We make a great team: Community Foundation as a coach

As an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, you are a key part of every client’s team. You help them with investments, taxes, accounting, insurance, and estate planning. Services like this are essential to pave the way for clients achieving their financial goals. But what about giving?  

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

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

Here are some examples of how the Community Foundation can play the role of coach to help you and your client structure giving plans to meet a particular objectives:     

• We can help your client establish the right kind of fund to organize their giving, whether that is a donor-advised fund, field-of-interest fund, unrestricted fund, or designated fund.  

• We can work with you to advise your client on the best mix of assets to transfer to the fund to meet certain tax objectives, including gifts of cash, highly-appreciated stock, real estate, or interests in a closely-held company.  

• Our team is knowledgeable about the range of charitable planning techniques, from charitable remainder trusts to Qualified Charitable Distributions from IRAs, to optimize the tax benefits for your clients while ensuring they are making the best investments possible in the charities and causes they care about.  

• In certain situations, we can help you work with your client to execute a “bunching“ strategy that helps front-load multiple years of anticipated charitable gifts into a single tax year to achieve tax deductibility that exceeds the standard deduction.  

• We will train your client on how to view their fund activity through the Community Foundation’s online donor portal, how to make additional contributions to the fund, and how to use a single tax receipt when tax filing time rolls around. 

• Our team can work with your clients to achieve the appropriate level of recognition for their gifts, ranging from anonymity to securing naming rights.  

• We help your clients explore the causes that are important to them and determine the most effective ways they can support the operations and impact of their favorite nonprofits. 

• We help your clients measure the success of charitable giving and offer suggestions for evaluating opportunities to align with the nonprofits in our community that can best achieve specific goals to address critical community needs and quality of life issues. 

• We can help set up systems for regular grant making to ensure that your clients are supporting favorite charities at the intended intervals, whether monthly, yearly, on notable anniversaries, and so on. 

So, please lean on us! Think of the Community Foundation as a philanthropic coach to help you serve your clients to make the community a better place for everyone who lives here. From charitable tax planning to grant making tactics, we are all on the same team. 

Reach out to Josh Dukelow, gift planning officer, at 404.588.3208 or jdukelow@cfgreateratlanta.org to discuss how the Community Foundation can help you deliver on your client’s charitable ambitions. Let our experts be your partner for philanthropic impact!