Do you give tax-deductible cash gifts to charities and want to do that even more efficiently to reduce future taxes beyond just this year? 

Would you like to avoid the scramble to gather your gift receipts at tax time? 

I’m going to show you how to do just that with one simple tool that’s growing like wildfire, but most people don’t use yet.    

This is a tool that I’ve helped dozens of my private wealth management clients start using to be more generous, more intelligently, and with greater potential tax benefits for their business, or for them personally.

If you wait to start using the tool, you’ll continue to scramble at tax time in order to show and deduct all your charitable donations. Think about it, have you ever missed one? What if you DID miss one that you still don’t know about? How much is that costing you? 

The other thing is that the more tax years that go by without this tool, the less impact it can have on your lifetime tax expense.   

The tool is called a Donor-Advised Fund, or DAF for short. A DAF is a charitable giving vehicle that a public charity or foundation administers to help manage donations on behalf of donors like you. Think of it like a standalone “giving account” that exclusively serves as a holding tank and investment account for assets that will ultimately be distributed as cash to 501(c)(3) organizations at your request.   

Here’s how it works: 

1. You give cash or other appreciated assets to a foundation and receive an immediate tax deduction. 
2. While the funds are sitting in your DAF, they can be invested (on a scale from cash to conservative to aggressive growth) until you recommend grants to your preferred charities in the amounts that you want. 
3. Then you direct those funds over time, whether it’s this year or beyond by requesting grants to the charities that you support, such as your church or any other 501(c)(3) charity...and there’s no deadlines to do that! 
4. When you request a grant from your DAF, the DAF provider uses available cash or sells investments in your account (which is tax-free to you) and disburses a check to the charity anonymously or with a letter acknowledging as the grant requestor, however you choose.  

Because your tax-deductible donations flow through your DAF, you only have one tax receipt to give your tax professional each year. Imagine that simplicity at tax time!

And, because you can gift appreciated assets like stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs, you personally don’t have to pay capital gains on those assets when they are sold within your DAF. In most cases, your DAF doesn’t either. I can’t really go into all the details here, but you can even do this with real estate and private business ownership.  

If you don’t have a DAF and want to learn more, my team and I have put together an easy-to-follow visual guide with all the details. It’s free, and at the end of the guide, I also provide a link for a no cost 15-minute call where I can give you a tailored analysis of the benefits of a DAF for you and your family.    

For important disclosure information, please visit RidgelinePrivateWealth.com/routine-disclosures