Plan Ahead for 2025: Helping Your Clients Take a Long-Term Approach to Charitable Giving

Your clients—and you—may still be recovering from a hectic end to 2024, but now is the perfect time to help families jumpstart their charitable planning for 2025.

While year-end giving often takes the spotlight, planning and launching a charitable giving strategy early in the year, even in January, offers valuable benefits:

• Support Nonprofits Year-Round: Early planning helps nonprofits meet their budgets consistently, reducing stress about whether they can meet ongoing community needs.
• Maximize Employer Matching Gifts: Leveraging matching gift programs early ensures funds are available, with ample time to complete the necessary paperwork.
• Improve Cash Flow Management: A year-long strategy creates more predictable cash flow, allowing clients to be proactive, not reactive, in their giving. Setting up automatic contributions to a donor-advised fund or other charitable vehicles can formalize this plan.
• Enhance Donor Impact: Planning ahead allows clients to research charities more thoroughly and use the Community Foundation’s expertise to become more informed and effective donors.
• Engage the Next Generation: Early planning gives families time to include children and grandchildren in giving conversations and tax-planning strategies, making it a meaningful learning experience for all.
• Simplify Required Distributions: For clients over 70½, early planning can help avoid the year-end rush to process a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) from an IRA. Completing a QCD in the first quarter can ensure timely and effective giving to eligible charities, such as unrestricted or field-of-interest funds at the Community Foundation.
• Explore Complex Giving Techniques: Starting early allows time to consider more sophisticated giving strategies, such as gifts of closely-held business interests or charitable remainder trusts, which can offer both tax advantages and significant charitable impact.

The Community Foundation is here to help you and your clients make the most of their charitable giving in 2025. Contact our team to explore strategies that can maximize impact, fulfill charitable intentions, and avoid the stress of last-minute giving. Planning ahead benefits everyone—your clients, their favorite causes, and you.