal activities that have no direct public benefit simply will not be viewed by the IRS as exempt. While private letter rulings are of course not binding, they are nevertheless useful tools to provide to a client to show specific examples of what the IRS considers to be non-exempt. Estate planning attorneys and CPAs tell us that every few months, a client comes to them with an idea for starting a nonprofit, and it’s easier to tell a cautionary tale than it is to recite Internal Revenue Code sections!   

Proposed Regulations

Proposed regulations issued by the IRS are not binding, and often they are revised–or even shelved or canceled entirely–before they go into effect. Still, the team at the community foundation is always keeping an eye out for these and other forms of IRS rulemaking that could potentially affect your work with your charitable clients. A recent example of this type of IRS activity is a set of proposed regulations concerning donor-advised funds, issued in November 2023. The public comment period ends in mid-January 2024, and then the IRS will take time to review the comments, so we won’t know anything definitive for quite some time. For those who are interested, we like the detail provided in this podcast series on the topic. You can take a long winter walk and learn everything you want to know about what’s being proposed! And of course, you’ll hear from us when (and if) the proposed regulations ever go into effect and what to do about it. 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

What's around the corner for 2024?

By the numbers: What’s around the corner in 2024

As 2023 makes way for 2024, you’re no doubt inundated with information about the various IRS thresholds that are subject to adjustment. But have you thought about how each of these thresholds might be connected with your clients’ charitable giving? Here are a few pointers to keep handy as you inform your clients about changes for 2024 and also help them tee up their charitable giving plans for the coming year.

1. Social Security COLA increases

The Social Security Administration announced a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase of 3.2% that will take effect in January. This increase is less than half of 2023’s COLA increase (which was the highest since 1981) and reflects inflation’s decline in recent months. 

Connection to charitable giving: Remember that retirees are a unique group when it comes to tools and techniques related to charitable giving. Remember also that 72% of Baby Boomers (and 88% of the Silent Generation!) give to charity every year, so if your clients include retirees, you’re almost certainly dealing with philanthropic individuals. When you talk about the Social Security increase, it’s a logical time to also bring up charitable giving plans for 2024. 

1. Standard deduction increases

The standard deduction will increase in 2024 by approximately 5.5 percent to $14,600 for single tax filers and $29,200 for married couples filing jointly.

Connection to charitable giving: The standard deduction is an important factor in charitable giving. Your clients whose gifts to charity, plus other deductions, total more than the standard deduction are eligible to itemize deductions. You know this, of course, but it is worth talking with your clients about their 2024 charitable giving plans (and their last-minute plans for 2023!) to evaluate whether a “bunching” strategy, working with the community foundation, could be helpful to maximize a client’s intended support of favorite charities over the next few years. 

1. Tax brackets

Though tax rates in each tax bracket, ranging from 10% to 37%, aren’t changing, the income levels that define each bracket are increasing. Generally speaking, your clients can earn up to about 5% more in 2024 and remain in their 2023 tax bracket. 

Connection to charitable giving: Reviewing tax brackets with your clients is a good time to bring up pending legislation known as the Charitable Act, which would create a “universal deduction” even for taxpayers who do not itemize. A similar, pandemic-era law that has since expired helped boost giving following the drop in giving that occurred after the standard deduction increased in 2018.  

4. Qualified Charitable Distributions

Each taxpayer aged 70½ and older may direct up to $105,000 in distributions from an IRA to a qualified charity in 2024, up from $100,000 in 2023. Note that your client can make a once-in-a-lifetime QCD to a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity in the amount of $53,000 in 2024 (adjusted for inflation from $50,000 in 2023).

Connection to charitable giving: With the ability to give more in 2024 than 2023, your clients can further escape income tax via QCDs and satisfy a greater portion of  their Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). Field-of-interest and designated funds at the community foundation are very effective recipients of QCDs. 

Four jewels of charitable giving in your clients’ golden years

The rising popularity of the Qualified Charitable Deduction–”QCD”--appears to be inspiring an increasing number of retirees to re-evaluate their charitable giving plans. Before the clock winds down on 2023 giving opportunities, be sure you’re familiar with the various charitable giving techniques that are most appealing to retirees and the various ways the community foundation can help.

Here are four characteristics of retirees and their charitable giving situations that will help you serve your retired clients.

–Greater connection to community. Retirees often feel a greater connection to their community and favorite charities than your clients who are not retired. Whether it’s because a retiree’s income and corresponding giving capacity are more predictable, or because a retiree has more time, getting involved with favorite charities can help retirees stay active and even avoid loneliness. The team at the community foundation stays connected with the many nonprofit organizations in our region, and we are happy to serve as a sounding board for your retired clients who want to get involved. 

–Less likely to itemize deductions. Many retirees apply the standard deduction on their income tax returns because they don’t have many expenses that qualify for itemization, such as business expenses and mortgage interest deductions. Help your retired clients evaluate whether itemizing deductions in certain years could be beneficial. Through a donor-advised fund at the community foundation, your clients may be able to concentrate charitable contributions into particular tax years and benefit from the deductions above and beyond the standard deduction. This is called “bunching,” and a donor-advised fund can help your client take advantage of itemizing tax deductions while still allowing them to provide steady support to nonprofits in years that follow the itemizing year.

–More interested in involving children and grandchildren in their philanthropy. The community foundation is happy to help your retired clients fulfill their desire to stay connected with their children and grandchildren, including formalizing roles for these family members as advisors and successor advisors of the retiree’s donor-advised fund at the community foundation. This is often an excellent and easy way to structure philanthropic priorities for generational wealth as well as create positive, authentic communication channels across an extended family.

–Excellent candidates for Qualified Charitable Distributions. Your clients who are at least age 70½ can direct a tax-free distribution (up to $100,000 per spouse in 2023) from an IRA to a qualified charity such as a field-of-interest or designated fund at the community foundation. For your clients who must take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), the Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) is especially beneficial. This is because the distribution to charity counts toward the RMDs and therefore never lands in the client’s taxable income. 

Philanthropy keeps your clients sticky

Regardless of your business or industry, retaining your clients or customers is a key to success. And as the saying goes, it’s easier and less costly to retain or get more work from a current client than it is to find a new client. 

As an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor who helps clients with tax and estate planning matters, you’re well aware of the fragile transition phase after a client passes away. Not only are many tax planning techniques activated (and validated!) after a client’s death, but you’re also navigating the understandably stressful and emotional factors that impact your work with the heirs to administer the estate, transfer assets, and file tax returns. 

It’s no wonder that the death of a client presents business retention challenges. You’d love to continue representing the client’s children, but that can be a difficult discussion immediately following their parents’ death. It’s no surprise that the rate of advisor disconnect and abandonment from one generation to the next is remarkably high. The numbers behind this churn are staggering. Historically, studies have found that 75% of parents report that their advisor had never met their children, and 10% or fewer of heirs retain their family’s advisor post-inheritance.

The solution is, of course, for the advisor to establish a connection with the next generation well in advance of a client’s death. Certainly there are many ways to cultivate a next-generation connection—starting young, sending birthday or holiday cards, encouraging clients to include children in meetings where appropriate, offering to counsel children on career choices, and making networking introductions or job referrals. Few touchpoints, however, are as substantive and meaningful as philanthropy. After all, in most clients’ view, inheritances are about more than money. They’re about values, humanity, multi-generational connections, understanding wealth’s origins, and more. 

Children who get to know their parents’ advisors begin to appreciate the advisors’ roles in not only making family wealth last across generations, but also leaving a family legacy to the community. The community foundation can help advisors create opportunities to discuss philanthropy with clients and their children and grandchildren. Here are a few examples:

–Suggest that your clients consider working with the community foundation to establish easy-to-understand charitable giving tools, such as a family donor-advised fund, field-of-interest fund, or designated fund. 

–Encourage your clients to take advantage of the community foundation’s services for families, which include researching family members’ favorite causes, arranging site visits at local charities, and educational sessions about the basics of charitable giving and what’s going on in the community. 

–Share with your clients and their children materials provided by the community foundation describing tax-savvy charitable giving, including the benefits of giving highly-appreciated stock instead of cash to a fund at the community foundation to avoid capital gains taxes.

–Ask the community foundation to help facilitate family discussions so that all family members  see how they can support causes that have been important to their parents and grandparents over the years as well as causes that are contemporary, relatable, or meaningful to them. 

While any conversation with a client’s child or grandchild can increase the likelihood of retaining the family as a client across generations, the topic of philanthropy is an especially effective tool to create a common bond that keeps the family from becoming your former client. 

“I still don’t get it”: TLC for your clients’ QCDs

Despite the Qualified Charitable Distribution’s (QCD) position as a financial media darling, mentioned in hundreds of articles every week, it’s still not an easy concept to get your head around. This is not only true for clients, but also for advisors whose areas of practice don’t typically include philanthropy. 

The confusion is understandable because several legal and tax issues are in play with a QCD:

–Eligibility age (QCDs are available to your clients who’ve reached the age of 70 ½)  

–Rules for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from IRAs (which clients must start taking for the year they reach age 72 [or 73 if the client reached age 72 after December 31, 2022])

–Okay, let’s pause for a moment! The difference in age requirements alone is already confusing!

–The types of charities that can receive Qualified Charitable Distributions (e.g., donor-advised funds at the community foundation are not eligible, but designated funds and field-of-interest funds at the community foundation are eligible)

–The maximum amount your client can give through a QCD is $100,000 for 2023, but that’s increasing to $105,000 for 2024 due to inflation adjustments

–The mechanics of executing a QCD are, well, a hassle! 

All of this adds up to a pretty complex set of requirements for executing a QCD, including:

–A QCD allows a taxpayer aged 70 ½ or older to donate directly to a qualifying organization from their traditional IRA, but unlike a typical distribution, the amount directly distributed does not add to the donor’s taxable income. 

–A bonus is that for clients required to take RMDs, the QCD can count toward the RMD, though conditions apply. 

–Among those RMD-specific conditions is that the QCD amount must be among the first funds to exit the IRA in a given tax year, at least within the RMD amount, to receive tax deductibility. Thus, the QCD must be taken early enough in the tax or calendar year, preferably in January, so as not to occur after a full RMD has been taken out by the donor. 

–QCDs must be appropriately tracked and acknowledged by the charitable recipient (and reflected in a corroborating 1099 tax form) and properly recorded on your client’s tax return as distinct from the RMD (IRA sponsors typically do not make the distinction on their forms).  

Yes, it’s a lot. 

Here’s the thing, though. If you have clients who are 70 ½, own an IRA, and are charitably inclined, you absolutely must consider the QCD as an option. And it does not need to be hard. Just reach out to the community foundation, and we’ll walk you through it, every step of the way.   

While QCDs are a win-win in many ways, and particularly with the decline of itemized filers since 2017 when the standard deduction increased, executing a QCD typically requires a lot of TLC, as they say. The community foundation is here to help! 

Music to your ears: There’s a fund that’s just right for every client

We look forward to working together to discover the type of fund at the community foundation that's a good fit for each of your clients’ unique charitable giving needs. Options include donor-advised funds, scholarship funds, field-of-interest funds, endowments, corporate foundation funds, unrestricted funds, funds established by private foundations, memorials, designated funds, charitable gift annuities, and bequests. Nonprofit organizations can establish accounts to hold reserve funds and endowments. 

Here’s a quick primer on a few of the most popular fund types.

Donor-advised Fund

A donor-advised fund enables your client to establish a specific account for charitable giving. Your client makes tax-deductible contributions of cash (or, ideally, stock or other highly-appreciated assets) to the fund, and then recommends grants to favorite charities. 

Unrestricted Fund

The community foundation has its finger on the pulse of the community’s most pressing issues. An unrestricted fund gives your client the opportunity to support community needs that can’t be identified until the future. One of the biggest benefits of a community foundation is its perpetual structure that allows clients and their families to offer support to nonprofits that evolves over time as priorities in the region shift. 

Field-of-interest Fund

Clients who want to target their giving to specific areas of community need (such as education, health, environment, or the arts) can set up a field-of-interest fund to establish parameters for grant making under the ongoing guidance and expertise of the community foundation’s staff.  

Designated Fund

A designated fund allows a client to direct giving to a specific agency or purpose. Over time, the community foundation's staff manages the distributions from the fund according to the terms established by your client.

Agency Fund

An agency fund is similar to a designated fund, except in the case of an agency fund, the source of the initial contribution is the beneficiary nonprofit organization itself, not a donor or donors as is the case with a designated fund. If you represent nonprofit organizations and their board members, it’s helpful to keep in mind that organizations frequently establish agency funds at the community foundation to set aside endowment reserves or rainy day funds. The team at the community foundation is adept at navigating the specific accounting standards that are unique to this type of arrangement.

Scholarship Fund

Clients can set up funds to support students’ educational pursuits based on the parameters and application requirements they outline with help from the experts at the community foundation. 

Here’s a pro tip: If you represent clients who are age 70 ½ and older, consider recommending a Qualified Charitable Distribution from a client’s IRA to a fund at the community foundation. All of the fund types noted above are eligible recipients, with the exception of only the donor-advised fund.

We look forward to talking with you about the type of fund that’s best for each of your charitable clients!

Gotta love a good checklist

Have you had your fill yet of year-end checklists? This time of year, every accountant, attorney, and financial advisor is inundated with messages and articles to help guide them in serving clients year-end giving needs.

We’ve picked a few of our favorites (and we’ll tell you why!) so you can clean out your inboxes more quickly. 

Local and intentional. We like the format of this list, where advisors themselves are sharing their own favorite tips. We also like the emphasis on making sure your clients understand what they’re giving to and consider giving locally. The community foundation is your go-to resource for this! Reach out anytime. We’re happy to help you help your clients make a meaningful difference this holiday season, right here in our community.

Comprehensive and in context. We like the breadth and depth of this checklist and the way it places charitable giving in the context of other financial decisions your clients are making at year-end. Charitable giving does not happen in a vacuum, and we appreciate this article’s inclusion of charitable giving as part of a well-rounded end-of-year protocol to serve the full range of clients’ needs. (This is also a similar, strong piece, although a subscription is required.)

Focus on community. We like this checklist because it boils the tips down to six, two of which are charitable-giving related. 

Above all, give us a call! The team at the community foundation is here for you. Put our website and phone number at the top of all of your checklists, year-end or otherwise. Whether your question relates to a client’s favorite cause, giving from their IRA via a QCD, setting up a donor-advised or other type of fund, or anything else related to charitable giving and philanthropy, we look forward to the conversation.

Year-end charitable giving punch list, why life insurance shouldn’t be overlooked, and what’s trending in philanthropy

Hello from the community foundation! 

Thank you for the opportunity to work together as you serve your philanthropic clients. We are grateful for the many ways our team collaborates with attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors. Whether we are working together to structure a family’s donor-advised fund, a gift of real estate, endowed support for a favorite nonprofit, or a Qualified Charitable Distribution to a field-of-interest fund at the community foundation, our team enjoys and appreciates every minute.

We’re covering three topics in this issue that are very much in demand right now:

--Keep a punch list handy for your upcoming meetings with your philanthropic clients. Key items to cover include reviewing clients’ charitable goals, exploring the various fund types available through the community foundation, and understanding the advantages of a community foundation donor-advised fund over those offered by national providers. Our team is here to help! 

--Don’t overlook life insurance as an effective charitable giving tool for certain clients under certain circumstances. You might find that for some clients, buying additional coverage is a solid financial move that also expands the beneficiary pool to include a charitable organization such as the client’s fund at the community foundation.

--Keep an eye on developing news in the philanthropic sector, including the Charitable Act which would expand charitable deductions to non-itemizers, recent IRS rulings affecting supporting organizations, and the benefits of establishing a field-of-interest or designated fund at the community foundation to focus charitable support on a particular area of need (and take advantage of QCDs, too).  

As always, we are here for you! We love serving as your first stop for all things philanthropy.

Wishing you and your family all the best for the Thanksgiving holiday,

Your community foundation

Tips for clients’ year-end giving

Year-end giving makes up a significant portion of total revenue for most charitable organizations. Research even shows that a whopping 25% of online giving occurs in December! What this means is that there’s a pretty good chance your clients are already considering end-of-year gifts to support causes they care about, are being asked by at least one nonprofit for an end-of-year gift, or both. That’s why it’s important for you to talk with clients well in advance of the year-end giving rush. 

Here are six tips to help jumpstart your client conversations over the next few weeks. Please give us a call if you’d like to dive deeper! We are here for you. 

Check in on goals. By discussing your clients’ overall charitable goals, you can ascertain which causes your clients are passionate about and why they care, how much they’d like to contribute in the short term and over time, the impact they’d like to see, and whether they intend to provide for their favorite charities in their estate plan. Against this backdrop, year-end giving strategies become easier to develop.

Explore a wide variety of fund types. Donor-advised funds are very popular vehicles, and community foundations are ideal providers of donor-advised funds for clients who want to keep their philanthropy local and benefit from the community foundation’s focus, expertise, and mission-driven 501(c)(3) status. But donor-advised funds are not the only types of funds that the community foundation offers. Your clients can also establish field-of-interest funds, designated funds, unrestricted funds, or scholarship funds. Our team will help you evaluate what type of fund (or funds) is best suited for a particular client. For example, a client considering a Qualified Charitable Distribution from an IRA is a great candidate to establish a field-of-interest or designated fund.  

Understand the community foundation’s donor-advised fund advantages. As you work with clients for whom a donor-advised fund is appropriate, be sure you understand why the community foundation is such a great fit for so many philanthropic individuals and families. Indeed, the community foundation is the truly local option for donor-advised funds. Large, national providers associated with financial institutions also offer donor-advised funds, but those vehicles are typically not a fit for clients who care about our community and want to support the region’s nonprofits in a meaningful way. 

Know how a donor-advised fund works. It’s easy for a client to establish a donor-advised fund at the community foundation. After completing simple paperwork, your client will make a tax-deductible gift (of cash or, ideally, stock or other highly-appreciated asset) to the community foundation to fund the donor-advised fund. The funds can then be granted out to eligible charities at the client’s recommendation over time. Many clients find that a donor-advised fund operates almost identically to a private foundation, but without the sometimes hefty administrative overhead costs and burdensome restrictions. A donor-advised fund can be named after the client (e.g., Smith Family Fund) or named to reflect the purpose of the client’s giving (e.g., Fund for the Future of Anytown), or even structured to enable the client to give anonymously. 

Supercharge both tax benefits and giving. Giving through a donor-advised fund at the community foundation may allow a client to tap a helpful technique called “bunching,” which maximizes the client’s itemized deductions for the tax year, while still ensuring that the client can give strategically over the next few years to achieve charitable goals and support favorite organizations when they need it the most. 

Don’t default to cash. Many clients naturally think of cash as the source for their year-end giving. That’s a missed opportunity! Most of the time, highly-appreciated marketable securities (or other highly-appreciated, long-term assets) are a better gift to a client’s fund at the community foundation or other public charity because the client is eligible for a tax deduction at the assets’ fair market value, and the proceeds from the sale of the assets will flow into the client’s fund at the community foundation free from capital gains tax. That means more funds are available to support the client’s favorite causes.  

Philanthropy is an important topic of conversation with your clients, not just at the end of the year, but always. Our team is here to help you ensure that your clients can meet their financial and charitable goals through year-end giving and beyond.

Life insurance: A key charitable planning tool for certain clients

As an advisor, you often talk with your clients about life insurance–how much is enough and which policies are best suited for a client’s particular situation. As you counsel your clients about risk management and the role of life insurance in their estate plans, don’t forget that life insurance can be an effective charitable giving tool in some situations.

Many advisors overlook the ease of naming a charity as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy. Certainly, qualified plans and IRAs are a more tax-effective vehicle to leave to a charity via a beneficiary designation, but some clients might want to do even more than that. For instance, “second-to-die” life insurance policies are a common hedge or shield against anticipated estate taxes. These policies may become more popular as the estate tax exemption drops back down at the end of 2025. 

Some clients may not be fully aware of how important beneficiary designations really are. Of course, many policyholders will first want to provide for family members in either specified dollar amounts or percentages. What some clients may not realize is that they can also designate insurance proceeds to support the causes they care about, whether by naming a charity directly or naming a fund at the community foundation to carry out their charitable wishes.  

Increasing the coverage under an existing policy may present an additional charitable giving opportunity for some clients. Because policy premiums generally do not rise proportionately to benefit amounts, expanding the benefits can be cost efficient. For example, if a client would like each of four family-member beneficiaries to receive $250,000 from a million-dollar life insurance policy, adding $250,000 of benefit will typically not increase the premium by 25%. In fact, the benefit-to-premium ratio may improve. In a case like this, the client can name the four family-member beneficiaries and the charity to each receive ⅕ of the policy benefits. Depending on the client’s overall financial and estate planning picture, a technique like this might truly deliver bang for the buck.  

And although deploying life insurance as a charitable planning technique may not be a fit for every client, it’s certainly worth considering in edge cases. Indeed, the global market for term insurance is growing—from $850 billion in 2021 to an expected $1.3 trillion by 2028. Many people buy term insurance with its relatively low fixed-rate premiums for 20 - 30 years as a hedge for potentially lost income during high-expense times in life, such as children’s college years, or to pay off a mortgage. But if those years pass uneventfully (fingers crossed!), and amid an improved personal financial position, it’s an opportune time to reassess and even continue the policy. 

Past term insurance policy premiums can then be viewed as sunk or unrecoverable costs, and future premiums can be seen as a relatively moderate “investment” relative to the benefit. Of course, all of your clients want to outlive their policies. But as long as a policy is in effect, the policy offers many potential opportunities, including for charitable giving. Reach out to the community foundation to explore this further. We’d love to talk! 

Philanthropy tips and trends

Many eyes are on the Charitable Act, which, if passed, would allow for deductible charitable contributions that exceed the standard deduction. The Charitable Act proposes to restore the pandemic-era “universal charitable deduction” and raise the cap from $300 for individuals ($600 for joint filers) to approximately $4,600 for individuals ($9,200 for joint filers). 

Some advisors have been watching the regulations surrounding Type I and Type III supporting organizations. If you are dealing with these vehicles in your practice, be sure to stay up to date on the latest IRS regulations. 

Finally, for your situational awareness as you advise clients who are pet owners, no amount of pet cuteness on Instagram will resolve the nationwide overcrowding at animal shelters. Dog and cat populations are up sharply from the pandemic due to owner-adopters returning to in-office work, inflationary costs for food and veterinary care, and owners seeking new forms of companionship. For a client who is passionate about this issue–or any issue–be sure to encourage your client to learn more about establishing a designated fund or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation to support highly targeted areas of relief, and, for those clients who are over 70½, serve as recipients of Qualified Charitable Distributions from IRAs.  

This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. 

What’s deductible, donor-advised fund options, and serving women clients

Hello from the community foundation! 

It’s October, and the fourth quarter is upon us.  

The team at the community foundation is especially looking forward to talking with many of you about incorporating charitable giving into your clients’ estate plans in honor of National Estate Planning Awareness Week from October 16 to 22. In that spirit, we’ve put together a collection of articles this month that might help guide your discussions with clients. Here’s what’s on tap:

What’s deductible and what’s not? As you talk with clients about supporting their favorite charities in their estate plans, it’s a great time to brush up on the rules for deductibility. This is the time of year when nonprofit solicitations are landing in clients’ inboxes and mailboxes nearly every day. Clients might not always realize that “nonprofit” does not necessarily mean “charitable” in the eyes of the IRS. Our brief summary of the rules provides a handy primer for you and your clients.

Moving from a commercial fund to the community foundation. Clients are reading about donor-advised funds everywhere these days! Some of your clients might even have established a donor-advised fund at a “commercial gift fund” without you even knowing it. As you work with clients on their estate and financial plans, be sure to ask whether the client has a donor-advised fund. In many, many cases, moving the donor-advised fund to the community foundation from a national financial institution provider is not only easy, but also is a far better fit for your clients. Learn why. 

Charitable planning and women clients. The dynamics are different when you’re working with women on their estate and financial plans. Make sure you approach these conversations with solid awareness of the often unique perspectives women bring to the table when they are deciding how to structure their wills or trusts and which vehicles they will use to support charities. We’re coming off a summer of Barbie and records broken by Taylor Swift and Beyonce; your women clients will appreciate your awareness of what’s going on in the marketplace. We’re offering tips for your conversations.

We hope you enjoy the updates and, as always, we look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions about topics and resources that would be useful to you as you serve your philanthropic clients.

Thank you for all you do to make our community a better place by assisting your clients with charitable planning. It is our honor and pleasure to support your work in any way we can.

All the best,

Your community foundation 

Clients want to know: What’s deductible and what’s not?

Whether you are an estate planning attorney, financial advisor, or accountant, you’ve probably seen an uptick in client questions about tax deductions–and tax rules in general–over the last few years. Tax law changes at the end of 2017 have caused a lot of ongoing taxpayer confusion. 

To be sure, your clients will be asking about charitable tax deductions as year-end rolls around. As an advisor, you’re already working with clients on financial and tax planning all year long, but fall is the time when many clients buckle down. Whether it’s the change in the weather or the imminent end of the calendar or tax year, autumn is a time to reassess things like tax loss harvesting and charitable giving. These are just two of many types of transactions that result in deductions when tax returns are filed in the spring. 

Charitable giving may be especially high on the planning radar right now because of the many national fundraising initiatives that kick into gear this time of year. You (and your clients) have probably noticed that many different types of causes are celebrated each and every month. October, in health-related charities alone, is National ADHD Awareness Month, National Down Syndrome Awareness Month, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, Spina Bifida Awareness Month, National Physical Therapy Month, and likely many more. 

Make sure your clients are aware that there are specific parameters around tax deductibility before they respond to requests from organizations and even their friends and family members who support these organizations. Your clients are relying on you as an advisor to stay on top of the rules, including:

–Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code lays out the requirements for organizations to be considered tax-exempt--a status for which an organization must seek IRS approval. 

–Tax exemptions apply to certain types of nonprofit organizations, but status as a nonprofit (which is a state law construct) does not necessarily mean that the organization will be exempt from Federal income taxes.

–Furthermore, even under Section 501(c), there are different types of nonprofits that are recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt. 

–To qualify under the Internal Revenue Code Section 170 charitable deduction for gifts to Section 501(c)(3) organizations, for example, the recipient must be organized and operated exclusively for “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.” “Charitable,” according to the IRS, has a very narrow definition.   

–No doubt, many of your clients not only support 501(c)(3) charities, but also social welfare groups organized under Section 501(c)(4). Examples of social welfare groups include neighborhood associations, veterans organizations, volunteer fire departments, and other civic groups whose net earnings are used to promote the common good. Donations to social welfare groups are tax deductible in only certain cases (e.g., gifts to volunteer fire departments and veterans organizations). 

–Chambers of commerce and other business leagues fall under Section 501(c)(6); donations to these entities are not tax deductible. 

If you have any questions about the tax deductibility of your clients’ contributions to various organizations, please reach out to the team at the community foundation. We are immersed in the world of Section 501(c) every single day and are happy to help you navigate the rules. 

Spotting opportunity: Moving from a commercial fund to the community foundation

Although a donor-advised fund, which is becoming a more and more popular charitable planning tool, can be established through a national financial institution, the community foundation offers its donor-advised fund holders much broader services, more personal attention, and deeper connections to the nonprofits whose work is essential to effecting positive community change. Unfortunately, many attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors are simply not aware that a donor-advised fund established at the community foundation is in most cases a far better fit for their clients than a donor-advised fund set up at a “commercial gift fund.” 

As you meet with your clients about year-end planning, be sure to ask whether they’ve established a donor-advised fund and if so, where it’s housed. If a client’s donor-advised fund is not at a community foundation, but instead was established through a national provider, please give us a call. We would be happy to talk with you and your client about the ease and benefits of moving the donor-advised fund to the community foundation. 

The community foundation offers donor-advised fund holders the same tax and administrative benefits as a commercial gift fund, including:

–Online access to the donor-advised fund to view balances, contributions, and grants

–Simple process for requesting grants to favorite charities

–Streamlined tax reporting, often represented by just one letter to provide to an accountant at tax time, even when the donor-advised fund is used to support dozens of individual charities throughout the year

–All back-office administration, tax receipts, recordkeeping, and other requirements for the donor-advised fund’s 501(c)(3) status

–Favorable tax-deductibility of contributions to the fund

Unlike standard commercial gift funds, though, the community foundation offers high-level, customized services to its donor-advised fund holders, including:

–Concierge-level service by knowledgeable staff to structure estate gifts to charities and accept gifts of appreciated stock or complex assets such as real estate or closely-held stock

–In-house experts who have a finger on the pulse of community needs, the strengths of specific nonprofits, and how to structure grant making for the highest possible community benefit

–Opportunities to collaborate with other donors who care about similar issues and forums to tap into local and national subject matter experts

–Opportunities to go deep into specific issue areas, both through education and hands-on involvement

–Assistance with structuring and measuring the impact of grants 

–Family philanthropy and corporate giving services to foster a well-rounded, holistic approach to philanthropy 

–Administrative fees that are reinvested into the community foundation, itself a nonprofit, to help support operations, grow its mission, and help even more donors support the causes they care about

–Hands-on assistance from local experts who understand both local and distant needs, and welcome the opportunity to research and identify causes aligned with donors’ goals and priorities 

–Staff members who live in the community they serve and often personally know the leaders and staff of grantee organizations and regularly hear about their needs first-hand

Keep an eye out for clients’ donor-advised funds at commercial gift funds. You’ll be doing a tremendous service for your client, and you’ll be helping the local community. You will also be fulfilling your own professional responsibilities by exploring the opportunity for a client to move a donor-advised fund to the community foundation. At the community foundation, hard-earned assets receive the attention they deserve as your clients strive to make a difference in the causes they care about the most. 

Charitable planning and women clients: Three mini-case studies

Women’s spending power has been in the news over the last several weeks as Taylor Swift’s and Beyonce’s tours continue to break records and the Barbie movie still looms large. As you’ve worked with female clients over the years, you’ve likely noticed a few trends:

–Women frequently take on caregiving roles within a family, including caring for both their parents and their own children, and often while also working full-time or owning businesses.

–Women often take the lead on charitable giving decisions.

–Women often find themselves living alone at some point in their lives, including because of a spouse’s death or because of divorce. 

–Women often have a hard time putting themselves first.

At the community foundation, we are always up-to-date on the trends in philanthropy that affect women as they build charitable components of their estate and financial plans. Our team is happy to provide helpful resources if you’d like to learn more about how philanthropy plays a role in your female clients’ lives.   

Here are three examples of cases where the community foundation team can help:

Family philanthropy vehicle funded with tax-efficient assets

We can work with you and your client to establish a donor-advised fund that includes your client and her children as advisors so that they can all learn together about nonprofit organizations in our community and jointly decide on grant recipients, tapping the knowledge and connections of the community foundation team. We can help you identify the most optimal assets for your client to transfer to the donor-advised fund, including highly-appreciated stock, real estate, or even an interest in a closely-held business. 

Funds dedicated to a specific area of interest funded with IRAs

Our team can provide deep research and expertise on a client’s specific areas of interest, whether that’s the arts, education, emergency assistance, medical research, or another cause that is important to your client. Then, we can work with your client to establish a field-of-interest fund at the community foundation to receive Qualified Charitable Distributions from your client’s IRAs. Your client can also name the field-of-interest fund as the beneficiary of the IRA to receive the remaining assets at her death. Your client will enjoy the confidence of knowing that her charitable priorities will continue to be supported for years to come, even beyond her lifetime.

Organization-specific support formally incorporated in estate plan

For a client who has dedicated many years of her life to supporting a particular charitable organization, including perhaps even serving on the organization’s board of directors, our team can work with you to help the client understand what that organization needs to be successful for many generations. Then, we can work with your client to help fill those gaps. For example, grants from the client’s donor-advised fund could provide the money needed to hire a new staff person or purchase new technology that will improve the charity’s ability to deliver on its mission. Your client could even leave a bequest in her will or trust to establish a designated fund at the community foundation that provides supplemental income each year to the organization’s operating budget. 

We look forward to working together as you help your female clients achieve both their financial and charitable goals.

This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. 

Supporting charities through the sale of a business, smart disaster giving, AND appreciated stock

Greetings from the community foundation! 

Fall is upon us, and philanthropy is on the minds of many. That’s not only because you and other attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors frequently start year-end planning for your clients in September, but it’s also because charitable individuals and families are looking closely at their charitable giving goals and budgets for the year and setting in motion the gifts they want to make before 2023 winds up. And of course, during this year’s giving season, philanthropy will surely be on the minds of many because of the tremendous community needs in the wake of recent natural disasters.

The community foundation is here to assist you as you guide your clients in executing their philanthropy plans for the remainder of 2023. In that spirit, we’d love to draw your attention to three important topics:

Giving to relief efforts

Your clients might not realize that charitable giving support is not only needed immediately following a disaster such as a hurricane or fire, but also ongoing as communities rebuild over the long term. Lean on the community foundation to help you work with your clients to structure gifts to provide relief and support for the people of Maui affected by the fires and the people impacted by Hurricane Idalia. Indeed, community foundations are an important “first responder” to help ensure that charitable support is facilitated efficiently and effectively and is deployed as fast as possible to the people who need it most–and over time as rebuilding and recovery efforts persist for years. 

The power of appreciated stock

We just can’t say this enough! Attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors like you are well aware of the tremendous benefits your clients get when they give appreciated stock, instead of cash, to their donor-advised funds at the community foundation. Unfortunately, the message often does not get through to clients. A regular reminder from you is so important to ensure that your clients are maximizing their charitable giving dollars to not only support their favorite causes, but also to optimize their own financial plans. Despite the rocky stock market, many stocks are way up in 2023.

Business sale on the horizon? 

Your clients who own businesses might be eyeing some analysts’ predictions that mergers and acquisitions may pick back up in 2024. That’s good news for clients who are looking at possible exit strategies. If these clients are charitable, though, start talking about it now. Gifting shares of closely-held businesses to a fund at the community foundation is a brilliant strategy, but you must think way ahead to avoid running afoul of IRS rules. The community foundation can help. 

As always, we appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your clients! 

–Your community foundation

Smart disaster giving can offer predictability to the unpredictable

Sadly, rarely does a month go by without the news of another disaster or humanitarian tragedy. Most recently, the Maui fires and Hurricane Idalia are making the headlines–and also generating widespread charitable support. Indeed, many of your clients are no doubt supporting relief efforts through monetary donations.  

Disasters are both unpredictable yet, sadly, predictable. Multi-billion-dollar damage events occur annually and, not surprisingly (and thankfully), natural disasters and humanitarian tragedies consistently attract much-needed philanthropic support. 

Understandably, most of the charitable dollars following a disaster flow toward essential and immediate relief efforts. Your clients might be interested to know, however, that dollars for efforts related to rebuilding and future mitigation are also critically important. Affected communities need both immediate philanthropic support for people affected by a disaster and long-term support to address ongoing ramifications. Ongoing support, for example, is needed not only for rebuilding after a fire or hurricane, but also to fund preparedness to blunt the effects of the next fire, hurricane, or pandemic.  

The team at the community foundation is happy to work with you and your charitable clients to explore ways to address future humanitarian disasters. Many people, for instance, use their donor-advised funds at the community foundation to support disaster relief efforts. And with rebuilds and recoveries often occurring long-term, a bunching strategy could help clients support disaster relief efforts through their donor-advised funds for several years. This allows clients to plan in advance to provide support, while also being smart about the tax advantages in the year of the transfer to their donor-advised fund. 

Not limited to disaster responsiveness, the community foundation is an ideal partner for disaster preparedness. Encourage your clients to consider endowments, field-of-interest funds, designated funds, and other perpetual structures established through the community foundation to ensure that the community we love is protected for generations to come. Field-of-interest or unrestricted funds can be especially attractive because, for people who’ve reached the age of 70 ½, these funds are eligible recipients of QCDs (Qualified Charitable Distributions) from IRAs. Creating a field-of-interest or unrestricted fund allows a client to make charitable gifts in advance of disasters so that the community foundation can deploy resources immediately when urgent needs occur. 

As disasters and hardships across the country inevitably occur, the team at the community foundation is honored to serve as your valuable resource as you help your clients deploy the power of philanthropy as a helping hand to those who need it most.

Keep your eye on clients’ appreciated stock–always

Such a difference a year makes–maybe!?

By August 2022, markets were down 12% for the year and inflation was up 8.3% year-over-year. Perhaps consequently, but then unknown, annual charitable giving was on its way to a rare (fourth time in 40 years) year-over year decline of some 4% according to Giving USA. Certainly this decline was due in part to donors not wanting to give stock at depressed values. You likely even discussed this with your clients! 

Nearly 12 months later, as of July 2023, markets were up 7.28% year to date and inflation was roughly half at 4.7% year–over-year. Even though the stock market still shows signs of volatility, hopefully, charitable giving will rebound. 

No matter the times, and even in down markets, some stocks will still out-perform. These holdings are of course excellent candidates for your clients to give to charity and avoid taxes on the capital gains. This year is no different, with stocks like Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, among others, enjoying banner years. Indeed, Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia were up 38%, 36% and 228%, respectively through mid-August. For some of your clients, these gains have created concentrated stock positions where you, as an advisor, may believe that portfolio allocations have become imbalanced under the investment strategy you are pursuing. Your clients who support charities through their donor-advised funds at the community foundation can consider potentially alleviating this situation through charitable gifts of highly-appreciated stock.

Your clients who give appreciated stock to a donor-advised fund can: 

–Enjoy the ease of the donor-advised fund as an account for current and future charitable giving

–Conveniently support the causes they and their families care most about 

–Maintain a mix of assets in the donor-advised fund account that are consistent with the client’s investment philosophies

–Benefit from an up-front income tax deduction, avoid capital gains on the assets’ sale within the fund, and grow the proceeds for future grantmaking

–Leave a legacy for children and grandchildren to continue their philanthropic commitments

–Reduce the value of their taxable estate, potentially reducing estate taxes

–Comply with IRS charitable gifting guidelines

–Enjoy supporting charities in the client’s name, the fund’s name, or anonymously

–Receive a single year-end tax document that summarizes all gifts for tax purposes 

By establishing a donor-advised fund at the community foundation, your client is part of a community of giving and will have opportunities to collaborate with other donors who share their interests. In addition, your client is supported in strategic grant making, family philanthropy, and opportunities to gain deep knowledge about local issues and nonprofits making a difference. 

So while it’s nice to see the market’s performance improve, a bonus opportunity lies in your clients’ transferring appreciated stock to donor-advised funds at the community foundation. We are here to help! 

For clients who may sell a business, the time to think charitably is right now

Business owners who’ve enjoyed summertime’s more relaxed energy can deservedly daydream about the “extended vacation” that comes with selling the business! 

While it all sounds good, business brokers will tell you that many business owners fail to optimize—and they sometimes even compromise—the value of their business’s proceeds by rushing the process, hastily determining an asking price, or not fully assessing the value of their business to a potential buyer. In their haste, owners often miss strategies that can deliver an improved post-sale result and a true reward for their years of work. 

The community foundation can be a valuable resource as you guide a business owner client through a pre-sale preparation process. This is especially true for a business that has operated for many years and has accumulated significant unrealized capital gains in its valuation that are likely to be heavily taxed at the time of the sale. 

Many closely-held business owners and their advisors may not be fully aware of the advantages of giving shares to a donor-advised fund at the community foundation well in advance of any external discussion about a potential sale of the business. With prudent planning, the gifted shares will be free of capital gains at sale time, allowing the proceeds to flow into the donor-advised fund, ready to be deployed to meet the business owner’s charitable goals. The business owner also benefits because they’ve reduced the value of their taxable estate. This can have huge repercussions given the anticipated reduction of the estate tax exemption slated for 2025. 

Remember that it will be important to secure a proper valuation of the business at the time the business owner makes a gift of shares in order to comply with IRS requirements for documenting the value of the charitable deduction. 

Critically important to successfully executing this strategy is to ensure that your client avoids even any preliminary discussions about sale, let alone negotiations, before consulting with advisors, including looping in the community foundation early on. Otherwise, your client might get caught in the IRS’s step-transaction trap, a risk with any pre-sale gift to charity of real estate, closely-held stock, or other alternative asset. Definitely, the devil is in the details!  

By the way, if you routinely advise owners of closely-held businesses, and if you like to go deep into tax law, you might enjoy reviewing the issues related to the business itself supporting charitable causes, totally unrelated to its eventual sale.

Please reach out to the community foundation team if a business owner client would like to explore the idea of potentially giving a portion of the business to a donor-advised fund or other type of fund at the community foundation. We can work alongside you and the client to help optimize the exit and maximize the resulting proceeds.

Structuring the multi-generational philanthropy plan, tapping charitable giving to motivate clients, and three eye-catching news stories

Greetings from the community foundation! 

It’s August, and many of you have reported that you are already getting questions from clients about how to get organized this fall–really organized. It seems that many clients and their families are finally back in full swing after the pandemic restrictions. People are getting together in person more frequently, which includes attending events and gatherings hosted by their favorite charities.

We’re offering a few suggestions for how you might support your clients as they dust off those charitable giving plans:

–Structuring a philanthropy plan is especially important for families who want to involve their children and grandchildren in a meaningful way. Many wealth and tax advisors notice that while the matriarchs and patriarchs might have a vision and a plan for the family’s multi-generational approach to philanthropy, that vision and plan are probably not very clear to the younger family members. A family donor-advised fund at the community foundation can provide that much-needed structure and organization to help a family advance its philanthropic purposes for many years to come. 

–It is always surprising to hear again and again that so many people do not have a will or any type of estate plan! Attorneys, financial advisors, and accountants do their best to recommend that their clients set up wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, and other estate planning vehicles, but some clients are too uncomfortable to directly deal with their own mortality. Approaching an estate plan through the more gentle lens of charitable giving can help break the ice and motivate clients to act.  

–We’re always on the lookout for the latest news that affects advisors and their work with charitable clients. The news is not always boring! Recently, stories about emojis, Aretha Franklin’s will, and the rise of donor-advised funds within professional niches have caught our attention–and we can’t resist sharing. 

As always, thank you for the opportunity to work with you! We are honored to help you serve your charitable clients and appreciate the opportunity to do so.

–Your community foundation

Help your clients get organized: Structure is a critical step in multi-generational philanthropy

Instilling the idea of charitable giving in children and grandchildren at first blush may appear to be easy, but where to begin, and how to make it ongoing? More and more, wealth advisors are being asked by their clients to weigh in on strategies for fostering a family’s financial values, which frequently include charitable giving traditions. 

An important first step in creating any multi-generational philanthropy plan is to advise clients to consider organizing their charitable giving, such as through a family donor-advised fund at the community foundation. 

The process of organizing charitable giving itself creates much-needed clarity around the family’s philanthropic purpose. This is because without an organized approach to family giving, it is easy for children and grandchildren to get confused about their parents’ and grandparents’ processes for making decisions about which nonprofits to support. 

Consider this scenario:

"Before we got everything organized through the community foundation, our family seemed to take a shotgun approach to charitable giving," commented the daughter of an entrepreneur who formed a family donor-advised fund upon the sale of a business. 

Her mother, the entrepreneur, had underestimated the confusion: "Nearly every check I’d ever written to a charity was aligned with my commitment to supporting a healthy workforce in our community. Without a healthy workforce, my business would never have been successful. Now, though, I see that because I was not involving the rest of my family in my giving and explaining why I was supporting certain causes, it might have looked chaotic to them."

Establishing a fund at the community foundation can be a very effective solution for many of your clients who are launching a multi-generational giving strategy. Here’s why:

–Community foundation vehicles are extremely flexible and can be used to engage an extended family in the process of charitable giving. Donor-advised funds, for example, are popular because they allow your client to name children and grandchildren as successor advisors. 

–When your client organizes charitable giving through a community foundation fund, the client can make a large transfer of cash or marketable securities that is immediately eligible for a charitable deduction. Your client then can recommend gifts to favorite charities from the fund when the time is right. This is especially useful in the case of clients who sell a business or for another reason experience a large influx of taxable income in a single tax year. 

–Establishing a donor-advised fund at the community foundation can be a much better choice for your family-oriented clients than a donor-advised fund offered through a brokerage firm (such as Fidelity or Schwab). That’s because, at a community foundation, your clients, as well as their children and grandchildren, are part of a community of giving and have opportunities to collaborate with other donors who share similar interests. 

–The community foundation can work with a client and the client’s family on a charitable giving plan that extends for multiple future generations. That is because the experienced team at the community foundation supports strategic grant making, family philanthropy, and opportunities to gain deep knowledge about local issues and nonprofits making a difference.

–Finally, the community foundation’s tools and resources make it much easier for families to communicate across generations about the family’s charitable giving purpose and goals for long-term impact.  

We welcome the opportunity to work with you and any of your philanthropic clients to establish an enduring and rewarding family philanthropy program that is customized to meet each client’s unique purpose. 

Legacy giving: An important component of client conversations that’s full of opportunity

August is National Make-A-Will Month. This means your clients may be reading articles and hearing about estate planning more this month than usual, which makes the next few weeks an especially good time to prompt your clients to review their estate plans–or get their wills and trusts in order if they haven’t done so yet. 

Charitable giving is an important part of any estate planning conversation. Certainly, bold, legacy-making plans are frequently in the news because of the high-profile people who establish them. Your clients may not realize that they, too, and nearly anyone, really, can leave a legacy to support favorite charitable causes. 

By discussing what legacy charitable gifts are, how they work, what the client has in mind, and then formalizing the client’s plan with the proper legal and financial documentation, you can help your clients tie up a few of “life’s loose ends” far in advance of when that legacy gift is actually made—and give your client the peace of mind of knowing it will actually get done. 

Clients’ charitable giving intentions and the possibility of establishing legacy gifts should be a routine and standard topic of any financial or estate planning discussion, right alongside provisions in an estate plan for family and loved ones. 

Here’s a primer to help you simplify key principles as you convey to your clients what they need to know about leaving a legacy:

Q: What is a legacy gift to a charity?

A: Encourage your clients to think of leaving a charitable legacy as a post-life gift that the client structures in advance. Legacy gifts are often referred to as planned giving. 

Q: What assets can be used to make a legacy gift? 

A: Like the gifts to charity that your clients are already making during their lifetimes, cash, stock (especially highly-appreciated stock), real estate, life insurance, an IRA beneficiary designation (which is extremely tax effective), are examples of assets that can be the subject of a legacy gift. A legacy gift can be expressed in a client’s estate planning documents as a dollar amount, percentage of the whole, or a legacy gift of the assets themselves. Your client will want to choose assets carefully, enlisting your expertise to do so.

Q: How is a legacy gift actually made? 

A: Legacy gifts are typically spelled out in detail in a client’s will or trust documents. This is especially important because after the client is gone, too much is otherwise potentially subject to hearsay or conflict. To attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors, this is common sense. But do not overestimate your clients’ understanding about estate plans and how they work. A surprising 2 out of 3 Americans have no estate planning documents!

Q: How can a discussion about legacy gifts help motivate clients?

Estate planning can be an uncomfortable topic because, by definition, it requires a client to contemplate mortality. This is likely part of the reason that 40% of Americans say they won’t even consider putting a will in place unless or until their life is in danger. Most clients think charitable giving, though, is a much more pleasant topic than discussing the end of their own lives. That’s why legacy giving is a topic that can help break the ice and pave the way for the broader, essential conversation about overall estate planning.  

Q: What are some particulars to be aware of?

A: Most legacy gifts can be revoked or altered through beneficiary or will changes while the client is alive. This is an important feature to mention to clients who want to include charitable giving in their estate plans but like the idea of flexibility as the overall family and financial picture changes over the years. 

Q: What tools does the community foundation offer to help?

A: A particularly useful technique is for a client to establish a fund at the community foundation that spells out the client’s wishes for charitable distributions upon death to specific organizations. The client’s estate planning documents can, in turn, simply name the fund as the beneficiary of charitable bequests. The client can adjust the terms of the fund anytime during the client’s lifetime to reflect evolving charitable priorities. 

We look forward to working with you and your charitable clients as they firm up their legacy giving plans, whether in August or anytime of year! 

Stories that caught our attention  

Emojis are fun, but . . . 

Words matter, and apparently, emojis do, too. At least in Canada, where a judge recently ruled that a thumbs-up emoji within a text message qualified as acceptance of a contract despite the sender’s alternate intentions stated later—and at an eventual cost to him of more than $60,000. This differs drastically, for example, from doctrine such as a frequent and strict United States custom where clients’ stock trade instructions to brokers can only occur through one-to-one voice instruction and not even via voicemail. For advisors who focus on fundamental legal documents such as trusts and beneficiary designations, whether charitable planning is involved or not, treatment of emojis may be a trend to keep an eye on.

Yikes!

As a trusted advisor, you may wish to consider sharing with clients the cautionary tale of late singer Aretha Franklin’s estate. A story like this might be the motivation it takes for resistant clients to finally implement estate planning! In a recent court decision, a jury found that the remnants of a 2014 will found in a sofa superseded Franklin’s earlier-stated intentions—and over which family members argued for years. 

The doctor is in

Donor-advised funds have gone mainstream! You may notice that the term “donor-advised fund” or “DAF” pops up more and more in your newsfeed. That’s no accident! Even niche markets (such as physicians, for example) are getting on board. Just remember that a donor-advised fund established through the community foundation delivers all of the benefits to your client that a commercial donor-advised fund through Schwab or Fidelity delivers–plus so much more. Your community foundation is the hub for all things philanthropy and the best place for your clients to organize their giving, support favorite causes, and join with others to make a meaningful difference in the community they love. 

AI and charitable planning, "catch up" contributions to boost IRA philanthropy, and the latest news

This month, we’re trying something new! See if you like the short version, the long version, or a combination of both!

Short Version

Hello from the community foundation! 

It’s summer 2023 and there’s no shortage of news on topics related to philanthropy and charitable giving.

Let’s start with a subject that seems to be everywhere all the time, which is artificial intelligence. Somewhere between worries that runaway AI will upend life as we know it and uneasiness about how AI might change the way attorneys, accountants and financial advisors do their work lies the likelihood that AI will change charitable giving, too. Your clients who are board members of nonprofits may want to brush up on the subject, and certainly if you have clients who are early investors in AI ventures, keep an eye out for opportunities to leverage highly-appreciated stock for charitable gifts down the road.

Next up is the ever-popular subject of using IRAs for charitable giving. We just can’t say enough about the power of the IRA to supercharge your clients’ charitable giving. If your clients are 70 ½, you simply must take a close look at the QCD, which your clients can use to fund a designated, unrestricted, or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation. And never, ever forget the eye-popping effectiveness of a client naming their community foundation fund as the beneficiary of an IRA, especially when the client has pumped up the IRA’s value through catch-up contributions. 

Statistics junkies will love digging into June’s Giving USA report and sharing the facts and figures with charitable clients. Overall giving was actually down 3.4% last year, but it still totaled nearly a whopping $500 billion. Your message to clients might be that their favorite charities likely need their support more than ever, and working with the community foundation can help them do just that. 

Sports fan or not, who hasn’t been watching the NIL developments in college athletics? It’s been a game changer for sure, although if your clients were among the folks who gave to a “NIL collective”, you may need to have a heart-to-heart about what it really means for an organization to be tax-exempt and worthy of a charitable tax deduction. The IRS certainly made its opinion known in a May 23, 2023 memo. Once again, especially when it comes to tax law, you just can’t have your cake and eat it too.  

Finally, if you are not talking about philanthropy with your clients, we really, really, really encourage you to do so! It is good for your clients, good for the community, and good for you, too. Please lean on the team at the community foundation. We are here to help you with any and all charitable giving issues that might cross your desk. 

Happy summer, and stay cool! 

Long Version

July 2023 Professional Advisor Newsletter

AI and charitable planning, "catch up" contributions to boost IRA philanthropy, and the latest news

Hello from the community foundation! 

We hope the summer is treating you well. 

As always, we appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your charitable clients. 

This is the time of year when many clients are traveling and spending time with family, which means they may be having conversations about their favorite charities and the year’s plans for giving to favorite charities.

To help you prepare for your clients’ questions when they return after summer holidays and travels, in this issue we’re sharing insights on a few topics that may be top of mind:

–AI is certainly a hot topic, even in discussions about philanthropy. We’re offering three suggestions for client conversations about AI and charitable giving, whether your clients are investors, nonprofit board members, or just curious.

–IRAs are a fabulous source of charitable gifts, not only through beneficiary designations, but also via the popular QCD tool for clients 70 ½ and older. Make sure you’re helping your philanthropic clients maximize their IRAs’ potential through catch up contributions. 

–Every year, the Giving USA report tells us about the state of charitable giving in America. 2022 numbers were down, although the total number is still inspiringly large. We’re also keeping you up-to-date on the latest tax news surrounding NIL money, along with an article to help you brush up on why the philanthropy conversation is so valuable to your practice.

Reach out anytime! It’s our pleasure to work with you as you help your clients achieve their charitable giving goals for this year and many years to come.

Happy summer! 

Your community foundation 

Advising clients about AI's impact on charitable giving

News about the capabilities of artificial intelligence has skyrocketed over the last few months. As attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors, no doubt you are watching these developments closely, both because of the potential legal issues involved and also because of the ways AI can enhance your work. 

Here are three suggested discussion points when your clients ask how AI might impact their philanthropy plans:

–For clients who serve on boards of directors of nonprofits or work for a nonprofit, AI could mean significant advancements in fundraising capabilities. From research to communications, generative AI could help fundraisers get their work done, which would be a welcome development in a profession that has been under stress due to a shortage of professionals and a challenging fundraising environment. 

–Some of your clients may be investing in AI companies. Pay close attention to this. While certainly not all AI ventures will make it, some AI startups will likely be very successful, creating huge financial gains for their shareholders. Talk with your clients about contributing shares of these companies to their donor-advised or other funds at the community foundation. Upon an eventual exit, the shares held by a donor-advised fund will not be subject to capital gains tax, allowing your client to support their favorite charities much more significantly than if the client waits to sell the shares and transfer the proceeds (minus the tax hit) to a charitable fund.

–While AI can certainly help your clients research their favorite charities, and similarly will also play a role in helping charities fundraise and carry out their missions, it’s important to remember that right now, in AI’s early stages, most AI results are still only as good as the prompts and instructions provided by humans. The key to getting the right answers is to ask the right questions, and sometimes asking the right questions is the hardest part.

As always, please reach out to the community foundation for help as you serve your charitable clients. Our team has deep, personal knowledge and experience in all areas of charitable giving, from tax deductibility rules, to planned giving techniques, to understanding the needs of our community and how your clients can make a difference in the causes they care about. We welcome the opportunity for human interaction as that becomes even more of a rarity! 

How “catch-up” contributions can boost clients’ giving

At the community foundation, we regularly work with legal, financial, and tax advisors like you to help clients reach their charitable goals. 

As a professional who regularly works with charitable clients, you are no doubt well aware of the tremendous benefits to both clients and charities when a client names a charity, such as a fund at the community foundation, as the beneficiary of an IRA or other qualified retirement plan.

So how can you help a client plan ahead to maximize a bequest of retirement fund assets, as well as support increased giving during the client’s lifetime? 

A great way to do this is by encouraging clients to maximize their IRA contributions—for many reasons:

–Taxable income “suppression” in the year of the contribution. 

–Tax-deferred growth until distribution—and now not required until age 73 of the account owner.

–Ease of changing a beneficiary designation to name the client’s fund at the community foundation, which will remove the assets from the client’s taxable estate at death and avoid income tax. 

–With retirement plans flowing to charity, leaning into highly-appreciated stock and other property at stepped-up values to make bequests to family or others, effectively erasing the unrealized capital gains for the recipients. 

Make sure your charitable clients don’t overlook an important tool in retirement savings maximization (and ultimately charitable giving) known as the “catch-up” contribution. This is the “extra” money that retirement savers aged 50 or older can stash away into their retirement accounts—and into more than one account as applicable. 

Advisors and clients might better think of this as a bonus opportunity rather than a “catch-up,” especially if a client has been maximizing their retirement savings all along. Additionally, of course, the catch-up contribution allowance helps a client make up for years when retirement contributions fell short due to earnings or savings interruptions due to layoffs, caregiving, high-expense years or similar circumstances.  

Thanks to the SECURE Act, catch-up contributions have created even more buzz about opportunities for retirement savings, especially as the rules are set to shift in 2024 and 2025. In any event, the effects can be impactful. For example, an extra $1,000 deposited annually from age 50 through 65 earning 6% on average could potentially deliver an extra $27,000 in retirement income at age 65. 

From a charitable giving perspective, the greater the IRA balance, the more opportunity there is for a client to give later to a fund at the community foundation. What’s more, higher IRA balances can motivate your clients to deploy a Qualified Charitable Distribution strategy, with its many benefits:

–Beginning at age 70 ½, your client can make Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) up to $100,000 in 2023 ($200,000 for married couples) and indexed for inflation beginning in 2024.

–QCD assets can be distributed to a designated or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation or to another qualifying public charity.

–QCDs can count toward Required Minimum Distributions for clients who are required to take them.

All in all, IRAs are the most prolific retirement savings vehicle in the United States, accounting for nearly 33% of the $33 trillion of total retirement assets as of December 2022. But regardless of the retirement savings vehicle, contribution maximization—and aided by so-called catch-up contributions—is a winning strategy for wealth building, family gifting, and charitable giving. 

Our reading selections

Giving is down, but the total amount-–nearly $500 billion—is still impressive

Just reported in June by Giving USA was a rare decline, 3.4%, in charitable giving by Americans in 2022. Though giving totaled nearly $500 billion, officials cited high inflation and the stock market’s pullback as reasons for the decline from $516 billion of total giving in 2021. Despite households’ financial pressures, 64% of giving came from individual donors. Dig into this compelling (and free!) infographic for a comprehensive look at the state of philanthropy in America. 

NIL collectives: DOA?

NIL collectives have been all the rage in some higher education circles, but that may be changing. Contributions to these entities may not be tax-deductible after all, according to the IRS in a May 23, 2023 memo. This development serves as an excellent reminder that private benefit and charitable tax exemptions do not mix well. 

Even more reasons to talk about philanthropy with your clients

If philanthropy is not a regular topic of your client conversations, you may be missing out. Not only can it be an easy icebreaker, but also studies have documented strong organic client growth through such conversations. And as this article points out, the combination of client dissatisfaction, wealth transfer, and the affluence of future generations spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y for advisors.

This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. 

A toss up between giving cash versus stock, dealing with family disagreements, and what's in the news this summer

Gifts of cash or stock: Is it a toss up?

As your philanthropic clients can likely attest, the going has been rough for many of the nonprofit organizations they support. Turbulent economic conditions, concerns about inflation, and challenges in the banking sector are just a few of the factors that are causing donors to be more financially conservative and perhaps begin to evaluate whether to keep their charitable giving at the levels of years past.

At the same time, many of your clients deeply understand the need to support the nonprofit sector and continue giving to the charities they love. Philanthropic support to these organizations is critical to maintaining and improving the quality of life in our region. This is especially true as the number of households giving to charity has declined by more than 16% over the last three years. 

As we head into the summer months, it’s a good idea to touch base with your clients about their charitable giving budgets for 2023, and in particular, evaluate the types of assets that are best suited for each particular client to give to charity. In some cases, it will be best for your clients to give cash. In other cases, stock will be more appropriate. 

For example, as interest rates and inflation continue to increase clients’ concerns about their household finances, you and your clients may decide that preserving cash is a priority. This means that some of your clients who have typically given cash to their favorite charities or to their donor-advised funds at the community foundation may be reluctant to do so this year. There’s a silver lining here because giving appreciated, publicly-traded stock to charitable organizations is a highly effective tax strategy in any economy. This is because capital gains tax is avoided when your client transfers long-term, marketable securities to a fund at the community foundation or other public charity. The client is typically eligible for an income tax deduction at the fair market value of the securities, and when the charity sells the securities, the charity does not pay capital gains tax. This is a win-win for your client and the charity. And even in a rocky stock market, not all stocks are down. Many of your clients are no doubt holding long-term stock positions that have appreciated substantially since they bought them, even with the current stock market malaise.

For some clients whose portfolios are down significantly, this may be a year to consider contributing cash to a donor-advised fund instead of donating highly-appreciated stock (which may have been these clients’ go-to gift for so many of the last several years). Gifts of cash could reduce the burden on a client’s personal stock positions that may have fallen in value dramatically, giving these positions more time to recover value and, at some point in the future, be contributed to a donor-advised fund at a higher value (thereby resulting in a higher tax deduction for the client). 

Overall, in turbulent times like this, donor-advised funds at the community foundation can come in especially handy. Now is the time to discuss charitable giving with those clients who regularly added to their donor-advised funds throughout the market’s long bull run. If these clients intend to ride out today’s market conditions in their personal portfolios, an up-and-down stock market doesn’t mean the clients’ 2023 charitable giving must take a hit. These clients can use their donor-advised funds to support their favorite organizations, sometimes even at levels consistent with prior years. 

As always, please reach out to the community foundation to discuss options for your clients’ charitable giving. We are happy to help you help your clients achieve their goals, even in a year as bumpy as 2023 appears to be! 

Bridging the gaps in multi-generational family philanthropy 

Differing views within families is nothing new; differing views about nearly anything and everything is centuries old. For generations and generations, common topics of disagreement have included popular culture, politics, religion and parenting, just to name a few. Frequently outranking all is money—how it’s made, spent or saved—or not. 

How benevolent families share money, whether agreeably or disagreeably, is a topic all its own. It’s perhaps never been more relevant than now given these realities: up to four generations living simultaneously; longer lifespans; more willingness to discuss family finances; differing social views; and the desire of older generations to set a good philanthropic example while retaining some control of assets built over many years. 

And the “share” discussion will likely continue for decades. 

According to figures cited in a May 2023 New York Times article (subscription required), total U.S. family wealth of $38 trillion in 1989 more than tripled to $140 trillion in 2022, with Baby Boomers and Generation X holding 90% of that. By 2045, older Americans will pass down a projected $84 trillion to Millennial and Gen X heirs, with $16 trillion transferring by 2033. With evermore wealth circulating, both ideas and conflicts about its use will likely result. 

As an advisor, it is your responsibility to help your clients achieve their goals for their estate plans, financial plans, and charitable objectives. As you work with your multi-generational philanthropic clients, you have no doubt noticed that even a subject as uplifting as philanthropy can lead to lively discussions and sometimes even disagreements. To fulfill your role, you will need to lean on strategies to navigate conversations about charitable priorities when not everyone is on the same page. 

You can also lean on the community foundation–and we encourage you to do so! Community foundations occupy a unique position in the midst of the unprecedented wealth transfer now underway: that of arbiter, guide and even peacemaker among benevolent multi-generation families. In addition to understanding the needs of the community, the nonprofits and programs that are addressing those needs, and the ins and outs of the tax vehicles best suited for your clients to help meet those needs, our team is also deeply experienced in facilitating productive dialogue among people who bring valuable, diverse viewpoints to the table.

As a secure, convenient, and trusted partner to help a family invest wealth in charitable causes, the community foundation can help you work with your philanthropic clients in a variety of ways:

–The community foundation team focuses on listening to understand the cross-generational and intra-generational values of a family. 

–We ask a lot of questions about what causes matter to your clients and the origins of those preferences, both historically and now. 

–When possible, we pair community foundation staff with family members to align according to personality and generation to foster more intimate, empathetic, and meaningful discussions. 

–Our team seeks to understand a family’s values, and then we research and suggest potential grantee organizations or causes if the family is seeking input. We can also deeply research organizations that the family is already supporting. 

–The community foundation offers to educate the various generations about the tactical opportunities including donor-advised funds, field-of-interest funds, unrestricted funds, designated funds, and anonymous giving, among others. 

–Our team is happy to develop options for multi-cause allocations that peacefully meet the needs of all involved.

–For geographically dispersed generations, our team offers to meet at agreeable intervals, even digitally, to understand a family’s current and changing views. 

We are here for you and the philanthropic families you serve. As the needs, capabilities and opinions around wealth expand, the community foundation can be a facilitator of conversations, connection, and contributions among well-intended but independently-minded families and help you carry out your professional responsibilities.

Summer topics worth watching

Proposed legislation known as the Charitable Act appears to be gaining momentum. The bill calls for making available a “below the line” deduction to taxpayers who do not itemize on their tax return. This proposed deduction is slated to reach up to one-third of the standard deduction (around $4,500 for an individual filer and around $9,000 for married joint filers). In addition to providing an overall boost to charitable giving, the intent is that enabling all taxpayers to benefit from the charitable deduction might help reverse the decline in recent years in the number of households giving to charity each year.

Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) are having a moment, thanks to new laws passed late last year that expand this unique charitable giving opportunity for those who are 70 ½ or older. Watch out, though, for potential pitfalls. As a recent legal analysis points out, the devil is in the details, especially with regard to the new “Legacy IRA” provisions allowing eligible taxpayers to make a one-time QCD to a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity.   

A recent private letter ruling reinforced once again that the IRS takes the concept of “private inurement” very seriously for nonprofits. As in, if you do it, you’re out. Most nonprofits are well aware that they will be putting their 501(c)(3) exemption status at risk if they play fast and loose with the rules for preventing undue benefit to a private person. After all, charities are established for the public good, and public good and private profit do not mix. Take note of this if you are an advisor who counsels nonprofit organizations.

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

The triple power of the IRA beneficiary designation, the IRS's bigger budget, and not-to-miss news and trends

Hello and Happy May!

As you and other advisors emerge from a busy tax season, your attention may be turning to estate and financial planning for your clients, which could include how to capture charitable bequests through IRA beneficiary designations. Like us, you're likely also watching and wondering how the IRS's increased budget may affect your high income-earning clients and their charitable giving plans. And, as always, you want to keep up with the latest news and planning trends that will help you serve your philanthropic clients. We're covering all of those topics in this newsletter.

As always, the community foundation is here to help you and your clients navigate the various options for charitable giving. We’ll help give you the insights and confidence you need to develop plans that enable your clients to provide the charitable support they intend while also keeping the clients’ activities well within the boundaries of the law.    

It is our honor and pleasure to work with you and your clients. We look forward to talking with you soon!

–Your community foundation

Retirement plans to charity: Understanding the “trifecta” of tax benefits

Over the last few months, many advisors have noticed an uptick in client inquiries about leaving their IRAs and other retirement plans to charity. If you’re wondering why, it likely has a lot to do with the buzz about Qualified Charitable Distributions, which allow those who’ve reached the age of 70 ½ to direct up to $100,000 annually to qualified charities (such as a designated or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation), avoiding both the need for an RMD (if they’ve reached age 73) and the income tax hit. 

It’s probably more than just the QCD, though, that has spurred your clients to ask questions. More and more, charitable planning with IRAs and other qualified retirement plans is a topic in financial and mainstream media. A case in point is a September 2022 article in the Wall Street Journal, irresistibly titled “Win an Income-Tax Trifecta With Charitable Donations.” If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, the article is well worth your time. 

When your client names a public charity, such as a donor-advised or other fund at the community foundation, as the beneficiary of a traditional IRA or qualified employer retirement plan, your client achieves extremely tax-efficient results. Here’s why:  

First of all, the client achieved tax benefits over time as the client contributed money to a traditional IRA (or to an employer-sponsored plan). That’s because contributions to certain retirement plans are what the IRS considers “pre-tax”; your client does not pay income tax on the money used to make those contributions (subject to annual limits).

Second, assets in IRAs and qualified retirement plans grow tax free inside the plan. In other words, the client is not paying taxes on the income generated by those assets before distributions start in retirement years. This allows these accounts to grow rapidly. 

Third, when a client leaves a traditional IRA or qualified plan to a fund at the community foundation or another charity upon death, the charity does not pay income taxes (or estate taxes) on those assets. By contrast, if the client were to name children as beneficiaries of an IRA, for example, those IRA distributions to the children are subject to income tax, and that tax can be hefty given the tax treatment of inherited IRAs. 

So, if your client is deciding how to dispose of stock and an IRA in the client’s estate plan, intending to leave one to children and the other to charity, leaving the IRA to charity and the stock to children is a no-brainer. Remember, the client’s stock owned outside of an IRA gets the “step-up in basis” when the client dies, which means that the children won’t pay capital gains taxes on the pre-death appreciation of that asset when they sell it. 

Here’s the net-net:

Traditional IRAs are often poor vehicles for your clients to use to leave a family legacy. Instead, if a client is charitably inclined, traditional IRAs are likely better deployed to posthumous philanthropy if other assets, such as appreciated stock, are available to leave to children and other heirs. 

The community foundation is always happy to work with you to ensure that your clients are maximizing their assets to fulfill their charitable giving goals. 

Tax scrutiny: Should clients worry about the IRS’s bigger budget? 

A major portion of the $80 billion scheduled to be invested in Internal Revenue Service upgrades is earmarked to “increase tax compliance among wealthy taxpayers and businesses,” according to the IRS’s plan. Indeed, the IRS is investing upwards of $47 billion toward enforcement efforts, an amount that towers over the next-largest item on its spending plan, which is just over $12 billion slated for technology enhancements.

Little doubt remains that your high income-earning clients can expect more oversight and less room for error. This reality is of concern to attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors who are responsible for helping their clients adhere to the tax laws with integrity. 

If you’d like to dig into the details about the IRS’s newly-secured tens of billions of dollars, you can peruse the agency’s Inflation Reduction Act Strategic Operating Plan submitted April 5, 2023 by IRS Commissioner Daniel I. Werfel. The 150-page plan covering 2023 - 2031 speaks primarily to five areas of priority spending:

• $47.4 billion to increase tax compliance among wealthy taxpayers and businesses.

• $12.4 billion for technology enhancements.

• $8.2 billion to recruit and retain a highly skilled, diverse workforce.

• $7.5 billion targeting taxpayer service improvements.

• $3.9 billion for cybersecurity.

Significant operational efficiencies are anticipated, and the heightened compliance efforts will generally apply to taxpayers making more than $400,000 annually. What’s raising eyebrows is that high-income earners and thus, donors to charity—and the financial professionals who serve them—should likely expect more in terms of attention, oversight, and audits. 

According to the plan, “segments of taxpayers with complex issues and complex returns where audit rates are minimal today, such as those related to large partnerships, large corporations, and high-income and high-wealth individuals,” will be areas of focus. 

The new-hire ramp up and technology implementation will take some time, per experts, with some believing that 2022 tax returns will be less subject to scrutiny than those in future years. But, the agency also has a three-year window to initiate an audit, giving it time to look back. 

Of specific importance to the charitable community is Objective 3, Initiative 4 (PDF page 66 of the plan), which states: “The IRS will increase enforcement activities to help ensure tax compliance of high-income and high-wealth individuals.” 

Increasing right along with the enhanced scrutiny is the need for solid charitable planning advice to assist your high net-worth clients. The community foundation is an ideal partner, offering secure and efficient vehicles for charitable giving—including the precise tax documentation and compliance that the IRS expects. 

Indeed, a silver lining for advisors and their clients who work with the community foundation may be that the added potential IRS oversight plays to the foundation’s strengths. By offering donors fully-vetted grantee organizations, plus gift execution, documentation and compliance services, your charitable clients who’ve established donor-advised, field-of-interest, designated, or other funds at the community foundation can rest more easily knowing that their philanthropy is being handled as intended and able to withstand questioning, whether your clients are funding their contributions with Qualified Charitable Distributions, highly-appreciated stock, or complex assets such as closely-held businesses and real estate.

We look forward to working with you and your clients as we navigate a new era of IRS scrutiny.  

Here's what we're reading

As you talk with your clients about charitable giving, are you leading with tax benefits? Deferring philanthropy topics until November and December? Not looking at the big picture? If so, you may want to rethink your approach, according to a recent article. The article also points out the importance of engaging specialists to assist you in advising a client about how to make a difference in the community. The team at the community foundation specializes in charitable giving and community impact. We’re just a phone call away. 

Our team also enjoyed digging into the latest study on family philanthropy, particularly because it reinforced so many of the best practices we already deploy here at the community foundation as we work alongside you to help your clients and their families make a difference in the lives of others for generations to come. We look forward to working together on practical solutions to engage your clients, their children, and their grandchildren in comprehensive philanthropy planning that moves the needle for the organizations and causes they care about. 

Finally, as the dust settles on tax season, and as we look ahead to what the charitable deduction might look like in future years, we appreciated the perspectives in this piece about the surprising benefits of a complex tax code. More proof that it is always possible to look on the bright side! 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Tax tips to stay on your toes, proposed legislation, and banking fallout

Tax tips to keep you on your toes

Charitable deductions and the vehicles that generate them continue to land on the IRS’s radar. For instance:

–The IRS is really, really picky about requiring a charitable deduction to be calculatable as a true “sum certain,” as the taxpayer in a recent tax court case found out the hard way.

–The IRS appears to be doubling down on exempt purpose requirements for 501(c)(3) organizations. Keep these rules in mind, especially as you counsel clients who are involved with starting a new charity. 

–The IRS is taking a close look at sketchy charitable remainder trusts in conjunction with its Dirty Dozen focus areas. As always, if a tax structure seems too good to be true, watch carefully for red flags and do your homework on the IRS’s positions.

The community foundation is here to help! We are always tracking the latest news and trends with charitable giving and our team is happy to help you as you serve your charitable clients.  

Turmoil in banking and technology: Optimism for charitable giving?

And, the wild ride continues! It’s been three years since the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe and wreaked wide-ranging havoc on so many areas of the economy. Then came inflation, rising interest rates, and a volatile stock market. Now, in early 2023, advisors and clients are also dealing with concerns about the health of the banking system in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.

Your philanthropic clients may seek your advice on how the recent events in the banking world could impact their approach this year to charitable giving. We’re sharing three factors to keep in mind as you counsel charitable individuals and families.

The outlook is chilly for tech start ups and the venture capital firms who fund them. 

“It feels like winter is here,” according to tech sector leadership. When tech was hot and it sometimes appeared that many start ups could do no wrong, you might have noticed an uptick in conversations with entrepreneurs and venture capital clients about planning for pre-IPO gifts of closely-held stock of a tech company or even investing in tech companies using philanthropic assets. Right now, though, opportunities like this may be rare. A silver lining may emerge, however. As both the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the overall tech sector malaise shake out, what may emerge is a “more sustainable and streamlined asset class,” which, in turn, could lead to more stable future opportunities for your clients to make gifts of highly-appreciated closely-held shares.  

Nonprofit organizations should closely examine their reserve funds.

A nonprofit’s accounts at a bank are subject to the same FDIC rules as a for-profit company, with a few additional twists that could allow a nonprofit to diversify. Many of your clients who serve on the boards of directors of their favorite nonprofits are well aware of this and may be working with fellow directors and nonprofits’ executives to ensure that the money is safe. This is an excellent time for any nonprofit to review its reserve funds and consider whether establishing a fund at the community foundation might be a wise move to maximize a nonprofit’s financial position–whether through a rainy day reserve fund, an endowment, or both–to ensure that the organization can meet community needs for the long term. A fund at the community foundation can be a cost-effective option for a nonprofit to access investment options that might not otherwise be available. Furthermore, the community foundation is committed to helping an organization exercise outstanding stewardship of its funds, including honoring donor intent.

Focus on the positive effects of technology on philanthropy.

Indeed, the softening of the tech sector may very well negatively impact tech stocks (and bank stocks!), at least in the short term, and therefore could diminish enthusiasm for your clients to transfer those assets to their donor-advised or other funds at the community foundation. That said, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that technology itself is increasing the opportunity and efficiency of charitable giving overall. In addition, even in the midst of an industry downturn, tech companies have made many people very wealthy, and their charitable giving stories are likely just beginning to be told. If your client base includes tech entrepreneurs and executives, it’s most certainly appropriate (and likely expected) that you would include charitable giving in your conversations.  

As always, the community foundation is here to help. Contact our team anytime to discuss your clients’ options for meeting their charitable giving goals, even in today’s challenging economic climate.

Proposed legislation: Is better deductibility back on the table?

Charitable deduction legislation ebbs and flows. Proposed reform efforts come and go, resulting in the occasional change to the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code governing charitable giving. At the same time, popular charitable giving techniques evolve and grow over time, frequently creating new opportunities for your clients to support the causes they love. 

For instance, donor-advised funds (DAFs) were first deployed as a charitable giving technique in the 1930s—long before their popularity ascended in the 1990s—and recently reached record highs.

Similarly, Qualified Charitable Contributions (QCDs) were codified in 2006 through legislation that initially approved the technique for just about a year, followed by several legislative extensions before QCDs were made permanent by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016. And while QCD annual limits ($100,000 per person and $200,000 for couples) have remained constant in the past, those will change when indexed for inflation under the new laws passed at the end of last year.

Now, like then, legislation pending in Washington—if realized—may influence the techniques your clients deploy to meet their charitable goals.

Donor-advised funds and private foundations

Currently, contributions to donor-advised funds by private foundations fall under the same rules as contributions to donor-advised funds by individuals, in that the funds are not subject to any particular timing requirements to be distributed to charities. Despite the lack of a formal pay-out requirement, however, the 10-year average aggregate pay-out rate from all donor-advised funds is a whopping 22.2%, and the 2021 aggregate pay-out rate was a record 27.3%. 

In contrast, private foundations are subject to a 5% annual distribution rule. Under proposed legislation (see page 139 of the Treasury’s explanation document), while it would not affect contributions to donor-advised funds by individuals, contributions to donor-advised funds by private foundations would need to be distributed “by the end of the following taxable year,” and documented as such, to qualify for the 5% private foundation distribution requirement. Time will tell whether these proposed changes make it into law.

Beyond the standard deduction

Tax deductibility of donations has changed with the times, and another piece of in-process legislation, if passed, would again reward charitable-minded tax filers who do not itemize, at least for tax years 2023 and 2024.

The Charitable Act, as it is known, would allow deductions of up to one-third of the applicable standard deduction for non-itemizers. As background, under the higher standard deduction passed as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, many donors who’d previously deducted their charitable donations lost that ability. Indeed, to the dismay of many nonprofits, tens of millions fewer households itemized their deductions in the years following the increased standard deduction, removing part of the incentive to make charitable gifts. The Charitable Act would strive to alleviate some of the negative impact on charities.

Recent history shows that taxpayers respond positively to deductibility opportunities, with 42 million taxpayers taking advantage of the $300 "universal" charitable deduction offered in 2020, and 24% of those having gross income of less than $30,000. That opportunity was extended in 2021 but discontinued for 2022. Notably, polling has shown strong support for restoring the universal charitable deduction.

With potential restored deductibility in the works—and again, it’s early in the process and not yet law—keep in mind that the community foundation is here to help your clients organize their charitable giving through a donor-advised or other type of fund.

As the tradition of change continues for charitable giving, the community foundation will continue to be your source of smart, efficient and secure gifting.

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Addressing disaster giving, eligible QCD recipients, and tips for your business owner clients

Disaster giving: Perspectives for your clients

Both the recent one-year anniversary of the start of the Ukraine conflict and the earthquake that has devastated Turkey and Syria are causing more and more people to explore ways they can help. In an era of abundant giving methods and (sadly) potential fraud, the community foundation is a source of reliability and expediency to help your clients act on their charitable instincts. 

Disaster giving frequently takes the form of a wide-ranging response, given that disasters can occur suddenly or over time, domestically and internationally. The damage can be heart-wrenching, such as loss of life and property destruction, or health-related, like Covid that has swept the globe. The urge to help is often immediate. 

There are many viable options for your clients to activate their generosity toward relief efforts, but there are also caveats. While global disaster giving is important, it is also important for clients to stay tuned to the most critical needs right here in our community. Although these critical needs do not always take the form of a time-bound disaster, the impact of ongoing crises such as low access to health care and poverty can be quite damaging over the long term.  

What is disaster giving?

Although challenging to pinpoint holistically, what’s typically referred to as “disaster giving” is perhaps best thought of as a subset of what has been a robust philanthropic climate in recent years. In 2021, Americans’ charitable giving reported by Giving USA was up 4% over 2020 to nearly $485 billion. Certainly the strong percentage increases in the categories of Human Service, Public-Society Benefit (up 23%, the second-highest percentage gain) and Health all likely involved Covid-related concerns and sentiments. 

An emerging area of challenge may be annual giving to international affairs, which declined approximately 5% from 2019 to 2021, finishing at $27.4 billion. Of course, these figures could change for 2022 when accounting for aid to Ukraine (and in future reports, to Turkey and Syria). As context, through February 2023, U.S. government aid to Ukraine has exceeded $75 billion, including 40% for humanitarian and financial purposes and the remainder for the military. Philanthropy also contributed to humanitarian needs; the 10 largest private donations, led by Microsoft, totaled more than $1.2 billion. 

How the community foundation can help

The community foundation can help your clients fulfill their giving instincts by acting as a secure, knowledgeable, and trustworthy facilitator. Our team personally knows–and regularly vets–hundreds of charities every year, and we can help you and your clients navigate the options for both local and international giving. 

Frequently, a donor-advised fund at the community foundation will be a suitable giving vehicle for your clients. Our team can help connect your clients to the causes they care about by identifying the most effective organizations addressing the critical needs both locally and globally in your clients’ areas of interest. Working with the community foundation also helps your clients secure robust tax planning benefits that can be missed when a client gives to charity on an impulse. 

Finally, the community foundation can help your clients steer clear of scams perpetrated via familiar-looking but sham websites and QR codes, both of which proliferate during highly emotional or threatening times surrounding a disaster. While your clients may be tempted to make a gift online or by phone out of compassion in response to a verbal solicitation or a news story, remind them that the community foundation has much to offer—safely, securely and advantageously—when it’s time to make impactful humanitarian gifts both here and abroad. 

Hidden no more: Designated funds and field-of-interest funds

Most attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors are well-aware of donor-advised funds and the reasons behind their popularity. Especially when a donor-advised fund is established at the community foundation, this vehicle is an excellent way for your clients to organize their charitable giving and get even more connected to the causes they care about. 

Enter the Qualified Charitable Distribution

Your clients can give nearly any type of asset to a donor-advised fund at the community foundation. A notable exception, though, is the Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD). A QCD allows a taxpayer 70 ½ or older to make a direct transfer of up to $100,000 annually from an IRA to a qualifying charity. A donor-advised fund is not considered to be a qualifying charity.  

Although donor-advised funds cannot accept QCDs, the community foundation offers other types of funds that can accept QCDs. For example, designated funds and field-of-interest funds held at the community foundation are ideal recipients of QCD transfers. These fund types are often overlooked, despite the high value they can deliver to your client and to the community. 

What is a field-of-interest fund?

The Council on Foundations defines a “field of interest fund” as, “A fund held by a community foundation that is used for a specific charitable purpose such as education or health research.” Perhaps your client is passionate about rare-disease solutions, feeding the food insecure or preserving works of art, for example. Your client selects the name of the fund (family, cause-related or even nondescript) and then, the knowledgeable team at the community foundation distributes grants from the field-of-interest fund in a way that is aligned with your client’s values and charitable wishes outlined in the fund documentation.

What is a designated fund?

Designated funds are defined as, “A type of restricted fund in which the fund beneficiaries are specified by the grantors.” These are a good choice for a client who knows they want to support a particular charity or charities for multiple years. The client names the fund and the community foundation fulfills the distributions. Made over time, these funds can help the charity’s or charities’ cash flow planning. Distributions are aligned with your client’s wishes set forth in the original fund document. 

QCD reminders

For the client aged 70 ½ through 72, a QCD removes funds from an IRA before the client reaches the age-73 threshold for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). This can lessen the eventual income tax hit that accompanies RMDs. And for RMD-applicable clients, the QCD counts toward their RMD. In both cases, the QCD transfers do not fall into the client’s taxable income.

QCDs are even more popular now that the $100,000 cap will be indexed for inflation under the new laws. Also, under the new laws, a one-time, $50,000 distribution to a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity is now permitted. 

Giving a business to charity: Stack the odds in your client’s favor 

Despite recent reports of a 55% decline in charitable giving by the top 50 U.S. donors in 2022, high profile giving by donors associated with well-known businesses has maintained its place in the limelight, even amid recent market volatility and tenacious concerns about inflation and interest rates. Recent examples abound, including last year’s gift of Patagonia by founder Yvon Chouinard; the well-reported generosity of philanthropists Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott; and the portion of the proceeds, potentially worth $5 billion, from the eventual sale of Subway restaurants that are set to flow to a charitable foundation.  

As an advisor to business owners—and collaborating with the community foundation—you can help your clients leverage potential future liquidity events to support the community causes they care most about.

Advance planning is critical. The community foundation team is happy to get involved as early as possible in your discussions with a client about giving part (or all) of a closely-held business to charitable causes. These transactions carry with them layers of complexity, largely around the timing of the charitable gifts in relation to the sale transaction. The best outcomes are achieved through a thoughtful, multi-step process. 

Many successful closely-held exit transactions occur only after several years of planning—and most of that planning occurs well before potential buyers are even engaged. This planning period is an important time for your client to consider giving ownership shares of the company to a donor-advised fund at the community foundation, especially knowing that under certain circumstances, the proceeds of the shares held by the donor-advised fund will be immune from capital gains taxes if the business eventually does sell, leaving more money to support the client’s favorite causes.

You might even consider encouraging your client to give shares to a donor-advised fund not all at once, but in increments over time during the business exit planning period (before a buyer is identified). This can help avoid the appearance that the gift is merely a function of the business sale and as such intended to be a tax dodge. If the IRS determines that the stock gifts to charity and the sale of the company are really one and the same event–a “step transaction”--the tax benefits of the charitable deduction could be disallowed. 

Another essential part of the process is to secure a proper valuation of the stock by an independent and qualified appraiser for charitable deduction purposes when the ownership is gifted to the donor-advised fund at the community foundation. 

Please reach out to the team at the community foundation to discuss how we can help your business owner clients who intend to maximize their future ability to support the charities they love. 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Philanthropy on clients' minds, pre-spring cleaning, and three tax tips

Even though 2023 is only a few weeks old, we're hearing from many attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors that clients are already talking about their charitable giving plans for the year.

As you keep up with industry publications, we suspect that the stream of articles about charitable giving will continue. We're here to help! Please reach out anytime with your questions. Our team is happy to interpret what you're reading and help you determine whether a particular planning strategy is right for your client. 

In this issue, we're helping you gear up for your client conversations this year. We'll also explain how the topic of charitable giving can serve as a springboard for larger conversations about a client's overall estate and financial plan. Finally, we're sharing three tax tips to keep handy as you launch into 2023 client work.

Thank you for the opportunity to work together!

Your Community Foundation 

Client conversations: Why your 2023 agenda must include charitable giving 

No doubt, your news feed includes far more articles about philanthropy as a planning tool for your clients than it did just a few years ago. Charitable giving has always been an important subject of client discussions for attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors. What’s changed is that widespread coverage of both major charitable gifts and the ease of making online donations has prompted more of your clients to pay attention to philanthropy.

Among the dozens of reasons to talk with your clients about their charitable giving plans are what many advisors consider to be the top three:

Tax strategies

This is a no-brainer on the list, but still, don’t assume that tax strategies will be the driving force for every client. After all, even if the tax savings on dollars donated reaches 35% or even 40%, your client will still wind up with less money in their pocket after making the donation than they would have if they’d never made the donation in the first place. 

Happily, though, most Americans are charitable, with at least 50% reporting that they give to one or more charitable organizations each year. That means it’s likely that at least half of the clients walking into your office are giving to charity, so you need to be able to address the tax aspects of charitable planning. Keep in touch with the community foundation to stay current on the basics of tax deductibility, including AGI limitations, understanding the differences between public charities such as a donor-advised fund at the community foundation versus a private foundation, and the benefits of donating highly-appreciated assets to charity. The community foundation is also the go-to resource for more complex giving, such as bequests, Qualified Charitable Distributions where retirement-age clients can give money from their IRAs to charity, and even gifts of real estate or closely-held assets. 

Serving clients across generations

Surveys indicate that the majority of children inheriting their parents’ estates will fire their parents’ financial advisor. An aging client base can be extremely dangerous to an advisor’s business. Whether you are an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, you’re certainly aware that you need to build relationships with the next generation to stand a chance of retaining the business long-term. That’s easier said than done, though, with client confidentiality rules and even just plain old awkwardness frequently standing in the way. 

Enter philanthropy. When you work with your clients on their charitable giving plans, there are several ways to include the clients’ children and grandchildren in the planning, thereby giving you the opportunity to build strong, multi-generational relationships. By helping your client plan an overall charitable giving strategy, including, for example, naming children and grandchildren as successor advisors to a donor-advised fund at the community foundation, you’ll get to know the family dynamics as well as build relationships with other family members. 

Responsibility to assist clients with their charitable goals

Many advisors take philanthropy seriously, adopting a disciplined approach and believing that it is their responsibility to understand their clients’ charitable goals and implement them to the best of their abilities using the very best tools available in the market. This is frequently the reason so many advisors turn to the community foundation for assistance as they serve their charitable clients, whether that assistance is behind-the-scenes or working together with the client.  

The community foundation’s purpose is to serve philanthropic individuals and families, as well as the organizations they support, to maximize overall positive impact on the community’s quality of life. The team at the community foundation is not only well-versed in the tax rules governing charitable giving, but it is also deeply familiar with the programmatic elements that are critical for a nonprofit organization to deploy a financial donation into meaningful, tangible improvement in the quality of life of the people the nonprofit serves. For advisors, the community foundation’s expertise and due diligence offer peace of mind that a client’s favorite nonprofits have been well-vetted and are in good standing, and that their programs are legitimately serving a community need. 

By keeping these three reasons in mind, you’ll be better prepared to proactively raise the subject of charitable giving in your upcoming client meetings. We look forward to working together to serve your charitable clients. 

It’s not too early for spring cleaning: Make this the year to help clients get organized

If you’re already dreading asking your clients to pull together their receipts and other documents for 2022 tax filings, this may be a good time to take proactive steps to avoid being in this same spot next year.

When it comes to charitable giving, your clients may find that organizing their giving through one or more funds at the community foundation will make their lives easier. Establishing a fund at the community foundation is an easy way to organize and track charitable giving. A client can take advantage of this feature by making a single, tax-deductible contribution each year to the community foundation, to be added to their donor-advised, field of interest, or other type of fund.

An especially tax-savvy technique is for the client to make this contribution using highly-appreciated stock. After the stock has been transferred to the community foundation, the proceeds from the foundation’s sale of the stock–free from capital gains tax–are then used for distributions to support your client’s favorite charities. No matter how many different charities receive support from the fund, the client still has just one receipt to keep track of charitable donations for income tax deduction purposes.

The subject of gathering up tax receipts for charitable donations is often a prompt for clients to get organized with the rest of their financial lives, too. At the very least, the subject of charitable giving can pave the way for a discussion about the basics of estate planning. Many clients are simply not aware of the meaning and importance of critical elements, such as:

--The difference between a will and a living trust and how charitable wishes fit in to these documents

--Why it’s critical to be intentional about how each and every asset is titled so that the assets actually pass as intended (which requires making a comprehensive list of assets in the first place)

--The dangers of hurriedly filling out life insurance and retirement plan beneficiary designations and why these documents are absolutely critical components of a financial, estate, and charitable plan

--Reasons for having both a “living will” and a durable power of attorney, both of which (or the lack thereof) have a major impact in the event of incapacity

--A reminder to make sure someone in the family knows where to find a list of logins and passwords

Charitable planning is one of many steps in your work with clients, but it can be an excellent catalyst for helping clients understand why they need that comprehensive estate and financial plan you’ve been encouraging them to complete. The team at the community foundation is happy to help with the charitable components of your service to clients. We look forward to making it easier for you to address all of your clients’ needs.  

In case you missed it: Three tax tips worth smiling about

Energy incentive extends to nonprofit organizations

Nonprofits and other exempt entities are often left out of discussions when new tax incentives are proposed in Congress, primarily (and logically) because these organizations don’t pay tax. Fortunately, nonprofits are not left out of a recently enhanced tax provision known as the 179D deduction, which is intended to encourage incorporating energy efficiency measures into new or renovated buildings. While a nonprofit itself can’t use the deduction, of course, because it does not pay taxes, this incentive is still valuable because the nonprofit can transfer the deduction to the architect or engineer on the project who then uses the deduction.

The takeaway here? If you represent nonprofit executives or board members at organizations that have undertaken capital projects (universities, for example), you’ll want to be aware of this potential benefit, in addition to keeping up in general on sometimes tricky tax rules related to exempt entities.   

This again? More crypto crack down

The ups and downs (and downs) of cryptocurrency continue! If your clients are involved in the cryptocurrency market, and especially if they are contemplating giving these assets to support charitable endeavors, be aware that the IRS continues to formalize its guidance and requirements for a qualified appraisal. Recently, the IRS confirmed that an appraisal is required to claim a deduction of $5,000 or above for a gift of cryptocurrency.

A must-know: Reviewing the QCD

You’ll recall the buzz at the end of 2022 when Congress passed sweeping omnibus legislation that included a version of the long-awaited Legacy IRA provisions that expand a tool called the Qualified Charitable Distribution, or QCD. A QCD is a financially-savvy way for your clients to support the charities they care about. 

As a reminder, if your client has reached the age of 70 ½, the client may be eligible to make annual distributions of up to $100,000 from IRAs directly to an unrestricted or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation or other qualifying public charity. QCD transfers count toward satisfying clients’ Required Minimum Distributions and therefore avoid the income tax on those funds. Plus, distributed assets are no longer part of a client’s estate at death, which avoids estate taxes, too. The new law expands the QCD rules to allow for a one-time, $50,000 QCD to a split-interest vehicle, such as a charitable gift annuity or charitable remainder trust, as well as indexing the QCD cap for inflation in future years. 

Punchlist: What the IRS may be up to in 2023

Advisors of philanthropic clients are keeping an eye on the IRS’s list of priorities for the fiscal year, which includes a focus on several sections of the Internal Revenue Code that impact charitable giving. The team at the community foundation is also watching closely, and, as always, we’ll keep you posted as issues bubble up that may lead to potential charitable giving-related legislation.   

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.  

Yes! Celebrating new laws for QCDs, more reasons to love CGAs, and smart charitable strategies for 2023

Happy New Year from the community foundation!

Not surprisingly, community needs tend to rise during uncertain economic times. As 2023 gets into full swing, inflation, housing challenges, and talk of a recession are pressuring people who are already vulnerable due to financial insecurity, illness, or disability. Nonprofit organizations serving these populations need additional resources—and even more support from charitable giving—to meet the escalating demands. Unfortunately, an economic downturn typically results in not more, but less, giving because many donors are themselves dealing with fewer financial resources.  

Many families have long understood that tough times are easier to navigate with the help of a solid financial plan. “Have a plan and stick with it” is often viewed as wise advice to ride out economic turbulence. The same can be said for a planned approach to charitable giving. Now is the time for philanthropists and their advisors to be thoughtful in planning how much to give and to which organizations in 2023, and also to evaluate which tax strategies might maximize support to charities while minimizing impact on donors’ personal financial situations. 

In the spirit of the new year and the resolutions that come with it, we’re sharing tips and ideas in this issue of the newsletter that can help individuals, families, and their advisors develop a thoughtful charitable giving plan to make the best of a tough situation. Indeed, planning is a key theme across all areas of charitable giving, especially as you help your clients budget for their 2023 donations, adopt a year-round giving strategy, take advantage of the new “Legacy IRA” rules for QCDs, or consider the increased benefits of a charitable gift annuity as interest rates rise. 

As always, the team at the community foundation is here as a sounding board. We’re just a phone call or an email away from helping you work with your clients to map out a budget-conscious, tax-savvy charitable giving plan for 2023 that provides strong support for the local charities that are keeping our community afloat. 

Celebrating the new Legacy IRA and a boost for QCDs

 Congress passed the much-anticipated, $1.65 trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 (“CAA”) on December 23, 2022, followed by President Biden signing the Act into law on December 29, 2022. At more than 4,000 pages, the Act includes a wide range of provisions that impact multiple sectors.  

Of particular interest to attorneys, accountants, and wealth managers who advise philanthropists are the provisions starting midway through the bill. The bipartisan legislation often referred to as “SECURE 2.0” is included in the CAA legislation. As background, SECURE 2.0’s provisions build on the original SECURE Act of 2019 (“SECURE” stands for “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement). SECURE 2.0 includes the Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) enhancements that have been in the works for many months.

Here are the new law’s top three provisions affecting philanthropists:

–Taxpayers may now make a one-time $50,000 QCD transfer to a charitable remainder trust (CRT) or other split-interest gift such as a charitable gift annuity (CGA). These are the “Legacy IRA” provisions. Note that the law effectively mandates that the CGA or CRT be created solely for the purpose of receiving a QCD because the new statute requires that the vehicle contain only IRA assets.

–The required minimum distribution (RMD) age (currently 72) will increase to 73 starting on January 1, 2023. The age will increase to 75 beginning on January 1, 2033. While this provision is not directly tied to charitable giving, it will nonetheless impact your clients’ overall financial plans and potentially affect the timing and strategy of their philanthropy. As a reminder, “required minimum distribution” (RMD) refers to the mandated amount that a taxpayer must withdraw from qualified retirement plans, which include IRAs as well as 401(k)s and other tax-deferred retirement accounts.

–The annual per-taxpayer $100,000 QCD cap is now slated to be indexed for inflation, which will allow taxpayers to give even more from their IRAs directly to charity.

Here’s what has not changed:

–Eligibility for making a QCD still starts at 70 ½. This allows taxpayers who are not yet required to take IRA distributions under the RMD rules to still take advantage of the QCD technique without the income tax hit on the distributed funds while also removing those funds from liability for future estate taxes.

–Taxpayers required to take RMDs can still count QCDs toward their RMDs, thereby avoiding the usual income tax hit on RMD dollars.

–Charities eligible to receive QCDs include designated funds, field-of-interest funds, and scholarship funds at the community foundation, but still not donor-advised funds. 

It just keeps getting better: Why charitable gift annuities are having a moment

Charitable gift annuities (CGAs) are becoming more attractive to philanthropists, making this planned giving vehicle a good fit for your clients who like the idea of an up-front tax deduction, a steady lifetime income stream, and a remainder gift to charity.

If you are not already doing so, now is a good time to consider talking with clients about CGAs. A CGA, like any other annuity, is a contract. Your client agrees to make an irrevocable transfer of cash or assets to a charitable organization. In return, the charitable organization agrees to pay the client (or a designated beneficiary such as a spouse) a fixed payment for life. Your client is eligible for an immediate income tax deduction for the present value of the future amount passing to charity. 

The popularity of CGAs is increasing for a few reasons.

Increase in payout rates

First, in late November 2022, the American Council on Gift Annuities voted to increase the rate of return assumption it uses in its suggestions for maximum payout rates for CGAs. Effective on January 1, 2023, the rate of return assumption moved from 4.50% to 5.25%. This increase translates to a significant boost in payout rates for annuity contracts and is therefore good news for a client’s income stream. The new rates are now available on the ACGA’s website. 

New Legacy IRA opportunities

Second, with the December 2022 passage of the Legacy IRA enhancements to the Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) rules, CGAs could become even more attractive. This is because the new Legacy IRA rules allow for a once-in-a-lifetime, $50,000 QCD from an IRA to a split-interest vehicle. While the law allows a taxpayer to make a QCD to a charitable remainder trust, the $50,000 statutory maximum for a Legacy IRA gift may be a deterrent. This is because minimums for CRTs are usually at least $100,000; that is not the case, however, for CGAs, which typically can be set up at much lower minimums. Because of the difference in minimums, the CGA may be more attractive for taxpayers who want to take advantage of the one-time Legacy IRA gift as part of a QCD strategy.

Note that CGAs created to receive a QCD contribution are different from other CGAs in a few important respects under the new law. For example, annuity payments are fully taxable, and must be at least 5%. Although the 5% requirement is not an issue at the moment due to the new, higher payout rates, this stipulation could present a challenge in the future. 

Tax planning with appreciated assets

Third, gifts of appreciated assets are always a strong planning technique, especially to a CGA. When a taxpayer contributes highly-appreciated stock in a public company, for example, to a CGA, the taxpayer typically is eligible for an income tax deduction at the stock’s fair market value on the date of the gift. When the recipient charity sells the stock, the charity pays no capital gains tax. Note that the taxpayer would have paid capital gains tax had the taxpayer sold the stock. Especially if the stock was paying low or no dividends, the CGA has enabled the taxpayer to unlock a low-income producing asset and convert it to a vehicle that pays an income stream. Plus, the taxpayer gets the benefit of the upfront tax deduction, presumably in a tax year where income is higher (and therefore taxed in higher brackets) than it will be when the taxpayer retires at a future date. 

Valuable conversations: Why it's smart to talk with your clients about charitable giving

January is a good time to start helping your clients plan for their annual giving. With the year-end flurry of donations still fresh in many clients' minds, you may discover that clients will welcome your suggestion to make 2023 the year to get organized early, particularly as economic headwinds make planning especially important.

A conversation that benefits everyone

Among the many benefits of discussing charitable giving with your clients is that your clients will see you as an expert about local community needs and nonprofits, especially when you have a close working relationship with the community foundation team. Your philanthropic clients want to learn how they can make a difference through their charitable activities, and they are expecting their advisors to be ready to help them structure and plan their giving. Indeed, for years, research has shown that a proactive advisor who offers options for incorporating philanthropy into financial and estate plans inspires client loyalty, even across client generations. 

The community foundation advantage

Advisors frequently comment that they’re surprised to discover the many ways the community foundation can help their clients, especially compared with national donor-advised fund programs affiliated with brokerage houses or financial services firms. 

Sometimes the greatest needs really are right here at home, and working with the community foundation is often the very best option for ensuring that your clients are informed and impactful philanthropists. The team at the community foundation team works with local nonprofits every single day and thoroughly understands how organizations are meeting community needs. 

In addition, the community foundation is unparalleled in its ability to be flexible and responsive, providing outstanding, personal service designed around your clients' needs while always respecting your role as your client's primary advisor. 

Options for every client's unique situation

Our team welcomes the opportunity to work with you and your clients to implement their charitable giving goals. Here are just a few of the ways we can work with you as you plan for 2023:

Wills and trusts

A client can establish a bequest to a fund at the community foundation through a will or trust or through a beneficiary designation on a qualified retirement plan or life insurance policy. The community foundation will provide proper bequest language.

Retirement plan beneficiary designations

Bequests of qualified retirement plans can be extremely tax efficient. Funds flowing directly to a client’s fund at the community foundation from a retirement plan after the client’s death will not be subject to income tax or estate tax.

Family philanthropy

Consider encouraging clients to involve their children and grandchildren in philanthropy, especially when the clients are working with the community foundation through a family donor-advised fund or other collaborative vehicle.

Income tax planning

Remind clients that they are eligible for an income tax deduction for lifetime charitable gifts, and the gifted assets are no longer subject to future estate taxes. 

Complex giving

Consider more complex giving vehicles, including charitable remainder trusts, charitable gift annuities, and gifts of closely-held stock. The community foundation can work with you to establish these structures to help facilitate your clients’ charitable giving goals and meet the clients’ financial and tax goals at the same time. 

The team at the community foundation is a resource and sounding board as you serve your philanthropic clients. We understand the charitable side of the equation and are happy to serve as a secondary source as you manage the primary relationship with your clients. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.