Helping You Serve Your Clients
Key Benefits for Your Clients
- Your clients can address a broad range of local needs.
- Arts. Education. Community Development. Health. The environment. Faith-based causes. These are just a few areas of community need that your client can specifically address with a Community Foundation gift. Every year the Grand Rapids Community Foundation makes hundreds of grants to local agencies and programs to address a broad range of needs specifically in Grand Rapids and Kent County.
- Your clients' donations will work forever.
- When your clients donate through our endowment fund, the principle of their gift is never spent. It is carefully invested, and a portion of the earnings are used to address specific causes, needs and issues.
- Your clients can maximize tax benefits.
- All gifts to the Grand Rapids Community Foundation are tax deductible. They also qualify for the Michigan Community Foundations Tax Credit each year.
- Your clients can create a personal legacy of giving.
- The Grand Rapids Community Foundation offers a variety of options for donors to personalize their philanthropy. They may establish a Donor Advised fund and be involved in suggesting grants from their funds. Donors may also create a Field of Interest fund to benefit a specific area of interest (e.g. the environment, arts or education), a Designated fund for a specific nonprofit, a Named Fund for the Community Good or a Scholarship fund. They may receive regular communication from the Foundation staff about community needs and initiatives.
To calculate Tax Credit, click here.
Listening for Charitable Opportunities
As a professional advisor, your clients expect you to provide sound counsel about the management and investment of their assets, their tax situation or their estate plan. You can also help them by listening for and identifying situations when a charitable gift to the Community Foundation would be in their interest. These include:
- When year-end tax planning identifies a need for greater tax deductions.
- When estate planning identifies the possibility of significant estate taxes.
- If your client is interested in setting up a private charitable foundation.
- If our client is passionate about helping meet a specific community need and is ready to make a significant gift.
- Your client wants to establish a scholarship for a special interest, but doesn't know how to begin.
- If your client owns highly appreciated stock in a company that is about to be acquired.
- Your client currently has a private foundation but needs help with administration and grantmaking.
- Your client has most of his/her assets tied up in a closely held company and would like to give a gift of C or S Corporation stock.
- If your client has a substantial IRA and/or 401(k) asset within his/her estate.
© Grand Rapids Community Foundation - 161 Ottawa Avenue NW 209 C - Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503 - 616.454.1751
