We know that for professional advisors every client is unique — with distinct goals, financial situations, and life circumstances, which is why you tailor your guidance to each individual. To help you serve your clients even more effectively, we’ve put together three sample scenarios showing how Cobb Community Foundation can partner with you to thoughtfully manage the charitable aspects of your clients’ financial plans.
Your client is charitable but still takes the standard deduction.
Your client has long supported many local charities with annual donations totaling around $20,000. While generous, her giving has not exceeded the standard deduction under current tax law, which means she has received little to no tax benefit for her contributions. You’ve counseled her that 2026 will bring even more limitations on her ability to deduct charitable contributions.
Working with Cobb Community Foundation, you can arrange for your client to contribute $100,000 of appreciated stock this December to establish adonor-advised fund. This large, single-year contribution will allow her to itemize deductions for 2025 and maximize her tax savings, while still preserving the flexibility to recommend grants of $20,000 per year to her favorite charities over the next five years. By front-loading her philanthropy, you’ll have helped your client secure a significant deduction even under the higher standard deduction thresholds and avoid potential exposure to the upcoming IRS “floor and cap” rules under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Your client needs to diversify a concentrated position but faces a large capital gain.
Your client has accumulated a significant position in a favorite stock over the past two decades. As his advisor, you’ve grown increasingly concerned about the concentration risk in his portfolio and the steep capital gains tax bill he would face if he sold shares outright. You also know that he has consistently supported a handful of local charities with annual cash gifts.
You could work with Cobb Community Foundation to help your client donate $250,000 worth of highly appreciated stock to establish a donor-advised fund. This move would accomplish two critical objectives: it would allow yourclient to bypass the capital gains tax on the gifted shares and also make him eligible for a full fair-market-value charitable deduction for the stock’s value on the date of the gift. Then, instead of writing annual checks from after-tax dollars, your client could recommend grants from his donor-advised fund over time—maintaining his giving pattern while enjoying significant tax efficiency. What’s more, by contributing stock instead of cash, your client would transform a concentrated holding into diversified charitable capital.
That’s exactly what Terry and Teresa DeWitt did—leveraging appreciated stock to reduce risk, avoid capital gains, and give more meaningfully to the causes they care about.
See Terry and Teresa DeWitt’s story here.
Your client has more money in her IRAs than she’ll ever need
Your client is 73 years old. She doesn’t begin to spend hercurrent income—and probably couldn’t if she tried. She also owns several IRAs and must begin taking her Required Minimum Distributions. She’s quite irritated that she’ll be incurring taxes simply for moving her own money from one pot to another.
While you’ve heard about QCDs, you don’t specialize in tax planning and haven’t had time to get up to speed on these vehicles. If you reached out to Cobb Community Foundation, we would share that because your client is over the age of 70½, she can direct up to $108,000 (the 2025 limit) to qualified charities. While a DAF cannot receive a QCD, other types of charitable funds we offer can. For example, a designated fund couldbe established to receive her QCDs, which, in turn, could support any number oforganizations she designates in advance of CCF’s receipt of the QCD—even beyond her lifetime. These QCD dollars would be excluded from your client’s income and still satisfy up to $108,000 of her RMD. Additionally, the QCD reduces her exposure to income-related Medicare surcharges—benefits that would not have accrued if she had simply donated from after-tax cash.
And if your client chooses to direct her QCD to CCF’s Match Magic fundraising campaign, her gift could do even more. Thanks to generous local philanthropists, every dollar donated through Match Magic could amplify her impact on the causes she cares about most.
See Carole Cox’s story here.
If your client base includes people with challenges like these, please give us a call! Cobb Community Foundation is here to help. The tax benefits are terrific, but that’s not what’s most important. What matters most is that you are helping your clients fulfill their charitable objectives—making our community, and the lives of those who live here, even better for generations to come.
Thank you for all you do!
