Professional advisors can play a key role in helping clients understand options relating to philanthropy. Whether it is lawyers, accountants, investment advisors or many other types of professionals, having a solid understanding of charities and philanthropy can be very useful. Many clients, at a certain point in their lives, are more interested in giving money away than making it. Professional advisors need to understand this change or be at risk of alienating or prematurely losing their most valuable clients. Professional advisors and their networks can be subject matter experts and can add tremendous value to their clients when dealing with social good and philanthropy.
As many philanthropists have found, giving money away can be pleasurable or painful. It is often more difficult to donate effectively than it is to earn the money in the first place. Canadians donate about $22 billion per year and professional advisors can assist clients in being more strategic, retaining more flexibility in this increasingly turbulent world and creating a greater impact in the use of their charitable resources.
Some professional advisors are reluctant to bring up the topic of philanthropy with their clients. Some see it as a highly personal or emotional topic. Some professional advisors are concerned that they don’t have enough knowledge of philanthropy, so they are not comfortable with the topic.
In this course, charity lawyer Mark Blumberg will discuss:
- What is a Philanthropist? Why is being a philanthropist not always without controversy?
- What is planned giving, and how can this affect your clients’ choices?
- Smart giving vs. tax-effective giving?
- Different giving vehicles have different pros and cons and may be useful at different points in time
- The importance of values when analyzing charities
- Why all charities are not equal and bad ways to pick a charity
- Many important elements in understanding a good, effective, reliable and sustainable charity
- Red flags with charities and how you and your clients can avoid embarrassment and involvement with a charity scam
- Charity ratings and ratios – how you can be confidently wrong in picking charities
- Ideas and resources for due diligence on charities
- Why a major gift is not a merger and acquisition
- How involvement with philanthropy can bring risks to advisors
- Information gleaned by donors and reporters from public filings and why public filings are not always accessible to the public
- How to reduce costs and increase the impact of giving
This 90-minute course is geared towards professional advisors who are interested in philanthropy and what to have a greater understanding of some of the issues and factors that could be relevant.