Funds for year-end, gifts from your IRA, and assets you can give to your fund
Hello from the community foundation!
We’re honored to work with so many of you as you support the charitable causes that mean the most to you and your family. If you’ve not yet established a fund at the community foundation, please reach out! We’d love to help you structure a charitable giving plan that’s just right for you, including a donor-advised fund, legacy gift, field-of-interest fund, or all of the above and more. Our goal is to help you make a difference in the ways that mean the most to you.
Here’s what’s trending:
–We’re so glad to see that field-of-interest funds and designated funds are gaining popularity. A field-of-interest fund allows you to support a specific charitable cause by leveraging the community foundation’s expertise. A designated fund allows you to support a favorite charity or charities over time. Best of all, if you’re over the age of 70 ½, both of these funds are eligible recipients of Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) from your IRA, up to $105,000 a year. Reach out to learn more about field-of-interest funds, designated funds, and QCDs.
–Many Americans hold a significant portion of their net worth in one or more IRAs. Have you thoroughly considered all of the ways your IRA can help you meet your charitable giving goals, both during your lifetime and through a legacy? Giving to charity from an IRA is one of the most tax-savvy moves you can make. Reach out to the community foundation team to learn more.
–It’s that time of year! You may be starting to review your tax projections to determine an ideal level of charitable giving at the end of 2024. Before you start writing checks, stop to consider the many types of assets that frequently make even better gifts to your fund at the community foundation. Our team can help you and your advisors identify the best assets for year-end giving.
Finally, and most importantly, our hearts go out to the millions of people affected by Hurricane Helene. Community foundations in the affected areas and across the country are making it as easy as possible to donate to relief efforts. Please contact the team at the community foundation to learn more about how you can help swiftly and most effectively.
–Angie Tatro, CKCF CEO
Field-of-interest and designated funds could be your year-end friends
As you’re looking ahead to year-end giving, you’re likely thinking about transferring cash, or ideally appreciated stock, to your donor-advised fund so that you can maximize tax benefits and support the charities you love. And absolutely, a donor-advised fund can be a fabulous component of your overall charitable giving portfolio.
Think beyond donor-advised funds, though, especially at year-end. The community foundation offers a wide variety of funds to meet your charitable giving goals and also help you maximize your tax and financial planning efforts.
Two excellent fund types that are sometimes overlooked are designated funds and field-of-interest funds.
When you set up a field-of-interest fund at the community foundation, you’re setting aside charitable dollars for a specific charitable purpose. For example, you might decide to set up a field-of-interest to support research for rare diseases, to support organizations that assist homeless families in getting back on their feet, to enable art museums to acquire works that celebrate the region’s diversity, and so on. With a field-of-interest fund, you’re leaning on the knowledgeable team at the community foundation to distribute grants to achieve your wishes. As is the case with a donor-advised fund, you’ll choose a name for your fund, whether you wish to use your own name (e.g., Samuels Family Fund or Samuels Family Fund for the Arts), maintain anonymity (e.g., Maryville Fund for the Arts), or something else altogether (e.g., Bettering Our World Fund).
A designated fund is a good choice if you know you want to support a particular charity or charities for multiple years. This is useful so that the distributions can be spread out over time to help with the charity or charities’ cash flow planning, which allows you to potentially benefit from a larger charitable tax deduction in the year you establish the fund if, for example, your tax rates are higher than usual in that particular year. Your designated fund document allows you to specify the charities to receive distributions according to a spending policy you select.
Last but not least, if you are over the age of 70 ½, pay particular attention to designated funds and field-of-interest funds as year end approaches because these two types of funds, unlike donor-advised funds, can receive “Qualified Charitable Distributions” from IRAs–up to $105,000 per person in 2024!
As always, thank you for the opportunity to work together!
Your IRA is a force for good
It probably would not surprise you to learn that over 42% of Americans own an IRA. In many cases, IRAs–especially for people who have rolled over one or more employer retirement plans–represent a significant portion of a household’s net worth. When it comes to charitable planning, IRAs should never be ignored. Indeed, your IRA may offer some of the best opportunities to support the causes you care about.
For starters, no matter what your age, consider the benefits of changing the beneficiary designation on your IRA to name your fund at the community foundation as the recipient of all or a portion of the account. This is an easy, tax-effective way to leave a bequest to support the causes you care about. The community foundation can help you structure the terms of your fund to match your intended charitable legacy. For example, you can make arrangements for your children to serve as advisors on the fund to recommend grants to particular areas of interest, or the community foundation itself could deploy the money to support the community’s areas of greatest need or even the support foundation’s own mission-based operations.
The reason an IRA beneficiary designation is such an ideal form of charitable bequest is because of the tax advantages. Dollars flowing to the community foundation from an IRA upon your death are not subject to estate tax. In addition, as a public charity, the community foundation does not pay income taxes on the IRA assets it receives. By contrast, if you were to name your children as beneficiaries of the IRA, those IRA distributions to the children are subject to income tax, which can be hefty given the tax treatment of inherited IRAs. Plus, the IRA assets would be included in your estate for estate tax purposes.
Exploring ways to give your IRA to charity can also serve as a helpful reminder to review all of your beneficiary designations. Although they may appear to be innocuous and may even be easy to overlook, those beneficiary designation forms actually represent critical components of your estate plan. To understand this, you need look no further than the cautionary tale of a Procter & Gamble employee who died in 2015, leaving behind a retirement plan. Way back in 1987, the employee had named his girlfriend as the beneficiary of his retirement plan. Despite their relationship ending, the employee never updated the beneficiary designation. By the time the employee died, the retirement plan, which had grown to nearly $1 million, passed via the beneficiary designation to the 1980s ex-girlfriend.
Finally, if you have reached the age of 70 ½, you can make what’s known as a Qualified Charitable Distribution (“QCD”) from your IRA directly to certain charities, including a designated fund or a field-of-interest fund at the community foundation–up to $105,000 per year per spouse. You won’t pay income tax on the distribution and, happily, if you’ve reached the age for Required Minimum Distributions, your QCDs count toward those distributions.
The upshot? Next time you review your financial and estate plan with your advisor, take a close look at your IRAs. If you intend to leave a charitable legacy, or if you’d like to support your favorite organizations during your retirement years, your IRA may be your best bet to make a big difference in the causes you care about.
Variety is the spice of … giving
If you’ve been working with the community foundation for a while, you certainly know that it’s easy to make a contribution to your fund. And by now, you likely know not to automatically reach for your checkbook! The team at the community foundation is happy to work with you and your tax advisors to review the options for types of gifts. Here’s food for thought:
Marketable securities
Gifts of long-term appreciated stock to a donor-advised or other type of fund at the community foundation is always one of the most tax-savvy ways to support favorite charitable causes because capital gains tax can be avoided. Gifts of publicly-traded stock, for example, are easy to transfer to a fund. The community foundation team provides transfer instructions to make the process simple.
As is the case with a cash gift, the community foundation will provide a receipt for tax purposes, and the gift of stock will be valued at the shares’ fair market value on the date of transfer. When the community foundation sells the shares, the proceeds flow into your fund without any reduction for capital gains taxes. This is because the community foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and therefore does not pay income tax. That would not have been the case, however, if you had sold the stock first and then transferred the proceeds to your fund; you would owe capital gains tax on the sale. Especially in cases where you have held the stock a long time and it’s gone up significantly in value, the capital gains hit can be big.
Closely-held business interests
The community foundation team is happy to work with you and your advisors to explore how you might give shares of a closely-held business to a fund at the community foundation. Not only will transfers be eligible for a charitable deduction during the year of transfer (and at fair market value if the shares are held for more than one year), but also these gifts could potentially reduce income tax burdens triggered upon a future sale of the business. Be sure to talk with our team well before any potential sale is in the works; otherwise, you could lose out on tax benefits. Gifts of closely-held business interests are powerful but can be tricky to administer.
QCDs from IRAs
As always, keep in mind that the Qualified Charitable Distribution (“QCD”) is a very smart way to support charitable causes. If you are over 70 ½, you can direct up to $105,000 from your IRA to certain charities, including a field-of-interest, designated, unrestricted, or scholarship fund at the community foundation. If you are subject to the rules for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), QCDs count toward those RMDs. That means you avoid income tax on the funds distributed to charity. Plus, keep in mind that leaving your IRA to your fund through a beneficiary designation is a very tax savvy move, so be sure to discuss this option with our team and your tax advisors.
Real estate
You can give a tax-deductible gift of real estate, such as farmland or commercial property, to your fund in a variety of ways. An outright gift is always an option; lifetime gifts of real estate held for more than one year are deductible for income tax purposes at 100% of the fair market value of the property on the date of the gift, which also avoids capital gains tax and reduces the value of your taxable estate. Other ways to give real estate include a bargain sale or a transfer to a charitable remainder trust which produces lifetime income for you and your family.
Life insurance
Don’t overlook life insurance as an effective charitable giving tool, whether by naming your fund at the community foundation as the beneficiary or, in the case of whole life policies, naming the fund as beneficiary and transferring the policy itself. If you transfer a policy, you may be able to make annual, tax-deductible contributions to the community foundation to cover the premiums.
Other “alternative” assets
The community foundation is happy to discuss your options for giving other non-cash assets to your fund at the community foundation, including oil and gas interests, negotiable instruments, cryptocurrency, artwork, and collectibles.
We look forward to working with you to explore all the options!
The team at the community foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.
