This post is part of our “Smart Giving” series of informational articles for professional advisors from CCF’s Professional Advisors Council.
Your clients (and you!) may still be recovering from a hectic end to 2024, but don’t let that stop you from helping families get a jump on their charitable planning for 2025.
As compelling as year-end giving may be, perhaps even more compelling are the reasons for planning and launching a charitable giving strategy early in the year–even in January. Benefits of a year-long giving strategy include:
- Helping nonprofit organizations meet their budgets all year long, which can save them from worrying as much about whether constituents’ ongoing needs can be addressed.
- Leveraging employer matching gifts programs early in the year when dollars are available and there is plenty of time to process the paperwork.
- Increasing predictability of cash flow and therefore being proactive, not reactive, in supporting the causes your clients love. Your clients might even consider setting up automatic contributions to their donor-advised or other types of funds at CCF to formalize this component as part of an ongoing plan.
- Giving the client (and you) time to include children and grandchildren in the charitable giving conversation and tax-planning structures as a learning experience for the whole family.
- If your client is over 70 ½, being able to avoid the year-end scramble to process a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) from an IRA directly to an eligible charity, such as an unrestricted or field-of-interest fund at CCF, by executing a QCD in the first quarter.
- Leaving enough time to explore options for more complex giving techniques, such as gifts of closely-held business interests, that might provide tax benefits as well as meet a client’s charitable goals, rather than waiting until the last minute when it may be hard for everyone to coordinate calendars.
- Setting up a donor-advised fund at the community foundation to allow your clients to support favorite charities during their lifetimes, with the terms of the donor-advised fund providing that the children step in as successor advisors following the clients’ deaths.
Please reach out to us at the Cambridge Community Foundation to learn more about how our team can help as you work with your business-owner clients to navigate legal and tax developments that could significantly impact future plans for their privately-held companies.
Contact: Jennie Woo, director of development, [email protected].
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