Individuals and families often turn to professional advisors to help them plan ahead for what will be done with their assets when they are no longer able to direct how those assets are used. When estate planning attorneys, tax attorneys and financial advisors bring a community foundation into the planned giving conversations with their clients, they access the expertise in strategic philanthropy that community foundations can provide for your planned giving.
1. Partners in Strategic Philanthropy
In planning their giving, donors identify charitable causes and organizations that will benefit from the assets they have accumulated during their lifetime. Community foundations can help donors understand and select which planned giving vehicles allow them to best achieve their philanthropic goals.
2. Planned Giving Options
Community foundations help with bequests, charitable remainder trusts and gifts of securities, real estate and life insurance, among others. Learn more about the Charitable Real Estate Fund (CREF) at the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation.
3. Donor Advised Fund and Private Foundation
Community foundations offer the simplicity and tax benefits of donor-advised funds. Those donors with a private foundation do not have to choose between a donor-advised fund or a private foundation. They may maintain their private foundation and have a community foundation manage it. The donors select the grant recipients, and the community foundation writes the checks and handles the back office operations of the foundation.
4. Preserve Donor Intent
When donors intend their planned giving to have a future benefit, they want to be sure their original intent and purpose for the gift is preserved over time. Community foundations have systems of accountability and transparency and a Board of Directors charged with stewarding the funds. These safeguards ensure that the original purpose of the fund will be honored in perpetuity.
5. Knowledge of the Community and Effective Charitable Organizations
Many donors say they hesitate to make planned gifts out of fear that nonprofits will misspend their money; they lack a close connection to a charity; or they are concerned that they will face a deluge of donation requests from other groups once they give to one organization.
Community foundations know the nonprofits in their communities and can advise donors on the effectiveness of these organizations; they can arrange site visits and meetings with nonprofit leaders to connect donors with community nonprofits; and they can preserve anonymity for donors so they don’t receive unsolicited donation requests.
Find out more about how the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation can be a resource for planned giving for both donors and professional advisors.
