Getting Started

Welcome, Professional Advisors!

The Community Foundation is happy to offer you our support and assistance as you work to serve your clients and advise them about the charitable giving options that are right for their particular financial and estate planning circumstances.

Advantages to Working with the Community Foundation

Sample Client Scenarios and How We Could Help
 

What are the advantages to working with the Community Foundation?

• Our team of locally-based professionals has solid expertise in the many types of philanthropic funds that can be established to fulfill charitable intent. And, we’re glad to work with you and your client (either directly or in the background) to explore the financial or estate planning instruments that can best achieve that intent while also providing optimum tax and/or financial benefits.
   
• You can feel confident that the assets your client commits to a charitable gift or fund at the Community Foundation will be well managed. The Investment Committee of the Board of Directors oversees all investment activities of the Foundation, and works with a highly qualified team of investment professionals, Graystone Consulting, to manage the Foundation’s endowment. (View our Investment Policy Statement and our Fact Sheet about the Foundation, which includes our current statement of Return on Investment. Adobe Acrobat Reader required.)
   
• We’re here “For Good. For Ever™.” The Community Foundation’s endowment ensures that we’re in it for the long haul. The Foundation exists to make grants to benefit our entire community for generations to come.
   
• Once a fund is established, the Community Foundation handles all administrative responsibilities related to that fund. Your clients won’t have to worry about legal reporting issues or burdensome paperwork. They will simply receive a gift acknowledgment letter for their contributions suitable for their tax purposes, and the Foundation handles all the rest.
   
• We offer local, personalized service. We’re not a monolithic bureaucracy located hundreds or thousands of miles away. We’re right here in south central New York (headquartered in Binghamton), and we care about our region and its people just as you do. We urge all our donors and professional colleagues to feel free to pick up the phone, e-mail or stop by any time.
   
• You have quick, easy access to comprehensive knowledge about the charitable landscape in the six counties* we serve. We’re familiar with the region’s nonprofits, the work they do, the issues they address, and are pleased to share information with you, as well as with donors.
  *Broome, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego and Tioga
   
• We understand grantmaking. Since our inception in 1997 the Community Foundation, in partnership with its donors, has awarded more than $5.18 million in grants from the various funds within the endowment to the region’s nonprofits.

What sort of client scenarios might present a situation where the Community Foundation could be the right option? Here are a few examples.

Your clients want to “give back” to the community, but are undecided about which organizations to give to. Establishing a Donor Advised fund at the Community Foundation would give your clients a tax deduction for the current year, while allowing them ample time to reflect on the organizations to which they would subsequently like to direct grants. And if they have questions about particular organizations or community issues, Foundation staff will be pleased to provide background information that can inform their charitable decision making.

Your client has appreciated stock and is concerned about capital gains. Appreciated stock can be used to establish or contribute to any of the types of funds that the Community Foundation offers. By giving the stock to charity, your client reduces, perhaps even eliminates, capital gains taxes.

Reducing capital gains is important, but lifetime income is also a concern. If the stock or other appreciated asset has considerable value and, in addition, lifetime income is a concern, your client could use the asset to fund a charitable remainder trust (CRT), allowing him to reduce or eliminate capital gains tax, claim a deduction and secure a source of ongoing income. Then, at his death, the remainder in the trust would benefit the charities of his choice. The Community Foundation can be a good option to name as the beneficiary of this type of trust because the remainder will be thoughtfully used for years to come to help area nonprofits and to address pressing community issues through grantmaking. And if the remainder is $25,000 or more, it can be used to establish an endowed named fund at the Foundation that would perpetuate your client’s charitable interests. We’ll be glad to work with you and your client as you set up the CRT to ensure that the ultimate gift to the Foundation is used as your client intends.

Your client wishes to write a will but is unsure where/how to leave her estate. Especially if the client has no children, the decisions made when writing the will can be hard to work through. But your client no doubt has one or several issues in which she is intensely interested, and you could suggest a charitable fund, such as a Field of Interest fund, at the Foundation as a way of perpetuating those interests and leaving a legacy to the entire community. We would ask that you and your client have a conversation with us ahead of time to ensure that we’re all ‘on the same page’ regarding the type of legacy your client wishes to leave.

Your client wants his gift to benefit a particular local organization or group of organizations in perpetuity, but is concerned that future leadership at the organizations might not use the gift as he intends. By setting up an endowed Designated fund at the Community Foundation, your client can ensure that the local organizations of his choice will receive periodic grants from the fund that are restricted for the purpose he intends, even after his death. And if for some reason one or more of the organizations he names should eventually cease to operate, the Foundation will see that grants are made to other similar organizations in the area addressing the issues that your client is passionate about.

Your firm administers a trust or foundation, but the trustees or board members are aging and there are no viable candidates to step up and take their place. The Community Foundation currently holds several funds that were established by foundations that chose to cease operations but wanted to preserve their founders’ philanthropic legacy, and so opened a named Designated Fund at the Community Foundation (for example, the Lillian Briggs Fund) prior to dissolution. Other scenarios involve family foundations where subsequent generations have moved the foundation’s headquarters and activities out of the original founders’ geographic region to the area where current board members now live, but they wished to leave an active grantmaking fund in the original region as a tribute to their founders and to continue their original intent.

These are just a few sample scenarios. There are many other ways in which we can partner with you to fulfill the needs and wishes of your client. The first step is giving us a call or sitting down with us for a conversation about what your client hopes to accomplish for the community. Or perhaps you’d just like to learn more in general about the Community Foundation. Either way, Executive Director Diane Brown or Development Officer Donna Hill will be glad to schedule a conversation at your convenience. Feel free to call us at (607) 772-6773.

Return to Top