If you’ve already established a donor-advised fund at the community foundation, you can understand why it’s become such a popular tool to organize your family’s giving and serve as a springboard for so many other ways to make a difference in our region. 

Recently, we’ve talked with a lot of donors who work with the community foundation in a variety of ways, such as regularly contributing to a favorite organization’s endowment fund, supporting the community foundation’s operating endowment, making distributions from an IRA to a designated fund, or attending community foundation events to rally around important community priorities. Interestingly, we are discovering that some of these donors also have established a donor-advised fund at a national financial institution and in many cases did not realize that they could have set up their donor-advised fund at the community foundation. 

It’s time to set the record straight! 

For starters, the community foundation offers donor-advised fund holders the same tax and administrative benefits as a national financial institution, including:

–Simple process for requesting grants to favorite charities

–Streamlined tax reporting, often represented by just one letter to provide to an accountant at tax time, even when the donor-advised fund is used to support dozens of individual charities throughout the year

–All back-office administration, tax receipts, recordkeeping, and other requirements for the donor-advised fund’s 501(c)(3) status

–Favorable tax-deductibility of contributions to the fund

Unlike standard national financial institutions’ donor-advised funds, though, the community foundation offers high-level, customized services to its donor-advised fund holders, including:

–Concierge-level service by knowledgeable staff to structure estate gifts to charities and accept gifts of appreciated stock or complex assets such as real estate or closely-held stock

–In-house experts who have a finger on the pulse of community needs, the strengths of specific nonprofits, and how to structure grant making for the highest possible community benefit

–Opportunities to collaborate with other donors who care about similar issues and forums to tap into local and national subject matter experts

–Opportunities to go deep into specific issue areas, both through education and hands-on involvement

–Assistance with structuring and measuring the impact of grants 

–Family philanthropy and corporate giving services to foster a well-rounded, holistic approach to philanthropy 

–Administrative fees that are reinvested into the community foundation, itself a nonprofit, to help support operations, grow its mission, and help even more donors support the causes they care about

–Hands-on assistance from local experts who understand both local and distant needs, and welcome the opportunity to research and identify causes aligned with donors’ goals and priorities 

–Staff members who live in the community they serve and often personally know the leaders and staff of grantee organizations and regularly hear about their needs first-hand

If you’ve established a donor-advised fund at a national financial institution, we’d love to chat about moving it over to the community foundation. At the community foundation, your hard-earned assets receive the attention they deserve as you and your family strive to make a difference in the causes you care about the most.