Charitable Giving Using a Community Foundation

One of the greatest privileges of being an estate planning attorney is working with clients who are making charitable gifts as part of their estate plan. Our clients’ charitable goals vary widely, but in many cases they leverage our local community foundation (or, in some cases, a community foundation in a different area) to support long-term charitable goals for our community that otherwise would not be workable.

Here’s how this potential partnership can work.

(Note that this post assumes an understanding of charitable giving basics. Our charitable giving primer can be found here. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm on the board of our local community foundation, the Community Foundation of Central Wisconsin. Wisconsin Rapids and Wausau also have their own foundations.)

Basics of Charitable Giving

One of the best parts of this job is working with people who want to include charitable giving in their estate plans. Here's how we like to talk about this.

We start with how charitable giving fits into the plan. Many of our clients' primary beneficiaries are individuals (like children), but they want to include charitable giving in a small way, typically by giving a small amount to their church or another organization they care about. For those folks, generally deciding on a gift is just a matter of deciding on an amount and an organization.

For others, charitable giving is the main objective, or is a significant portion of their plan.

WisPACT Trusts - a great planning option for children with disabilities

For a long time, I’ve been using WisPACT trusts to hold money for special needs beneficiaries. For people who are unfamiliar with special needs trusts or WisPACT, what WisPACT does is manage a pooled special needs trust (SNT). Like any other SNT, the funds are managed to supplement—not replace—government programs like SSI and MA. The pooled part means that disabled individuals have their own accounts with WisPACT. WisPACT hires a corporate money manager (currently, Chemical Bank) to manage the funds as a single pool, and gets a favorable fee structure, since it has millions to invest. WisPACT makes decisions about distributions in consultation with a trust advisor (a family member or guardian of the beneficiary).

What to Expect During an Estate Planning Consultation

Every estate plan we do starts with a free consultation. We get a lot done during those meetings, but they really (honestly) don’t require much preparation. Here’s what happens.

First, we cover the basics of what an estate plan does, and how the process works. Next is a chance to get to know a little bit about you. We want to understand your family structure—how many kids and what are their ages, and same for any grandkids. For people without kids, we want to understand who your nearest relatives are. We also want to understand asset structure. We don’t need to know too many details—just a general idea of net worth and how it is structured.