Talking to Your Clients About Giving

Many of your clients may not know how to achieve their charitable goals or what they can accomplish through effective charitable planning. Some clients may not even know to raise ideas about charitable intentions unless their advisor brings up the topic for conversation. Discussing philanthropy with your clients can be good for your business, good for your clients and good for our community.

Starting the Charitable Conversation with Your Clients

The single most important step you can take to help your clients obtain the benefits of giving is to integrate the charitable question – “Are there any charitable or community interests you currently support or would like to address?” – into your regular interactions with clients.

You may also ask yourself these eight questions to determine if your clients may be interested in integrating charitable giving into their estate planning:

• Do I have clients who care deeply about and have been engaged in their local community?
• Do they give to more than one charitable cause?
• Are they interested in creating a personal or family legacy in their community?
• Are they considering the creation of a private foundation, but concerned about costs, privacy and administrative complexity affecting their philanthropy?
• Would they like to stay personally involved in the use of funds that they deploy for charitable purposes?
• Do they want to receive maximum tax benefit for their charitable contributions under federal law?
• Do they place a priority on sound financial management of their contributions?
• Are they concerned about future changes in nonprofits they are currently supporting – wanting to assure that gifts that they might make remain relevant even if these organizations cease to exist or change their missions?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then working with us will provide you with the tools to help make charitable planning easy for you and your clients.