Sharpening the pencil and helping clients plan to fund their charitable goals—while not putting their personal financial situation at risk and doing so in a tax-advantaged manner—has long been one of my favorite financial planning roles. Helping people smartly use their resources to benefit their favorite organizations and causes is an all-around win.

However, designing a philanthropic mission that is lasting and includes multiple family members, can be quite challenging. Charitable motivations, priorities, desired effect, roles, governance, and selective specific strategies are interdependent and, ideally, planned in a coordinated fashion.

In an effort to help successfully guide and document a family’s philanthropic journey, the National Center for Family Philanthropy has created this useful toolkit designed to help create a structured and strategic roadmap to maximize their charitable donations.

There are many options beyond cash that you may have available to use for your charitable donations. In fact, cash gifts are often the least “efficient” means of charitable giving. Your financial advisor, attorney, accountant, and a planned giving officer from your charitable organizations may all play a role in helping you analyze the array of charitable giving tools and techniques.

Here are some related posts I have on this topic:

• Money Matters: Charitable Giving Strategies

• Charitable Gifts of Company Stock

• Secure 2.0 Webinar: My wealth strategy team discusses the new Qualified Charitable Distribution to Split Interest gift option available under Secure 2.0, among other changes in this bill.

If you’d like to learn more about how your family can start or advance their charitable giving efforts and the best options to maximize those efforts in your individual situation, please feel free to contact me.