When your financial goals include philanthropy, the Delaware Community Foundation can help you make your charitable giving simple, joyful and powerful. This includes helping your trusted financial advisor help you.
Recently, Tony Lunger, market manager for Delaware Wilmington Trust Wealth Advisory Services, and his client Bart Dalton, Esq. began working with the DCF to maximize Dalton’s philanthropic impact. We sat down with them to talk about their experience with the DCF.
Defining a Strategy for Giving
When Dalton decided to increase his giving and to give more strategically, Lunger pointed him to the DCF.
“There are lots of hurdles to be met with private foundations,” Lunger said, “which is why Wilmington Trust has a whole group that does foundation administration. It’s complicated, especially the taxes. A donor advised fund seemed to be the best fit for what Bart was trying to accomplish.”
A donor advised fund at the DCF includes all record keeping and accounting, various investment options, and access to a wealth of community and grantmaking expertise.
“The DCF is a prominent institution in this community,” Lunger said. “I consider the DCF to be synonymous with donor advised funds. We know there are others, but the DCF has been doing this for a long time and has a great reputation.”
A Vision for the Future
The donor advised fund Dalton set up at the DCF allows him to support the causes he’s most passionate about, education and criminal justice reform, with grants to Nativity Prep, the Ministry of Caring, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Foundation of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the Beau Biden Foundation and others.
Dalton’s desire to help others reflects the primary reason people give, Lunger said, even outweighing tax deductions. “First and foremost, philanthropy satisfies a basic human impulse to help and to give back.”
Dalton and Lunger agreed that tax benefits are only part of the motivation for giving. “You could just hand the IRS a check and not have any liability,” Dalton said, “but there are so many good people out there who could use just a little bit of help. And it’s a wonderful thing if you’ve been put in a circumstance where you can help things here and there.”
Through the donor advised fund, Dalton said, he gets to have a very hands-on approach to helping others. He appreciates the DCF’s easy-to-use online donor portal, which makes it simple to incorporate his DCF fund into his broader investment strategies.
Establishing a Legacy of Giving
An important part of giving for Dalton is establishing a legacy for future generations of his family. His goal, he said, is to have his three grandchildren sitting around a table together making decisions about the fund he has set up, still involved in helping the community in an ongoing way and understanding what we all get out of philanthropy.
“The DCF works very closely with clients’ advisors,” said Joan Hoge-North, DCF vice president for philanthropy, “and we often partner for the long term to help create a customized plan to help achieve a client’s unique charitable goals, realize tax benefits and maximize impact.”
Find out More!
To learn more about how the DCF can help you enhance your charitable giving, contact Joan Hoge-North at 302.504.5224.
Read a more in-depth version of this article that appeared in Delaware Banker magazine.
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