For Clients Who Love Local Causes, the Community Foundation is the Place

Most of your philanthropic clients likely support a wide variety of charities year after year. The causes they support represent a range of motivations, including personal experience, a role as a volunteer or board member, family tradition, or alignment with values and community priorities.

Many of the charitable organizations your clients support are local. That’s important to note because it means that your clients are especially well-positioned to lean into the Community Foundation’s unique position as the hub for charitable giving and local knowledge. Here are three reasons that matters:

• Clients can tap into the team’s knowledge about specific organizations, including financial information, data about the impact of a charity’s programs, and observations of an organization’s areas of greatest need.
• Clients can choose from a variety of fund types depending on what they’d like to achieve. A designated fund, for example, allows your client to set aside tax-deductible dollars that are dedicated to supporting a specific organization. Through the Community Foundation’s services, funds are distributed over time to the charity while the assets remaining in the fund are protected from the charity’s creditors. Another example is an unrestricted fund, which leverages the Community Foundation’s extensive research about the needs of the community and the nonprofit programs that are addressing those needs.
• Clients can work with the Community Foundation to leave a bequest to an endowment fund to support community needs for generations to come. As a perpetual organization, the Community Foundation ensures that charitable giving stays strong in our region to address important needs as they evolve over time.

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Of course, if your client establishes a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation, the fund can support local causes as well as causes across the country. As the hub for your clients’ charitable giving, our tools and our team are dedicated to helping your clients achieve their charitable goals both near and far. Working with the local Community Foundation, no matter what a particular client’s charitable priorities may be, is itself a strong show of support for philanthropy right here in our community. 

The team at the Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.