Charitable Planning
Crafting the Best Approach for Charitable Giving
Whether you are following your passion, giving through your place of worship, or making charitable contributions to get a tax write off, supporting charities can be an important part of your financial life. Homrich Berg has a strong culture of giving and believes in giving back to our community. Working together, we can examine your life goals, values, and passions to build a personalized plan for you to support the cause or charity that is meaningful to you. We also look ahead to the future, to a time when you may not be able to make these gifts yourself but still want to be able to support the causes you care about.
Through proper charitable planning, you can support causes you believe in, leave behind a family legacy, and pass family values from generation to generation.
The Basics of Charitable Planning and Giving
For some clients, charitable giving is all about a favorite cause with a charitable purpose. For others, it is all about an income tax deduction. However you approach charitable giving, your HB team can work with you to achieve your goals. Before you dive into complex charitable planning strategies, we will focus first on the basics of your situation. How much gift tax exemption do you have left? What is your adjusted gross income? Do you have significant capital gains taxes due this year? What is your charitable intent, and how are you thinking about structuring these gifts over one vs. multiple years? Are you focused on the tax benefit being maximized, or are there other more important considerations involved? Do you have an existing donor advised fund or private family foundation, or is this your first time considering significant charitable giving? There are so many basic questions that we will discuss with you as we help your family assess the current financial planning situation and consider the best charitable planning strategies for your needs.
Charitable Planning Strategies
We focus on the basics of charitable planning first — because selecting the appropriate charitable planning strategies depends on understanding your goals and situation. Some clients come to us wanting to implement a certain strategy they heard about from their friends or another advisor, but without any actual context or rationale for why they should be using that specific strategy. For one family a charitable lead trust may be the best approach, while for another a charitable remainder trust will be preferred. Charitable trusts are not the only approach – charitable gift annuities are also an option to discuss. Outright gifts are always an option, whether to a donor advised fund or private family foundation, or directly to a charity. Each strategy will have pros and cons, not only related to your estate plan and your income tax benefits, but also as it relates to the control and flexibility of your future gifts.
Read more about various charitable planning strategies in a blog post by our Director of Financial Planning.
Our Charitable Planning Services
Your HB team is ready to dive in and help you assess all of your options, from the most basic details like gifting appreciated stock to a local charity all the way up to helping you negotiate the structure of a major gift to a charitable organization. We start with the basics and then help you evaluate various charitable planning strategies to achieve your goals. Your team then works with you, your attorney, and the relevant organizations to implement the desired plan.