Develop a Charitable Giving Strategy
Once you have a financial plan in place, we have enough information to help you maximize your monetary contributions to charity and the causes you support.
First, you may have to separate charity work from charitable contributions.
It sounds strange: Many people are very charitable but shouldn’t be giving their money away. Without an overall plan, they shortchange themselves and the causes that are dear to their hearts. We’ll help you understand the difference between charitable intent and charitable contributions.
Suppose your goal is to give away a lot of money over time. You could buy life insurance, name a charity as the beneficiary and leave a legacy. By doing this, you’ll be able to leave a charity much more money in the future than you could provide today. Or perhaps you have stock you intend to gift to younger generations. This would be a highly taxable event for you, so you might be better off giving the stock to a charity. It’s a win-win situation: You have a lower tax bill while supporting a charitable cause.
Your charitable giving strategy is supported by processes and tools, such as charitable remainder trusts and gift annuities, that allow you to achieve your goals. A strategic plan can also help mitigate estate taxes while passing wealth on to future generations. Strong working relationships with our strategic advisory professionals – attorneys, CPAs and estate planning specialists – can help simplify this process and ensure the best plans.
