Building your charitable plan, brick by brick
When every decision feels permanent, it is natural to pause. Your Community Foundation can help you shift gears from intention to action. Here are three principles that guide our work with donors in this situation.
Take it one step at a time
One of the most helpful mental shifts is to think of charitable planning as a multi-step process rather than a single, all-or-nothing decision. In many cases, a tax planning need takes precedence because of concrete deadlines and tax year considerations. Our team understands! That’s why we are happy to help you establish a donor advised fund, for example, to meet an immediate tax planning need. With that time-sensitive box checked, we’ll move on to discussing how you’d like to deploy the fund’s resources, involve family members in the decision-making process, and adjust your giving as your interests evolve.
Keep it simple
Sometimes the hardest part of giving is not generosity, it is decision fatigue.
You might be asking yourself, “Where should I give?” Often, that’s not the best question to ask right out of the gate, especially if you are new to philanthropy. The team at the community foundation can help you work through key threshold questions including:
- As I look back on my charitable giving, what areas of focus seem to jump out?
- What specific charities have I supported over the years?
- Why have I supported those charities?
- Is there anything about my areas of focus that I’d like to change going forward?
As we explore these questions together, our team can provide research on local nonprofits, share insights about community needs, and facilitate family conversations about values and priorities.
Adopt long-term thinking
Community change does not happen overnight. You may find that your charitable intentions include not only providing annual support to favorite charities, but also making a meaningful difference over many years or even many decades that extend well beyond your lifetime.
The team at the Community Foundation can help you structure not only a donor advised fund to help organize your annual giving, but also other types of funds and a legacy plan. Many families, for example, complement their donor advised fund by also establishing a field of interest fund to support a particular cause with built-in flexibility as community needs change. Similarly, a designated fund can provide long-term support to specific organizations, and an unrestricted fund allows you to leverage the community foundation’s deep expertise and perpetual structure to address emerging community priorities for generations to come. You can name one or more of these funds as a beneficiary in your estate plan, whether through a gift in your will or trust or through a beneficiary designation on an IRA.
The bottom line is that we are here for you along your entire charitable giving journey. We’ll work together to build and implement your philanthropy plan brick by brick over the years to come, involving your tax advisors and family members at key junctures and always ensuring that your charitable intentions, even as they evolve over time, are fulfilled.
