Instilling the idea of charitable giving in children and grandchildren at first blush may appear to be easy, but where to begin, and how to make it ongoing? Wealth advisors are being asked by their clients to weigh in on strategies for fostering a family’s financial values, which frequently include charitable giving traditions.

An important first step in creating any multi-generational philanthropy plan is to have your clients consider organizing their charitable giving, such as through a family Donor Advised Fund at CFAAC.

The process of organizing charitable giving itself creates much-needed clarity around the family’s philanthropic purpose. This is because without an organized approach to family giving, it is easy for children and grandchildren to get confused about their parents’ and grandparents’ processes for making decisions about which nonprofits to support.

Consider this scenario:

"Before we got everything organized through the Community Foundation, our family seemed to take a haphazard approach to charitable giving," commented the daughter of an entrepreneur who formed a family Donor Advised Fund upon the sale of a business.

Her mother, the entrepreneur, had underestimated the confusion: "Nearly every check I’d ever written to a charity was aligned with my commitment to supporting a healthy workforce in our community. Without a healthy workforce, my business would never have been successful. Now, though, I see that because I was not involving the rest of my family in my giving and explaining why I was supporting certain causes, it might have looked chaotic to them."

Establishing a fund at the Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County can be a very effective solution for many of your clients who are launching a multi-generational giving strategy. Here’s why:

• CFAAC's charitable giving vehicles are extremely flexible and can be used to engage an extended family in the process of charitable giving. Donor Advised Funds, for example, are popular because they allow your client to name children and grandchildren as successor advisors.
• When your client organizes charitable giving through a fund at CFAAC, the client can make a large transfer of cash or marketable securities that is immediately eligible for a charitable deduction. Your client can then recommend gifts to their favorite charities from the fund when the time is right. This is especially useful in the case of clients who sell a business or for another reason experience a large influx of taxable income in a single tax year.
• Establishing a Donor Advised Fund at CFAAC can be a much better choice for your family-oriented clients when compared to a similar fund offered through an institutional brokerage firm. That’s because at the Community Foundation your client and their family members, are part of a community of giving and have opportunities to collaborate with other donors who share similar interests.
• CFAAC can work with you and your client’s family on a charitable giving plan that extends for multiple future generations. That is because our experienced team supports strategic grant making, family philanthropy, and opportunities to gain deep knowledge about local issues and nonprofits making a difference.
• Finally, the Community Foundation’s tools and resources make it much easier for families to communicate across generations about the family’s charitable giving purpose and goals for long-term impact.

We welcome the opportunity to work with you and your clients to establish an enduring and rewarding family philanthropy program that is customized to meet each client’s charitable interests.