​At the Community Foundation, we are honored to work with generous individuals and families like so many of you who’ve established funds to support the causes you care about and the needs of our community both now and in the future. We’re also inspired by those of you who are getting to know the Community Foundation and considering establishing a donor-advised or other type of fund. 

Wherever you are in the stages of your philanthropic planning, the team at the Community Foundation is here for you and considers our relationship to be personal. That’s why we welcome the opportunity to meet with our fund holders and prospective fund holders. Here are a few insights into what those meetings are all about.

You can expect personal, dedicated service. Unlike financial institutions' donor-advised fund platforms where access to a dedicated donor services team can be rare, the staff at the local Community Foundation is here to help you every step of the way along your charitable giving journey. Our team is happy to meet with you one-on-one, and we are also happy to join a meeting with you and your legal, tax, or financial advisor to assess your current situation and determine the best charitable tax strategy for you. This includes evaluating the best assets to give to your fund or funds at the Community Foundation, including publicly-traded stock and even other noncash assets such as real estate or closely-held stock. 

We care about your intentions for your fund. The team at the Community Foundation wants to understand the areas of interest that are a priority for you, whether that’s the arts, health care, social services, the environment, education, community development, or something else. We also want to understand the role you envision for the successor advisors you’ve named in the fund documentation, such as your children, who will make decisions about the fund when you are no longer living or able to manage the fund yourself. 

We will help you establish additional funds to meet your goals. Sometimes when the team at the Community Foundation is working with a fund holder to understand the intentions for a donor-advised fund, we discover that it’s worth adding one or more additional funds to complement the donor-advised fund structure already in place. For example, some fund holders decide to also establish a designated fund for a particular nonprofit organization or an unrestricted fund to support the Community Foundation’s mission in perpetuity. Many times, fund holders decide to make recurring contributions over time to multiple funds at the Community Foundation to achieve their various philanthropy goals. 

We make the paperwork a breeze. As you know if you’ve already established a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation, the paperwork is straightforward and not at all cumbersome. As we’re exploring updating your existing donor-advised fund, setting up a new donor-advised fund, or adding additional types of funds to your portfolio, we’ll prepare simple documentation to capture your wishes, collect important contact information, and address your vision for your fund or funds both during and after your lifetime. 

We’re always here to strategize about your giving options. As you periodically review your assets and financial situation with your advisors, keep an eye out for appreciated assets that could be ideal to give to your fund or funds at the Community Foundation because of the potential capital gains tax savings. The Community Foundation can work with you and your advisors on contributions of a wide variety of assets to help you achieve your tax and estate planning goals. We are happy to go over the appraisal and documentation requirements for gifts of nonmarketable assets such as closely-held stock and real estate. 

We’ll let you know about educational opportunities and gatherings with other fund holders. During our meeting, we’ll share a calendar of upcoming events and ways you can learn more about the causes you care about and what’s going on in the community overall. Our team is here to help you stay up-to-date and on the various ways you can support the community by working with the Community Foundation and partnering with other fund holders.

Thank you for your commitment to philanthropy! If you’re already a fund holder, we are grateful that you’ve made the choice to organize your giving by working with the Community Foundation. If you’re considering getting started, we look forward to continuing the conversation! In either case, we look forward to seeing you soon! ​

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

​Developing a practice of regular contributions to your donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation not only allows you to systematically build a philanthropic nest egg for your annual giving to favorite charities, but also paves the way for your future legacy bequests. Whether your cadence of contributions is monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, the consistency delivers many benefits.

For instance: 

• As your donor-advised fund grows, it allows you to be nimble with your giving and meet the urgent needs of the community as they arise. For the community as a whole, this type of support and stability gives many nonprofit organizations’ leaders the peace of mind and security of knowing that important programs can continue through good times and bad.
• Recurring giving to your donor-advised fund also helps build ultimate capacity to ensure that your principles and dedication to altruistic endeavors endure long beyond your lifetime. Many fund holders at the Community Foundation have included provisions in their donor-advised fund documents to leave all or a portion of the donor-advised fund remaining at their death to an unrestricted or area of interest fund at the Community Foundation. 
• Talking about your recurring support through the Community Foundation helps to create a giving culture within your family. Over time, your children and grandchildren will learn that philanthropy is an important family tradition and that charitable giving is a critical source of funding for programs that improve the quality of life for so many people in our region. Your donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation offers ongoing flexibility to fulfill your own charitable goals as well as the goals of the next generation. 

The team at the Community Foundation is happy to work with you and your advisors to determine the best way for you to make regular contributions to your fund, especially if your priority is to give highly-appreciated stock to take advantage of the opportunity to avoid income tax on capital gains.

We look forward to talking with you about how recurring donations to your existing donor-advised fund (or a new donor-advised fund if you’re considering it) might be a fit for you and your charitable plans.

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

​If your organization has established an endowment or agency fund with the Community Foundation, your staff and board of directors are already experiencing the benefits of our relationship. We are here to help you grow critical financial resources to support your important mission well into the future. 

Many nonprofit organizations who work with our team appreciate the opportunity to periodically review with their directors the benefits of working with the Community Foundation, whether at a board meeting or in a board communication. Here are points you can include in your next endowment update to your directors:

• The organization has established a fund at the Community Foundation because of the Community Foundation’s services to help charities efficiently and effectively set aside and grow endowment reserves and 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. The Community Foundation’s depth and breadth of experience allows the organization’s staff and board of directors to focus on deepening relationships with donors and carrying out its mission in the community. 
• The Community Foundation team helps nonprofit organizations establish and regularly update investment policies and gift acceptance policies, making it easier for the staff and board to engage in fundraising discussions. The Community Foundation team is happy to attend a board meeting to review planned giving and endowment-building strategies. 
• The Community Foundation team can help the organization accept and process donors’ gifts of highly-appreciated stock, real estate, closely-held stock, and other complex assets, giving fundraising a big boost. 

 
An endowment or agency fund at the Community Foundation is a powerful tool to help secure your organization’s financial future for generations to come. Thank you for the opportunity to serve as your behind-the-scenes back office. If your organization has not yet established a fund at the Community Foundation, please reach out. We’d love to explore how the Community Foundation’s tools and services can help you grow donors’ support for your mission. 

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

Most of your donors have been made aware, often repeatedly, that giving highly-appreciated stock to favorite charities is a very tax-effective strategy. Indeed, gifts of shares held for more than a year are typically deductible by the donor at fair market value. When the charity sells the shares, the charity receives 100 cents on the dollar because nonprofit organizations don’t pay income tax. The net-net here is that the donor (1) benefits from a favorable income tax deduction, (2) avoids the capital gains tax that would have been triggered if the donor had sold the shares and used the cash proceeds to make the gift to charity, and (3) maximizes value for the charity. 

So, with all of these benefits, why do so many donors forget about giving stock when they’re ready to make a gift to your organization or your organization’s endowment fund at the Community Foundation? Sometimes a donor is in a hurry, doesn’t think it through, and writes a check before realizing that it would have been better to give stock. Sometimes a donor assumes it will be too much of a hassle to pursue a stock gift. Most of the time, though, a donor simply forgets.

This is why it is so important for your organization to mention the benefits of giving stock in nearly every fundraising communication. At any point in time, during any year and any month, regardless of whether the stock market as a whole is up or down, at least a few of your donors will be sitting on highly-appreciated stock. Those are the donors who need to hear the message. Already in 2024, for example, several stocks are hitting milestone one-year performance marks. Assure your donors that giving stock to your endowment fund is very easy. Seamless processing for stock gifts is one of the many benefits of establishing your organization’s endowment fund with the Community Foundation. 
​
As always, please reach out to the Community Foundation for ideas and strategies to build your endowment fund through donors’ gifts of stock. We’d love to help you seize the opportunity! 

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

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.

Organizational Fund
An organizational or 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. 

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

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 the most 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 handle the 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 theCommunity Foundation to discuss techniques and strategies. 

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

Money, mortality, and family relationships. Each of those topics alone can be tough for anyone to address head on, and when you combine them, it’s no wonder so many people put off setting up or updating their estate plans. Establishing a will, trust, and beneficiary designations forces a person to confront decisions about the ultimate division of their assets, and many people think estate planning is more expensive or more of a hassle than it really is. 

But, getting your affairs in order–well before you need to due to age or illness–is truly a gift to your heirs. It’s extremely stressful for surviving spouses, children, and other loved ones to be faced with the emotional stress and workload of financial disorganization and uncertainty, on top of dealing with grief. Updating your estate plan also allows you to make arrangements for gifts upon your death to your favorite charities.  

Many people choose to support their favorite charities in an estate plan through a beneficiary designation. As you work with your attorney and other advisors, be sure to review the beneficiary designations on your insurance policies and retirement plans. Pay close attention to tax-deferred retirement plans such as 401(k)s and IRAs. Typically, you’ll name your spouse as the primary beneficiary of these accounts to provide income following your death and to comply with legal requirements. But as you and your advisors evaluate whom to name as a secondary beneficiary of these tax-deferred accounts, don’t automatically default to naming your children or your revocable trust. You and your advisors may determine that naming a charity, such as your fund at the Community Foundation​, is by far the most tax-efficient, streamlined way to make gifts to your favorite causes upon your death and establish a philanthropic legacy. A bequest like this avoids not only estate tax, but also income tax on the retirement plan distributions. 

Please reach out to the team at the Community Foundation as you work with your advisors on your estate plan. We can:

• Review the many tax benefits of naming your fund at the Community Foundation as a beneficiary of your IRA or other tax-deferred retirement account
• Provide bequest language for your will or trust, properly describing your fund using the correct legal terms 
• Provide language for a beneficiary designation, again properly describing your fund using the correct legal terms 
• Work with you to update the terms of your donor-advised fund so that your wishes are carried out following your death, whether that is naming specific charities to receive distributions or naming your children as successor advisors to your fund

We’ve all heard stories about the sad consequences of someone not having an estate plan, or even having out-of-date beneficiary designations. Estate planning documents, including wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations, often turn out to represent generous acts of clear distribution and conflict avoidance. An estate plan allows you to demonstrate how much you care about the people in your life as well as your charitable passions. 

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

Simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness have long been cornerstones of working with the Community Foundation to carry out charitable goals. Time and time again at the Community Foundation, we see how easily donors who’ve established a donor-advised or other type of fund are able to not only fulfill their big-picture charitable goals, but to act quickly to respond to critical needs in the community as they occur.. 

The flexibility of working with the Community Foundation allows you to support the causes you love at a financial level that meets your charitable giving budget. Early in the year, many of our fund holders transfer highly-appreciated stock to their donor-advised fund, for example, at the Community Foundation so that they are prepared to activate their annual giving right away. 

At every level of giving, philanthropy is a catalyst for improving quality of life. Indeed, anyone with a willingness to give can be a philanthropist. Whether you’re using your donor-advised fund to give $250 to a college or university, $2,500 to an animal rescue, or $25,000 to the art museum’s endowment, you’re making a difference.

Consider that small donations from a large number of people can make a huge difference. This is especially true for responses to disasters and humanitarian tragedies. On the other end of the spectrum, very large donations to an organization can transform its ability to scale and serve a much greater population. 

In so many ways, whether gifts are large or small or somewhere in between, philanthropy creates the margin of excellence that helps communities, families, and individuals thrive. The team at the Community Foundation is here to help you achieve satisfaction and impact with your giving at any level. 

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

Many donors and fund holders at the Community Foundation have updated their estate plans to leave a bequest to their donor-advised or other type of fund. 

Some bequests take the form of a “specific bequest,” which means that the fund at the Community Foundation receives a specific amount of money from the donor’s probate estate or trust. For example, for a specific bequest, your advisor might include a provision in your will as follows:

I bequeath $15,000 to The Community Foundation (taxpayer ID number and/or mailing address), a tax exempt organization under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3), to be added to the [Name of Your Fund], a component fund of The Community Foundation, and I direct that this bequest become part of the Fund. 

In these situations the Community Foundation will be ready to receive your bequest, typically as soon as the estate is settled. 

In other situations, you may want to leave a bequest of a portion of the remainder of your estate after all specific bequests, expenses, and taxes have been paid. These types of bequests are called “residuary” bequests. The language can look something like this:

I leave all the rest and residue of my property, both real and personal, of whatever nature and wherever situated, and assets, including all real and personal property, tangible or intangible, to The Community Foundation (taxpayer ID number and/or mailing address), a tax exempt organization under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3), to be added to the [Name of Your Fund], a component fund of The Community Foundation, and I direct that this bequest become part of the Fund.

Because the amount of a residuary bequest cannot be determined until all of the assets in an estate have been identified and valued, and all expenses and taxes have been paid, the designated charity (in this example, your fund at the Community Foundation) will not receive the full amount of a residuary bequest until the estate is completely settled. Typically, however, the estate’s personal representative or trustee will make what is known as a “partial distribution” to the residuary beneficiary (or beneficiaries as the case may be), as soon as the personal representative has enough information about the assets and liabilities to confidently do so.

When you leave a residuary bequest to your fund at the Community Foundation, our team will be involved at various steps during the administration of your estate until final distribution. For example, the Community Foundation will receive regular communications about the estate related to assets, expenses, taxes, and periodic accountings. The Community Foundation will execute documents, such as receipts, related to distributions and other estate transactions.

The team at the Community Foundation looks forward to working with you and your advisors to establish bequests to fulfill your charitable legacies. 

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

Keep these five tips in mind as you consider your year-end giving:

1. Charitable Bunching: "Bunching" means you are "front-loading" charitable donations into the current year, knowing that you plan to make these donations anyway in future years. By structuring a large year-end gift to your donor-advised fund at the community foundation, you could surpass the standard deduction threshold to further reduce your taxes in 2023.
2. QCDs from IRAs: If you are over the age of 70 1/2, you can direct up to $100,000 from your IRA, satisfying your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD), to certain charities, including a field of interest, designated, unrestricted, or scholarship fund at the community foundation. That means you avoid income tax on the fund distributed to charity.
3. Stocks vs. Cash: Gifts of long-term appreciated stock to your donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation is one of the most tax-savvy ways to support your favorite charitable causes because capital gains tax can be avoided.
4. Standard Deductions: The 2023 standard deduction for single taxpayers ($13,850) and married filing jointly ($27,700) is up nearly 7% over 2022. Keep your household's standard deduction amount in mind when you tally your deductible expenditures, including your gifts to charities.
5. Year-End Deadlines: Contributions must be made online, postmarked, or hand-delivered no later than December 31 to be legally completed during this tax year. All checks must be made out to the Community Foundation with the fund of choice on the memo line. Please note that the Community Foundation will not be open for hand-delivered gifts on December 30 to January 2.

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

As a nonprofit, two constants you likely face are (1) more demand for your services and (2) rising operating costs. Fundraising can help satisfy the “more demand” part of this equation, but that typically requires more budget, which means more marketing and … well, you get the point.

The community foundation team is your partner! We are here to help you grow your endowment at the community foundation in both traditional and creative ways. That means we’re here to help you accept and administer gifts of complex assets, such as closely-held stock and real estate, as well as help your board understand the importance of an endowment and best practices for investment and spending policies to ensure that your mission stays strong for generations. 

The shorter days of fall and winter aren’t the only sunsets creeping up on people these days. If you’ve met with your estate planning attorney and tax advisors recently, you’re probably aware that the gift and estate tax exemption–the total amount you can leave to family and other beneficiaries during life and at death before the hefty federal gift and estate tax kicks in–is about to drop, rather precipitously. 

Without legislation to prevent it, on January 1, 2026, the exemption will drop from $12,920,000 per person (that’s the 2023 exemption) to about half of that amount, depending on annual inflation increases. As the date gets closer, tax planning decisions get tougher. Make aggressive moves now to activate gifts to family members? Or hold out to see if legislation intervenes to prevent the sunset? 

Perhaps you established a donor-advised fund at the community foundation years ago, or you set up a donor-advised fund more recently. Or maybe you are considering establishing a donor-advised fund at the community foundation this year to help you keep your giving more organized and involve your children and grandchildren in your philanthropic priorities.

Whatever the case may be in your situation, it’s a great idea to consider a few best practices for ensuring that your donor-advised fund is making the biggest difference possible for the causes you care about. Life gets busy, the months fly by, and it's tempting to put your donor-advised fund on autopilot. But that would be a missed opportunity. ​