The Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County (CFAAC) can help as you work with a couple to design a charitable giving plan that will create rewarding philanthropic experiences for both partners. In Giving as a Couple, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors reinforces the tenets we maintain as a team at CFAAC when working with a couple to develop and activate a charitable giving strategy that matches their goals and values.

For example, CFAAC

• strives to know why your clients want to give together as a couple, rather than as individuals. 
• seeks to deeply understand your clients’ perspectives on roles and control so that we can help structure a process that will allow both partners to be active decision-makers. In certain cases, a couple will ask CFAAC to act as a mediator, or even as a tiebreaker, in the event that the partners are in the midst of an amicable debate about a particular community impact strategy or charitable gift. 
• helps couples decide on financial levels of current and legacy giving that will achieve the couple’s philanthropic goals in harmony with their goals for children and grandchildren’s personal inheritances and involvement in the family’s legacy philanthropy. 

If you are representing couples that include women, it may be worth reviewing Women Give 2021: How Households Make Giving Decisions, a study recently released by Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The study also observed notable trends in how partners – not just women – approach giving. According to the report:

• More than 61% of couples make charitable giving decisions jointly.
• When decisions are made by one member of a couple, and that couple includes one woman, the woman is more likely to be that decision maker.
• Couples tend to agree on the amount and recipients of their philanthropic investments.

As always, CFAAC looks forward to supporting you as you help your clients achieve their family philanthropy goals.