Imagine all you'd like to accomplish with your philanthropy. Now picture a large portion of your resources never reaching their intended use due to poor strategies, mismanagement, or unnecessary taxes. Today the opportunities in the philanthropic sector are greater and more varied than ever. Private foundations, which offer several estate and tax-planning advantages as well as unparalleled donor control, have become the vehicle of choice for more than sixty thousand individuals and families--and may be ideal for you. Creating a Private Foundation introduces the issues you need to understand and gives the big picture on how foundations work. It tells you exactly what is involved for you, for the causes you care about, for your finances and taxes, and for your heirs. Chapters address the practicalities as well as the implications of founding, funding, organizing, and operating an effective foundation, including growing its endowment, allocating its assets, and selecting professional foundation management help. Roger Silk, James Lintott, and their colleagues, leaders in the foundation consulting arena, have pooled their wisdom in this comprehensive guide for donors and your advisers. If you're looking to make a difference, there is no better guide.

The insider's guide to charitable organizations for donors and their advisors Do you know when to use a private foundation, a donor-advised fund, or a charitable remainder trust or other charitable vehicle? Do you know the different tax benefits, limitations, and control rules for each alternative? Do you have an appropriate investment policy for your endowed charities? Do you have a rubric for avoiding fraud? Do you know what to look for to make sure that your charitable donations don't do the opposite of what you intend? In Managing Foundations and Charitable Trusts, Roger D. Silk and James W. Lintott provide a comprehensive guide for charitable donors and their advisers. Additional topics include: Foundation Governance When to seek additional professional help When and how to turn a CRT interest into cash Key tax issues Creating a legacy Why tax planning is so difficult, and how to approach it Straightforward and authoritative, Managing Foundations and Charitable Trusts is a handy, easy-to-read guide that all donors and their advisors will want to keep on hand.

For the past fifteen years, Stephen Isaacs and Paul Jellinek have been go-to advisors to foundations. They have consulted on everything from basic governance and management to strategic planning, program development, and impact assessment. Distilling more than fifty years of hands-on philanthropic experience into a short, highly readable book, the authors guide founders and leaders of foundations through many of the issues and challenges they are likely to encounter. These include the technical aspects of starting and running an effective foundation as well as critical insights about what it takes to become a truly great foundation. Indispensable for board and staff members of new and established foundations alike-and for individuals who may be considering launching a new foundation of their own-the book is available through Amazon.com and other major outlets.

The troubling ethics and politics of philanthropy Is philanthropy, by its very nature, a threat to today’s democracy? Though we may laud wealthy individuals who give away their money for society’s benefit, Just Giving shows how such generosity not only isn’t the unassailable good we think it to be but might also undermine democratic values. Big philanthropy is often an exercise of power, the conversion of private assets into public influence. And it is a form of power that is largely unaccountable and lavishly tax-advantaged. Philanthropy currently fails democracy, but Rob Reich argues that it can be redeemed. Just Giving investigates the ethical and political dimensions of philanthropy and considers how giving might better support democratic values and promote justice.

Charitable Foundations: The Essential Guide to Giving and Compliance Foundation trustees and officers bear the legal obligation to ensure that moneys entrusted to the foundation for charitable purposes will be used for those purposes. However, highly complex statutes and regulations set forth numerous requirements and prohibitions. How can officers and trustees recognize when rules are about to be violated or know what questions to ask to elicit key information about an issue? For example, What types of grants are off limits to a charitable foundation? What steps does a charitable foundation have to take before making a grant to another foundation? What rules apply to foundations making loans to for-profit businesses? The wrong answers can be costly to the foundation, its grantees, and the general public. This highly readable book, packed with useful examples, addresses these and numerous other situations related to charitable foundations.

Private foundations are a special niche of the nonprofit sector. They are allowed to remain relatively tax-exempt in exchange for supporting charitable activities. There are more than 50,000–and growing–private foundations in the United States holding assets worth more than $230 billion. Private foundations are subject to a unique and complex set of (mostly tax) regulations that govern everything from how much money they give away to their investment policies and procedures. This much needed, annually updated manual explicates a wide range of tax rules and regulations for these foundations and prepares them for the increasing scrutiny of the IRS. Co-authored by a lawyer and tax accountant, the revised and expanded second edition of this highly respected guide includes practical tax compliance suggestions and in-depth legal explanations, line-by-line instructions, sample-filled IRS forms, and complete citations.