Community foundations and CPAs: Valuable allies

top 10 reasons cpas work with community foundations

They are local organizations with deep roots in the community.
Their professional program staff has broad expertise regarding community issues and needs.
They provide highly personalized service tailored to each individual’s charitable and financial interests.
They accept a variety of assets and can facilitate even the most complex form of giving.
Their donor advised funds help people invest in the causes they care about most.
They partner with professional advisors to create highly effective approaches to charitable giving.
They offer maximum tax advantage under state and federal law.
They multiply the impact of gift dollars by pooling them with other gifts and grants.
They build endowment funds that benefit the community forever and help create personal legacies.
They are community leaders, convening agencies and coordinating resources to create positive change.
.

In the course of doing business, sooner or later you will be called upon to help clients with their charitable giving.

Your clients will be looking for the most tax-advantaged ways to contribute to charitable causes that they hold dear. They will have questions about specific charitable giving vehicles, such as charitable remainder trusts. They may also want to know how to capitalize on the potential for contributing retirement funds to charity.

Perhaps you already raise the charitable question with your clients. Maybe it makes your job more satisfying to not only provide exemplary client service, but also to contribute to making your community a better place – all by doing your job.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were one place you could go to get all the information you and your clients need about charitable giving?

In Maryland, there isn’t just one place – there are 10.

Maryland has 10 community foundations that serve citizens in 14 counties and Baltimore City. Each community foundation is a non-profit community corporation created by and for the people of Maryland. Their mission is to help donors make a positive impact on their community.

Community foundations are your best allies in delivering philanthropic planning, products and services to your clients. Community foundations offer a variety of giving tools to help people achieve their charitable goals and have expertise on issues and trends in charitable giving instruments and strategies.

Maryland’s community foundations are part of a growing movement of more than 600 community foundations in the United States today. In 2004, Maryland’s community foundations distributed more than $23 million to non-profit organizations around our region, and held more than $186 million in philanthropic assets.

Maryland’s community foundations

Community foundations in Maryland are:

Baltimore Community Foundation
The Community Foundation of Carroll County
Community Foundation of the Chesapeake
The Columbia Foundation
Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore
The Community Foundation of Frederick County
The Mid-Shore Community Foundation
The Montgomery County Community Foundation
The Prince George’s Community Foundation
Community Foundation of Washington County

These 10 organizations are working to help other areas of the state develop their own community foundations. Under development at this time are The Community Foundation of Mountain Maryland, which will serve Garrett and Allegany counties, and The Charles County Community Foundation.

Three special features

There are three special features of community foundations that can help you do your job better:

Personalized service: Community foundations make giving easy, flexible and effective, accepting a wide variety of gifts and providing donors the greatest flexibility. Clients can contribute cash, stocks, property and bequests. They may establish an unrestricted, field of interest, designated, or donor advised fund in their name or in the name of a loved one. Their gift will gain maximum tax advantage.
Local expertise: The professional staff of community foundations has an in-depth understanding of the issues, opportunities and resources that shape your community. They monitor all areas of community need, including human services, education, the environment, health care, the arts and economic development. They can help you and your clients learn more about local agencies and programs that make a difference.
Community leadership: They invest in the long term and bring people and organizations together, convening diverse voices to address local issues and opportunities.

Maryland’s community foundations have joined together to provide up-to-date, accurate and helpful information to accountants, attorneys and other professional advisors through a bimonthly free e-newsletter called Maryland’s eSource. This e-newsletter, which launched in June 2004, is full of technical information, profiles of clients and advisors and how they work together, and helpful articles about how to have the charitable conversation with your clients. To subscribe, log onto mdcommunityfoundations.org/enews.

for more information, log onto http://www.mdcommunityfoundations.org/ or contact your local community foundation. Contact information for all local community foundations can be found on the Maryland Community Foundation Web site.

This content has not yet been Rated.

To Rate content, please Login.