Let's Talk Year-End Giving

We're back and diving into how you can make a difference with your year-end gifts. Community Foundation President Nancy Anthony joins us to discuss this year's changes to charitable giving, how donors can make the most of their gifts and much more. GiveSmartOKC manager Rachel Mouton is also here to walk us through how donors can learn more about charitable organizations and give smarter this holiday season.

Visit occf.org to learn more!

Transcript

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Dan Martel 0:33

Hello, I'm Dan Martel. Welcome back to the pod. Man, we sure have missed all of you folks. We're glad to be back after taking a little hiatus, and I hope you find today's topic informative as we come to the end of yet another calendar year. Where does the time go? Our guests today are Nancy Anthony, the president of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, and Rachel Mouton who oversees the GiveSmartOKC platform with the foundation. Before we get too far, I want to remind our donors that our 2021 annual report will be arriving soon. Look for it to land in your mailbox in a matter of just days. We think you'll find it informative as it includes plenty of stories that have shaped us over the last several months. So, let's get right to it. First of all, I want to welcome back Nancy Anthony to the program. Nancy, welcome. Glad you're back.

Nancy Anthony 1:17

Thanks. Glad to be here.

Dan Martel 1:19

Nancy, it's that time of year where folks begin to think about year-end giving, sort of the type of charitable organizations they might want to support, maybe the type of gifts they want to leave to an organization or perhaps what kind of legacy they might want to leave for themselves and to the community. So, first question I want to ask you here is, you know, every year when it comes to charitable giving, there seems to be some changes that always are made legislatively when it comes to charitable giving. What are some of the changes being knocked around or that may have happened over the last year?

Nancy Anthony 1:48

Well, for most people, the ability to deduct up to $300 for an individual or $600 for a couple is a new thing this year. There were some changes in the tax law about three years ago that took the charitable deduction away because it was just part of the larger deduction that just became one big pot of money and so you couldn't really get much advantage, but now they've added back in $300 for individuals and $600. So that's the kind of thing that will affect most people. If you are in a position to make a large cash gift, it can actually be very advantageous to you to actually be able to make a gift in cash to a specific organization and be able to take full credit against your income for that. But, relatively few people are in that boat where the size of the cash would make that difference, but for some people it could make a difference.

Dan Martel 2:37

Absolutely. All right. So being the head of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, I would imagine this is a pretty busy time for everybody.

Nancy Anthony 2:42

Oh, for sure. We have a lot of people who make year-end gifts of cash or appreciated securities. The reality is, you get the same benefit for a gift in December, as you make a gift in January. So, lots of people sort of wait until they get to the end of the year they look at what their financial situation is and then make the gift at that time. So for us, we know that that's the case so we prepare for it and we encourage people to think about it.

Dan Martel 3:05

Well now I guess the accounting team that works at the foundation aren't really thinking about party hats and favors on New Year's Eve.

Nancy Anthony 3:12

No, you know, we laugh and say we'll have a drive through if anybody wants us to go out into the parking lot and pick it up.

Dan Martel 3:18

Absolutely. Okay, so when a donor comes to the foundation, decides that he or she would like to make a gift at year-end, what are some of the things that you all discuss with the donor?

Nancy Anthony 3:27

Well, sometimes they're here because they want to support a specific organization or a specific scholarship fund, or in some cases, the fund they might have established. So, if it's a donor that's been here in the past, frequently we talk about what they've done. If they have not done anything thing in the past then we talk to them about the whole range of things we do at the foundation, They can either give to funds that they can contribute to other organizations, or they can give to some specific organizations, the endowment funds or the scholarship funds or the special field of interest funds that we have.

Dan Martel 3:53

So it's kind of like cart blanche, there's something for everyone. There shouldn't be any trouble with that.

Nancy Anthony 3:58

There really is something for almost any interest that anybody has.

Dan Martel 4:02

That's excellent. You know, the Oklahoma City Community Foundation has been around now for more than 50 years. Through those years, the organization's continued to see the donor base grow. I know that the leadership here at OCCF, I know you've been running the show here for several years, that you've helped probably thousands of people with charitable giving here in the community. Why do you suppose the foundation is such a good place to consider when somebody is thinking about giving at the end of the year?

Nancy Anthony 4:28

Well, first of all, they can make a single gift and benefit as many different kinds of things as they want. So, we can take care of many potential uses that they might have. Secondly, I think people know that we're going to be here and that whatever gift they give will be utilized in the way that they have designated.

Dan Martel 4:45

Alright. Awesome. So, what is your take on charitable giving during the pandemic? Did you see things kind of decrease/increase? Tell me a little bit about how that worked.

Nancy Anthony 4:52

I think giving for needs that were very specific to people was up. I think there was a great sense of helping people who maybe were unemployed or people that had lost the ability to do certain things with their family to make sure that people were taken care of. I think that that kind of giving really went up. I mean, it was very well seen in the news. I think people were very responsive to that. Bigger giving, like to a capital campaign to build a new building or to buy a new piece of equipment might not have been as well received. But I think people were very responsive to what they considered to be basic human needs, especially around health and around social services.

Dan Martel 5:33

One of the things I noticed at the foundation is toward this time of year, you really do see a lot of people in the community come out and put their, what I guess I would consider to be their charitable giving hat on. When it comes to specific types of funds and things like that, is there anything that stands out over the years that you may have seen in terms of a year-end gift that you kind of had a story to tell about that? Is there anything that comes to mind?

Nancy Anthony 5:59

Well, there was always a guy that every year he had a group of people that he send contributions to, but I guarantee if we closed at five o'clock, he would call about 4:45 and say, I'm on the way. The receptionist and I would stay until 5:30 and he would stumble in with his check. It was kind of like clockwork probably for 10 years. This same gentleman would make that same gift and his pattern was always to wait until not only the last minute after the last minute, in many ways, but he was somebody that we had done other things for. So it was always just a great story to be able to tell, but he was going to do it every year. I think people feel that way, that they want to be able to go ahead and make their gift.

Dan Martel 6:41

I think that's excellent. The foundation works a lot with professional advisors, too. How do you all work with professional advisors and when it comes to effective and efficient opportunities to help folks maximize their charitable giving, tell me the advantages that an advisor would recommend the foundation, perhaps over another institution.

Nancy Anthony 6:59

Well, I think the first would probably be that a single gift or a single transaction can benefit more than one purpose. And so that makes it easy for the advisor to help a client make a single gift and take care of a number of charitable interests. The second thing is we take a lot of non-cash gifts. I mean, we take stock, we take other kinds of marketable securities, and we also take other things that aren't marketable securities, but we are able to work with donors who have assets that might not be something that you can write a check with. So I think that is oftentimes, especially on the stock side, that can be very advantageous for them. Instead of selling the stock and giving cash, they can give us the stock and avoid probably in many cases, a lot of taxes.

Dan Martel 7:41

Man that's incredible to know. That's, that's outstanding. One thing that I know is fairly new here at the foundation is crypto, cryptocurrency. Tell me a little bit about why you all decided to do that.

Nancy Anthony 7:50

Well, we had some inquiries, would you accept crypto? So we set up an account with an organization that actually accepts cryptocurrency. So they would do it just like they would go to a stock broker and ask them to contribute their stock. Then they would contribute that crypto to this particular crypto-based fund and they would sell the crypto and then send us the cash. So eventually we would get cash because we don't really handle crypto. It's it's beyond many people's idea.

Dan Martel 8:16

Absolutely.

Nancy Anthony 8:17

I couldn't explain it but we would be happy to have the cash and be able to utilize it for whatever purpose the donor wants.

Dan Martel 8:23

I guess the final thing I was going to ask you here too, is in terms of investment performance and that kind of thing, the community foundation had a pretty good year I'm assuming?

Nancy Anthony 8:30

The year that ended June 30, 2021 was a great year for us. Our total return in that year was more than 25%, which that's a quarter. That means you increased the value of everything you had by a quarter of what it was, which is a huge return. Now the year before that, because there was a big downswing when crypto (Covid) first happened. We didn't have anywhere close to that. So between the two years though, it really did turn out pretty well. So we were happy to be able to have taken advantage of the rise in the equity markets at that time. For us really, it was the best year we've ever had in the investment side.

Dan Martel 9:05

That's outstanding. And if there's anybody out there listening right now, considering a year-end gift to a charitable organization, we would certainly advise you to reach out to the Oklahoma City Community Foundation. Nancy, what's the best way for people to reach out?

Nancy Anthony 9:17

Well, we have a website www.occf.org. We have a phone number (405) 235-5603, either of those work and we answer the phone with real people.

Dan Martel 9:27

That's another thing that's an advantage I think too.

Nancy Anthony 9:29

Right.

Dan Martel 9:30

Nancy thanks for being with us again on the pod. I know that you and your team are always on top of any changes and tax codes and how they affect charitable giving. We really appreciate your time. I hope listeners out there take heed and consider giving us a call again or visiting our website, www.occf.org and consider making an impact here in the community. Thanks for being with us.

Nancy Anthony 9:50

Thank you very much.

Dan Martel 9:53

Now we want to bring in Rachel Mouton. Rachel is the manager of GiveSmartOKC here at the Community Foundation. Rachel, welcome to the podcast.

Rachel Mouton 10:01

Thank you.

Dan Martel 10:02

We've just been talking to Nancy Anthony, the president of the Community Foundation. We're talking about year-end giving and the different ways that people can give to the foundation, whether they want to create a legacy for themselves or open up a scholarship or give to a specific fund. There are a lot of different ways to do that. You oversee GiveSmartOKC, tell us a little bit about GiveSmart, how does the platform work and what are some of the things people might need to know when searching for charitable organizations particularly this time of year?

Rachel Mouton 10:33

GiveSmartOKC, kind of in a nutshell, is an online database of charitable organizations here in central Oklahoma. So, if you want to give local, this is a great resource. It allows you the opportunity to really compare the organizations, apples to apples, orange to oranges. They all have their own profile page. Each of the profiles have robust information about the organization, their leadership, their financials, the programs that they have, et cetera.

Now on the platform, we have an interactive map feature. So, donors who are in the community, who want to maybe see a specific geographic location that they want to support, they can do that now with this map feature, that is synced to census data. Then that map has an overlay of those charitable organizations in the community that they can pick and choose from and make a contribution to. Or maybe if they're wanting to just donate time even they can volunteer with these organizations.

Dan Martel 11:33

So a really, I guess, a cool thing to do is if you are in the market and you do want to leave a big year-end gift or a small year-end gift.

Rachel Mouton 11:40

Yes.

Dan Martel 11:41

If they went to GiveSmartOKC, looked up, found the organization they're interested in, it could be a geographical thing. If, let's say I live on the south side of the city and I have an organization there, they can find that info, correct?

Rachel Mouton 11:53

Absolutely. They can search by an organization's name. They can put in a filtered topic, such as children and youth, health and safety, human services, animal related causes. They can even use a feature for geography so they can pick down to even the zip code and census track level.

Dan Martel 12:09

That is outstanding. What are some of the things that people might find on the platform that could maybe sway them toward a particular charitable organization when they're thinking about year-end giving?

Rachel Mouton 12:18

Well, what I really feel is important with the platform, is it gives the donor that sense of transparency. The organizations are providing this information completely free. We work with them every month to make sure that their profiles stay up to date. It's really helping those donors see kind of that transparency with the organization. What they are doing. Maybe there's been changes in their programming with COVID going on. They're able to see that on the organization's website.

Dan Martel 12:48

So, if a particular donor, again, wants to visit, GiveSmartOKC, what's the URL that they need to go to. If they have questions, can they call somebody like you here at the foundation?

Rachel Mouton 13:01

Absolutely. Yes. So if they go to www.GiveSmartOKC.org that goes directly to the platform, they can take a brief tutorial or they can end that tour and just start searching. They can also reach out directly to me. They can use my direct email r.mounton@occf.org or GiveSmartOKC@occf.org. My direct line is (405) 606-2918. I welcome the opportunity to talk you through over the phone, do a virtual tour, anything.

Dan Martel 13:42

Well, I've gone on and gone through it. It's really not a difficult platform to navigate at all. I mean, it does kind of spell out the organizations that are listed. How many organizations are there now?

Rachel Mouton 13:53

So there are right at 350 organizations within an 11 county geographical region.

Dan Martel 13:59

If an organization is out there, if you're a charitable organization and you're not on the GiveSmart platform, what's the best way for them to get on it?

Rachel Mouton 14:09

Yeah. The best way you can either reach out to me, or you can still go to www.GiveSmartOKC.org. There's an option to add 'my nonprofit.' You fill out a short form and then our team here at the Community Foundation will get back in touch with you as quickly as possible to get you going on the platform.

Dan Martel 14:26

Outstanding. Well, Rachel, thanks for being with us on the podcast today. We do appreciate you.

Rachel Mouton 14:30

Thank you for having me.

Dan Martel 14:32

Happy holidays.

Rachel Mouton 14:33

Happy Holidays.

Dan Martel 14:34

That about wraps it up for today. I'd like to thank our guest Nancy Anthony president of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, Rachel Mouton, who is the director of our GiveSmartOKC platform here at the foundation as well. Join us next month for another timely topic. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and we look forward to seeing you again in the new year. In the meantime, I'm Dan Martel, I look forward to having you join us again on Creating Impact Through Giving.