Dear Friends,

With my approaching retirement at the end of September, I want to take this opportunity to thank the professional adviser community for the critical role you play in helping your clients achieve their charitable dreams. This is a generous community, in part because of your efforts.

We also value enormously your continued willingness to refer your clients to the Foundation when appropriate. A great many of the more than 1,000 funds we manage today were started as the result of a recommendation by a trusted financial and legal adviser.

In this issue, local attorney Kathy Lambert describes four different examples of how creating a fund at the Foundation has allowed her clients to achieve their philanthropic goals. This issue also brings news of an exciting new donor planning tool, Planning Perspectives, an easy-to-use, informative site that will help your clients become even more knowledgeable about their philanthropic options. Planning Perspectives is a new feature of the Planned Giving Design Center, the world’s largest website on the subject of charitable gift planning.

My successor, Ellen M. Gilligan, currently vice president for Community Investment at The Greater Cincinnati Foundation, will join the Foundation in October. She brings a wealth of nonprofit and community foundation experience to the Foundation and will continue to build the Foundation’s capacity to provide the best and most cost-effective, donor-focused philanthropic services for your clients.

Doug Jansson
President

Foundation offers options for achieving philanthropic goals

Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned the well-known lines, “How to I love thee? Let me count the ways …” And while Browning didn’t exactly have the Greater Milwaukee Foundation in mind when she wrote them, “let me count the ways” aptly describes why people choose a GMF charitable giving fund as the vehicle for their philanthropy.

Estate planning attorney Kathy Lambert has found this to be true in her work with clients who create funds at the GMF. Lambert advises her clients about many different methods they can use to achieve their philanthropic goals, and she finds that frequently they opt for a fund at GMF.

“A fund at the Foundation is a powerful tool that is simple for the client to create and administer,” said Lambert, a shareholder in the Milwaukee office of Whyte, Hirschboeck Dudek S.C. “It has the benefit of perpetuity, oversight and low administration costs, and it’s very transparent in this community.”

To date, Lambert has helped more than a dozen clients set up endowed funds at the Foundation. Their reasons for choosing GMF are almost as varied as their philanthropic interests. These four brief stories each focus on a particular reason some of Lambert’s clients chose GMF:

Perpetuating a lifelong interest

One client, a professional musician who has dedicated much of his career to bringing the music of past centuries to wider audiences, believes that “our experience of musical expressions of earlier times brings us back in touch with the basic needs, hopes and dreams of our shared humanity.” He is perpetuating that belief through a field of interest fund, which will strengthen the link between early and contemporary music. The grants from his fund will support scholarship, commission new music and encourage performances that highlight the ongoing evolution of music from earlier times and diverse cultures.

He has also directed the Foundation to seek the advice of scholars, educators, performers, composers and presenters before determining the projects to be supported by fund distributions.

“It’s a bold idea that he has put forward here,” said Lambert. “His is not a huge estate, but because of the simplicity of the process of creating a fund through the Foundation, he will be able to leverage a modest amount to make a profound impact. It’s the ripple effect.”

Adapting to changing needs

Other clients of Lambert’s, a childless couple, appreciate the fact that over time, the Foundation will be able to adapt to change. “Through the decades and centuries, the needs probably won’t change, but the organizations doing a good job of meeting those needs may well change,” Lambert said. “This couple likes very much the idea of there being a reputable, well-connected organization within the community that can monitor which service providers are best meeting those needs over time.” The couple’s field of interest fund supports organizations that address poverty, hunger, homelessness and education.

Involving future generations

Another client couple created a donor advised fund to be advised by them now, then by their children, then by their children’s children, etc. The couple’s philanthropic interests include combating hunger, improving health, providing education and job training, promoting animal rights and protecting the environment. While supporting agencies that address these issues is important to the couple, equally important is the idea of establishing a reason for their three adult children, now living in different parts of the country, to come together and work on something bigger than themselves. Eventually the fund will bring together their grandchildren and future generations in a similar fashion.

“The whole idea of having the donor advised fund mechanism at the Foundation made it simple and straightforward to set up their fund,” Lambert said. “And this couple is delighted by the prospect that their fund will continue to provide funding for effective programs in perpetuity. Their children and future generations will carry on the work that these clients devoted so much to during their own lifetimes. Who could wish for a more meaningful family tradition?”

Keeping it local

Supporting organizations in the greater Milwaukee area is important to another of Lambert’s clients, a family that recognizes that Milwaukee has been very good to them. Even though they worked and traveled internationally for many years, the family acknowledges that they earned their success in the Milwaukee area. As a thank you, they are creating a donor advised fund that requires that a set percentage of grants be made in the greater Milwaukee area. There is no restriction on where the rest of the grants can be made.

“It could be that their descendants will not be living in Milwaukee anymore, but through their fund, these clients can make sure that the family keeps up the connection with Milwaukee,” Lambert said. This family’s fund supports education for disadvantaged youth, affordable housing and assistance for the homeless.

Lambert appreciates that the Greater Milwaukee Foundation is an available resource to her clients as they look for ways to support the causes close to their hearts. “I have gotten such a kick out of being able to suggest GMF as an option for doing charitable planning,” she said. “It’s a very public organization, which gives me a lot of confidence. I can recommend the Foundation as one that will always be there. It’s honorable, legitimate and doing business in a very businesslike way.”

Kathy Lambert is a shareholder in Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek’s Milwaukee office and a recognized local expert in charitable gift planning. A graduate of Vassar College and the DePaul University of Law, Kathy was selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® in Trusts and Estates (2007-2010) and has been named to the Wisconsin Super Lawyers list since 2005. She is a past chair and member of the Milwaukee Bar Association Trusts & Estates Section and affiliated with many estate planning groups, including serving as a board member of the Planned Giving Council of Eastern Wisconsin (now known as the Partnership in Philanthropic Planning).

New from the Planned Giving Design Center: Planning Perspectives

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is proud to present Planning Perspectives, a new web-based planning tool that will be highly useful for your clients.

This easy-to-use, informative site includes information on all types of charitable giving, with multiple tools for learning about philanthropic options. The site allows your clients to create a personalized illustration and share it with you through a link to their customized calculation. Additional, more complex, content on the gift plan is available for professional advisers, and any related content on the Planned Giving Design Center will also be collected for review. It’s easy to use. Just visit the Professional Adviser link on the Foundation’s website and then click on the Planning Perspectives link.

Planning Perspectives is the most recent of the many powerful features of the PGDC, the world’s largest website on the subject of charitable gift planning. The bulk of the content at PGDC is aimed at professional advisers; GMF has the exclusive right to offer PGDC in southeastern Wisconsin. You access it through GMF’s website in the professional advisers section, where you can sign up for a complementary membership or through http://www.pgdc.com/gmf

The site offers authoritative, current information on charitable gift planning through:

• News alerts to keep you up to date with concise summaries of IRS pronouncements, court decisions, legislative activity and other information regarding charitable gift planning;
• A search function to give advisers access to numerous court rulings and private letter rulings; and
• A calculator that allows advisers to easily calculate the tax impact of a deferred gift.

“I also like the insightful articles about charitable gift planning and related tax issues,” said Karen Rogers CFP®, Foundation director of development. In addition, Rogers said she appreciates the PGDC’s Technical Reports, which provide in-depth analyses of planned giving vehicles; income, gift and estate tax rules; and charitable gifts of non-cash assets such as real estate and closely held business interests.

Increasing numbers of Milwaukee-area advisers are coming to appreciate the one-stop-shopping convenience of the PGDC. “The PGDC is my go-to source for planned giving information,” said Adam J. Wiensch, a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP. “I recommend the PGDC to people new to planned giving as well as people with years of experience.”