As your clients’ advisor, you work hard to earn their trust. They come to you for guidance and advice, and when your clients set their sights on creating their charitable legacies, you want to be their first point of contact. While charitable solutions may not be your area of expertise, Greater Horizons has philanthropic advisors and charitable solutions you can rely on to meet your clients’ needs today and their heirs’ needs in the future.
You understand your clients’ goals best. The advisors with Greater Horizons understand what you need to serve your clients’ best interests. Our donor-advised funds are a value-added service you can offer, yet you can retain management over the charitable assets. They are a way for you to help your clients make a meaningful difference for causes that matter most to them. Our philanthropic advisors are your trusted source for accurate information on tax savings that can come with charitable giving and donor-advised funds. Ultimately, the charitable solutions you use to establish your clients’ legacies can act as your inroad to serving the next generation.
What Your Clients Need to Know About Donor-Advised Funds at Greater Horizons
Donor-advised funds are investment accounts for philanthropy that grow tax-free and make charitable giving easy, efficient and rewarding, without unnecessary rules or limitations.
The three aspects of a donor-advised fund are:
- Your clients give cash, stock or other assets to the fund, and their contributions are tax-deductible.
- Your clients use the fund to support charities.
- Your clients invest through you or in pools via Greater Horizons. Charitable dollars grow tax-free.
Donor-advised funds’ assets can be managed on your platform, along with the rest of your clients’ wealth portfolios. Or, your clients can invest their assets in Greater Horizons’ investment pools. Your clients access their funds online to request grants, track the fund’s charitable activity and access fund statements.
Donor-advised funds become part of your clients’ legacies when they name a successor advisor on their fund.
Ways to Contribute to a Donor-Advised Fund
Your clients can contribute to their donor-advised funds with a variety of assets. Of course, cash is one of them, but publicly-traded securities and complex assets, including business interests, life insurance policies and real estate also qualify. Should your clients want the additional benefit of avoiding long-term capital gains taxes, consider making donations of appreciated assets (held longer than one year) to a donor-advised fund. Used as a tax strategy, donations to a donor-advised fund are tax-deductible.
Creating Charitable Legacies and Connecting with Future Generations Through Donor-Advised Funds
For many of your clients, creating their donor-advised funds is a means to their legacy—a way to support causes near and dear to them, as well as share their philanthropical beliefs with their heirs. For professional advisors, charitable solutions are a way to connect with the next generation of clients—a way to become a multigenerational advisor.
Interested in learning more about charitable legacy solutions? Let’s discuss how you can use philanthropy as a bridge to work with your client’s entire families.