EVERGREEN CONTENT

We are honored to work with many talented and trusted attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors in our region as you strive to build charitable giving plans that meet your clients’ philanthropic goals and align with the latest laws, regulations, and best practices. Thank you for allowing the community foundation to be a resource.

Your clients

We understand that your relationships with your clients are your top priority. The key word is "relationship." We are committed to helping you build, maintain, and deepen your connections with your clients as their "go to" advisors for wealth management, accounting, and estate planning across generations. We will never create obstacles between you and your clients; rather, we are here to assist you behind the scenes or in whatever capacity makes the most sense for you to deliver value to the individuals, families, and business you serve.   

Your responsibility

In today's social impact culture, philanthropic planning isn't just a nice to have. It's a must have. To fulfill your obligations to serve your clients, you need to know the full range of everything the laws and regulations offer in establishing tax-savvy charitable giving vehicles that meet your clients' goals. Our experts are here to help you! Philanthropy conducted through a community foundation meets the high standards of today's best practices for achieving tax effective social impact objectives. 

Your partner

We would be pleased and honored to work with you. Whether you're establishing a donor-advised fund for a private foundation client, or setting up a family foundation fund from scratch, or assisting a C-level executive with corporate giving strategies, we would love to be your partner.

SUBSCRIPTION-ONLY CONTENT

professional advisor newsletter content

A subscription to Embolden's Professional Advisor Newsletter Content Package gives you complete freedom to edit, add, change, modify, chop, save, cut, paste, repurpose, and reuse the material we send you directly to your inbox. The raw content and sample photos arrive in an email on the first day of each month.

Please contact us for bundle pricing that will give you access to the complete archives, in addition to receiving the new monthly content.

Here are examples of how our subscribers use the content:

• They cut-and-paste the content into Constant Contact or MailChimp templates and edit the material to better fit the community foundation’s audiences.

• They use the content for social media posts.

• They use the content to populate blog posts on the community foundation’s website (like the samples below).

• They use the content to create printed newsletters.

• They stockpile two or more months of content and then send a comprehensive quarterly newsletter.

• They edit the content to include in their donor newsletters or on their website sections for donors.

PROFESSIONAL ADVISOR NEWSLETTER CONTENT ARCHIVES

These archives are available only to community foundations who subscribe to two or more newsletter packages (donor, advisor, and/or nonprofit).

SAMPLE CONTENT FOR INSPIRATION

PRO TIPS FOR ADVISORS

PLANNING TOOLS TO KEEP IN YOUR BACK POCKET

The team at the community foundation understands that it sometimes can be hard to know where to start a conversation with a client about charitable planning. As you ask questions about the causes your clients love and how your clients intend to support the community in their estate plans, you’ll need quick access to a few go-to planning tools to inspire the dialogue. To help you do just that, we’ve assembled this list of a few of our favorite planning tools.

Qualified Charitable Distributions

Under the now permanent IRA charitable rollover laws, your 70 ½+ clients can direct up to $108,000 (2025 limit) annually of required minimum distributions to charitable organizations, avoiding inclusion in taxable income. These distributions are called Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs). Although donor-advised funds can’t receive QCDs, there are still plenty of ways our team at the community foundation can help your clients take advantage of this tool for lifetime gifts. Also, your clients can name their donor-advised fund as the beneficiary of a qualified plan, which is still a tax-savvy bequest strategy.  

Charitable Remainder Trusts and Charitable Gift Annuities

They’re back! Tax reform’s elimination of the Pease provision, which limited charitable deductions for high income taxpayers, means your clients can better leverage a single, up front gift to a charitable remainder trust or a charitable gift annuity. 

Bundling . . . or Is It Bunching?

Whether you call it “bundling” or “bunching,” clients who want to maximize their charitable deductions under the new tax laws can benefit from making two or more years’ worth of charitable contributions in a single year. This helps push taxpayers over the itemizing threshold, where they can reap the benefit of deducting the full value of their donations. (Quick stat: Because of tax reform, just 10 percent of taxpayers itemized deductions in 2018, compared with 30% in 2017.) 

Talking with your clients about charitable giving

A conversational approach using plain language can ease the barriers to discussing community impact with your clients.

When the time comes to discuss philanthropy with clients, advisors are often left wishing there were an easier way to discuss the results achieved with a charitable gift than simply to rely on aspirational statements such as "Let's be sure your money makes a big difference."

Ask good questions.

The key to engaging in a more productive planning conversation with your clients is to ask more questions. Think about the long list of questions you ask clients when you are advising them on investment vehicles, or drafting estate planning documents! A few good questions can give a big boost to charitable planning, too. Here are a few of our favorites:

• What problem raises your eyebrows the most when you read about it in the news?

• What are the pieces of the puzzle that would need to come together to solve that problem in your community?

• If there were one piece of that puzzle you could put into place with a magic wand, what would it be?

HOW WE CAN HELP
The Community Foundation helps you build a plan based on the answers to these questions and more. For example:

• Our team helps you refine the client’s definition of the “community problem” they want to solve.

• We work with you and your client to identify practical ways that change could happen and how philanthropic investment can support the change.

• We can connect your client with nonprofits that are working in the area of desired change, and identify meaningful and attainable milestones to measure success.

• We can advise on what level of investment is appropriate and help identify other likely collaborators to make change happen.

navigating dynamics in family philanthropy

If you’re like most advisors today, you’re seeing an uptick in clients’ questions about charitable giving techniques that go beyond the nuts and bolts of tax law. Attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors hold trusted positions with philanthropic families to offer not only suggestions for tax planning in support of favorite causes, but also to be aware of perspectives that will make the charitable giving experience meaningful for all members of the family. Indeed, not all members of a single family will see philanthropy in the same way. Here are tips for working with three common points of view within a single donor family.

1. Impact-focused. “Impact” is in the news more and more frequently. Family members who have a strong impact focus will be interested in learning more about how to help favorite nonprofits better communicate the outcomes of donors’ charitable investments. For example, a recent study by Oracle NetSuite, Connecting Dollars to Outcomes, uncovered that only 29 percent of nonprofits are able to effectively measure the results of dollars invested. News like this is very much on the minds of impact-focused family members. 

2. Legacy-focused. Most families have at least one member whose top concern relates to establishing charitable values and passing them along to the next generation. Family members like this are no doubt seeing behaviors in younger generations that are different from their own. For example, research indicates that 10 percent of Gen Z want to start their own nonprofit organization. Keeping up with trends like this will help you counsel legacy-focused members of your client families.

3. Investment-focused. Family members who are interested in the dollars and cents are still going to ask about tax planning, which assets to give to charity, and how to time gifts to optimize tax benefits under the current laws. As you address these issues with investment-focused family members, it’s a good idea to also share the perspectives of legacy-focused family members and impact-focused family members. This helps the investment-focused family member see the big picture and focus on the holistic elements of the family’s entire philanthropy plan. 

HOW WE CAN HELP
The team at the community foundation is your partner as you work with families and the variety of personalities that come along with them. We’d love to help you navigate family philanthropy dynamics through our expertise, including researching community priorities and important social issues, helping you structure meetings to ensure that all voices are heard, and working with you and your clients to build multi-generational relationships with nonprofits in our community that are making a difference in your clients’ areas of focus.
 

SAMPLE CONTENT FOR INSPIRATION

MORE PRO TIPS FOR ADVISORS

Charitable gift annuities: Need-to-know bullet points

Charitable gift annuities can be very effective philanthropic planning tools for the right donor. For advisors whose practices aren’t exclusively focused on charitable planning, though, it can be hard to get up to speed quickly on what you need to know. Here is a checklist that can help.

• Through a charitable gift annuity, a donor makes a transfer of assets to a charitable organization and in return receives a lifetime income stream and a partial tax deduction.

• When the donor dies, the remaining funds are retained by the charity. 

• The charitable donation portion of the transaction is calculated based on Internal Revenue Service rules for determining the amount of the contribution that is in excess of the present value of the annuity.

• A donor can fund a charitable gift annuity with a variety of assets, including marketable securities and cash. 

• Actuarial calculations are used to establish the payout amounts, paid in equal installment payments that are considered a partial tax-free return of the donor’s original gift.

• Generally a large residual flows to the charity after the donor’s death. 

• The charity’s own assets, not just the donated assets themselves, back the annuity payouts. Because of this dynamic, charitable gift annuities are regulated by most states to ensure that the charity has enough reserves to meet obligations. 

• The American Council on Gift Annuities is a good source of additional information about this tool. 

HOW WE CAN HELP
The team at the community foundation is happy to work with you to identify whether a charitable gift annuity would be an effective tool for your client. Keeping up with the rules and regulations for charitable gifts of all types is one of the many ways we serve you, your clients, the nonprofits they care about, and the community we all love.  

Checklist: Assets to give to charity

As an advisor, you’re probably well aware of the types of assets that make great gifts to charity. That may not always be true for clients, who might underestimate the range of assets they can use to support favorite public charities, including, in many cases, funds at the community foundation. 

Here’s a simple guide to help you with your client conversations. 

Cash
For itemizers, dollars are deductible up to 60% of adjusted gross income and excess deductions can be carried over and deducted in five future tax years.

Highly-appreciated stocks and other investments
Publicly-traded stocks and bonds are tax-effective gifts to charitable organizations, especially because capital gains tax can be avoided.

Qualified plans
Whether via a Qualified Charitable Distribution by a donor who is over 70 ½, or through a bequest, a qualified retirement plan can be an effective asset for charitable giving. 

Alternative assets
Real estate, closely-held business interests, collectibles, and other nontraditional assets can frequently come with strong tax benefits when given to a public charity such as a fund at a community foundation or a favorite nonprofit.

HOW WE CAN HELP
We're here! If this checklist spurs ideas for your clients, we invite you to get in touch to discuss your clients' options for giving a variety of assets to favorite causes and exploring all of the options available through the community foundation for structuring philanthropy.  

Avoiding danger: Be wary of overstating the value of charitable tax deductions

In Estate of Dieringer v. Commissioner, the Tax Court issued an opinion reducing the charitable deduction in a decedent’s estate when the stock was redeemed only shortly after the decedent’s death. Earlier this year, on appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed that decision, referencing Ahmanson Foundation v. United States. The court relied in part on the principle that an estate tax deduction is allowed only for what is actually received by the charity. This longstanding “actually received” rule should always be top of mind for practitioners as they advise their clients on charitable giving tools and techniques. Read the full text of the court’s opinion for a refresher course on this important issue.

It is always wise to refresh your recollection about gift substantiation requirements as your clients plan their year-end charitable giving activities. Since last year, when the Department of Treasury released its final regulations for substantiation and reporting of deductions for charitable contributions, gift substantiation has remained a hot tax topic during giving season. Key areas include:

• Definition of a qualified appraiser (this provision took effect in 2019)

• Requirements for gifts of partial interests

• Appraisal requirements for charitable remainder trusts, even if the trust holds marketable securities

• Requirement to attach an appraisal for gifts of real estate valued over $500,000  

Check out the full text of the regulations.  

SAMPLE CONTENT FOR INSPIRATION

meet our specialists

SAMPLE CONTENT FOR INSPIRATION

Helpful Resources

If your client already has a fund at the community foundation or is interested in establishing a fund, these quick links can help. As always, we encourage you to contact our team for a conversation about your client’s goals and needs.

TOOLS

Download a sample establishing document and see how easy it is to create a fund.

This Comparison Chart illustrates the benefits of establishing a fund compared with a private foundation.

Review our Policies & Procedures to learn about our guidelines for fund administration.

giVING

Give to a fund online using a credit card securely through PayPal.

Download instructions for wire transfers and a list of steps to contribute securities.

Learn about giving complex assets, such as real estate and closely-held stock.

finance

Download our Administrative Fee Schedule to find out why establishing a fund is so economical.

Check out our Investment Performance and Investment Options for your client's’ funds.

View our online Annual Report for a snapshot of our key statistics and a list of our funds. 

funds

We look forward to working together to discover the type of fund that's right for your client. Options include donor-advised funds, scholarship funds, field of interest funds, endowments, corporate foundation funds, funds established by private foundations, memorials, designated funds, charitable gift annuities, and bequests. Nonprofits also can establish accounts to invest reserve funds and endowments.