Plan Your Giving

Every day, professionals of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona assist individuals and families with defining what they care about most and create a plan for their philanthropic giving.  By partnering with the Community Foundation, these individuals and families receive personalized service and benefit from the staff’s extensive knowledge of the community, and a plan that aligns with their interest and passion. There is never a “one size fits all” solution.

• Some plans are designed to support a specific charity over a number of years, or to support a particular community cause of the giver’s choosing
• Other plans allow the individual or family to recommend grants to various charities year after year
• Still other plans may boost an individual’s or a couple’s income for life, resulting in a generous future gift to charity
• And other plans help build our community’s endowment fund, providing a path for the Community Foundation to address southern Arizona’s most pressing needs now and into the future; or by supporting the Community Foundation’s General Scholarship Fund, providing higher education assistance to local students who are often the first in their families to earn college degrees

The CFSA staff serves as a philanthropic resource to nonprofit organizations, building funds to accomplish their missions. This can be done in several ways, such as providing informational seminars to staff and board members about the benefits of estate gifting, consultations with individuals who want to make gifts to these organizations, and providing endowment management services.

Corporations and businesses large and small depend on the Community Foundation’s expert knowledge and administrative support to handle their community giving.  While individual business needs vary, some of the ways the Community Foundation can help include:

• Distributing grants on behalf of the business, thereby reducing its own internal processes
• Ensuring that grants are sent to legitimate and well-run nonprofit organizations supporting the community
• Recommending specific community needs that demonstrate effective ways of accomplishing their mission
• Providing status reports to ensure that the business’ grants have been effectively utilized by the recipient nonprofit organizations

Some business leaders contribute to the community’s endowment fund in order to have confidence that their gifts will be part of a legacy that will address immediate community issues for decades to come.

In recent years, families who have established private foundations have found that converting their Private Foundation into a Donor Advised Fund with the Community Foundation receive a number benefits that include:

• Avoiding burdensome reporting requirements and certain taxes imposed on private foundations
• The founding donors’ philanthropic wishes will continue to be honored, and although family members continue to make granting decisions, the Community Foundation will ensure that the foundation’s original philanthropic objectives remain in place

Individuals throughout southern Arizona rely on the advice of professionals to help guide their estate-planning decisions.  Many of those professionals – including attorneys, financial planners, CPA’s, trust officers, investment advisors and insurance brokers – have come to rely on the Southern Arizona Community Foundation to help implement their clients’ philanthropic wishes.  These Professional Advisors, in collaboration with donor services staff from CFSA, are able to insure that each donor’s intent is honored and fulfilled.

• Establishing Donor Advised Funds through the Community Foundation to help individuals simplify their charitable giving. Administering charitable remainder trusts and charitable gift annuities, ensuring timely distribution of income back to their clients and providing for gifts to charity afterward
• Helping their clients establish endowment funds for charities they support, with the assurance that the funds will be well-managed and distributions will be made annually to the intended charity
• Creating a mechanism to make charitable gifts at death by establishing a fund today that is funded at the time the estate is distributed
• Providing mechanisms for the distribution of assets that may be difficult for a client’s favorite charity to accept (such as ownership of a business or of real estate)