July 2025 Professional Advisor News

As an estate planning, tax, or wealth advisor, you play a critical role in helping your clients maximize the impact of charitable giving while also optimizing tax benefits. Unfortunately, a 2023 survey found that only 19.2% of advisors regularly discuss charitable giving with clients, and another 44.2% do so only occasionally.

GiveWell Community Foundation can help! Our team is here as a sounding board for everything related to charitable giving. So, when the topic arises and your clients are interested in evaluating strategies for supporting the causes they care about, just loop us in.

Of course, this still means you’ll be looking for ways to bring up the topic in the first place. One of the easiest ways to do that is to talk with your clients about the benefits of donating highly-appreciated assets, such as stocks or real estate, to a fund at the Community Foundation. To help with that conversation, consider discussing the example of Susan, a hypothetical client.

Susan earns more than $500,000 per year. She wants to make a $10,000 gift to the Community Foundation’s Now & Forever Funds to address current community needs. Susan holds shares of Apple, Inc., which she purchased more than 20 years ago – and the value of the shares has increased significantly. She also holds plenty of cash.

Susan is weighing writing a check to the Community Foundation for $10,000 or transferring shares of Apple stock with a total value of $10,000.

Of course, as an advisor, you know that it’s more advantageous for Susan to give the stock. But it might help to break it down into real numbers when you talk with Susan:

• Susan’s annual income of more than $500,000 lands her at a Federal marginal tax rate of 37% and a Federal long-term capital gains tax rate of 23.8% (20% plus the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax).

• Let’s assume that Susan itemizes her income tax deductions, and that Susan’s cost basis in the $10,000 worth of Apple shares is $2,000.
• If Susan gives cash to the Community Foundation and claims a charitable deduction of $10,000, the resulting Federal tax savings will be $3,700, bringing the net cost of the donation to $6,300.

• On the other hand, if Susan were to donate $10,000 of Apple stock to the Community Foundation instead of giving cash, the tax result would be much better because Susan would avoid an unrealized capital gain of $8,000, equating to $1,904 in capital gains tax avoided.

• The Federal income tax savings of $3,700, plus the $1,904 in capital gains tax avoided results in a net cost to Susan of $4,396 for the $10,000 gift.

• The upshot here is that the gift to charity is $10,000 in either case but giving cash “costs” Susan $6,300 while giving stock “costs” her just $4,396.

Of course, the benefits of donating highly-appreciated assets to the Community Foundation are just the beginning. Charitable conversations with your clients lead to many productive discussions about maximizing lifetime giving, legacy planning, involving the next generation, and so much more. Please reach out to our team anytime! We’re happy to share more ideas and examples of the many ways your clients can make a difference.

Have you ever wished you could read your clients’ minds? Understanding what clients really care about is crucial to constructing any estate or financial plan. When it comes to charitable giving, you can be a step ahead. Plenty of research offers clues about what matters most to your philanthropic clients.

For starters, the numbers show that year after year, people are giving money to U.S. nonprofit organizations, to the tune of $592.50 billion in 2024 alone according to Giving USA. Indeed, most of your clients are probably philanthropic; more than 85% of affluent households give to charitable organizations each year.

Here’s what else they may be thinking:

“We want to make the world a better place, starting in our own backyard.”
The importance of a local connection is a common theme throughout various research studies on the motivations for charitable giving, and studies have historically found that people are more likely to donate to local nonprofits than distant ones. The professional staff at GiveWell Community Foundation certainly witness this every day as we work with donors to address local needs by supporting nonprofits right here in our community. The Community Foundation is honored to be a resource for you and your clients to structure charitable gifts that make the biggest difference.

“We really enjoy giving to charitable organizations.”
Philanthropy is a positive experience for the benefactor, not just the beneficiaries. Research suggests that the benefits are both psychological and physiological. This is in sharp contrast to something clients may view as a mostly negative or stressful experience –  updating financial and estate plans. Estate planning forces clients to confront uncomfortable topics such as their own mortality, potential incapacity, and the possibility of family conflict, not to mention the complexity of the planning process, fear of making the wrong decisions, and anxiety about financial security. By infusing charitable giving into the conversation, you’re taking the pressure off the uncomfortable and sometimes awkward topics and potentially lifting the mood of the entire process.

“We want to be sure we are making a difference.”
Philanthropists, by definition, seek to create positive social change and are often eager to address complex issues. Indeed, at this moment in time, commentary has suggested that philanthropy may be re-examining its role amid global “polycrises” by considering not just the material resources it provides but also its potential to lead within organizations, across the sector, and in society at large. The Community Foundation is uniquely positioned to help your clients expand their philanthropic portfolios to include not only ongoing financial support for charitable organizations, but also advocacy and structuring unrestricted endowments or other long-term vehicles to support sustained positive impact.

As always, the Community Foundation’s professional staff stays closely connected with the full range of nonprofits in our region, and that knowledge and experience is invaluable to help your clients achieve the impact they’re seeking to address causes that they care about along with critical community needs. Please reach out anytime, we’re here as a resource for you.

As you work with your charitable clients, you’ll likely encounter many who are absolutely sure they want to leave a gift to their favorite charitable organizations in their estate plans, but they’re not sure yet exactly which organizations they’d like to support and to what extent. These situations make your job more challenging because you want to wrap up the estate planning work, but you can’t finalize the documents without those key pieces of information.

GiveWell Community Foundation has a solution! Our professional staff can work with you and your client to establish a legacy fund — sometimes called a “future fund.” The process is quick, and the documentation is straightforward and can usually be completed in a matter of hours. By naming the legacy fund as the beneficiary in the client’s will or trust, your client can work directly with the Community Foundation team to update the list of recipient charitable organizations easily and at any time without having to amend their estate planning documents. This streamlines the process and allows your client’s intentions to stay aligned with their evolving interests and philanthropic goals.

Here’s what you need to know about legacy funds:

• Establishing a legacy fund at the Community Foundation is fast, easy, and done at no cost to your client except their time.
• The fund remains inactive with a zero balance until after your client passes, at which point the fund receives assets from the client’s estate or trust.
• Once the fund is activated by receiving assets from the estate or trust, the Community Foundation will make grants from the fund according to the client’s wishes as outlined in the fund agreement or subsequent fund amendment.
• The grants are made in the fund name or if the client prefers, anonymously, ensuring that their wishes are honored well into the future.
• A legacy fund can support long-term impact or if it is set up as an endowment, can provide a perpetual source of support for causes the client cares about, helping meet both current and future community needs.

As always, the Community Foundation is here to work with you and your clients to ensure that your clients’ charitable wishes are achieved both now and in the future. Our experienced staff handles all administrative, legal, and investment management tasks related to the fund. Plus, the Community Foundation team’s deep local knowledge helps ensure that the client is well informed about the choices they make in selecting charitable organizations and that they have solace in knowing that grants will be directed in a way that is pleasing to them. Reach out if you would like to learn more about a legacy fund or legacy giving!