Professional Advisors

As a professional advisor, your clients trust you to provide them with useful, pertinent information. And as someone who works and lives in Kansas, you also care about the future of our state.  

By connecting your clients with their local community foundation, you’ll not only help them carry out their financial and philanthropic dreams — you’ll also be helping them establish charitable legacies that will enable your community to grow in thoughtful and lasting ways.

Learn more about the distinct services community foundations offer, and how you can make a difference for the future of your clients, your community, and Kansas! 

Why Community Foundations?

Community foundations are tax-exempt, nonprofit, autonomous, nonsectarian, philanthropic institutions that are supported by community donors. The long-term goal of any community foundation is to build permanent funds supported by many donors. In doing so, the charitable interests of the donor, the community, and the residents are all served.

Partnering with a local community foundation can strengthen the relationship between you and your clients, as well as help your business, in many ways:

  • Connecting with a local expert on philanthropy helps you provide a full range of services to your client. You remain in control of your client relationships.
  • Community foundations provide maximum federal and state tax benefits, tailor giving plans to meet your clients’ particular needs, and provide a simple and cost-effective alternative to a private foundation.
  • Community foundations have in-depth knowledge about their communities and can help your clients be more effective in their giving.
  • Your clients can donate a variety of assets, from cash and appreciated stocks to real estate, commodities and more complicated assets. They can choose to donate these assets now or in the future as part of their estate plans.
  • Helping clients establish and maintain a charitable legacy for their children and grandchildren through a foundation fund allows you to stay connected with your clients across generations.
  • Community foundations employ staff that are oriented toward donor service, are skilled in solving complex gift situations, and maintain a high degree of professionalism and confidentiality.
  • Many community foundations offer the option of allowing a client's gifts to remain invested with the client's current money manager.

For more information, please use our online directory to find and contact a knowledgeable professional at your local community foundation.

Benefits for Your Clients

Below are some examples of the benefits your clients can experience by establishing endowments through their local community foundation:

Perhaps you have a client who would like to give back to the community but is concerned about having enough money for life. This person may benefit from establishing a charitable gift annuity with a community foundation. These annuities can provide a solid income stream during your client’s life and yet be customized to meet charitable goals for his or her estate.

By recommending that your client establish a fund through the local community foundation to counterbalance potential tax consequences, you will have shown your client how to get an immediate tax deduction as well as how to make a meaningful charitable investment in the community.

With your help, your client can tailor his or her estate to reduce or avoid estate taxes. By suggesting that your client direct dollars for local benefit, your client can reduce his or her taxable estate through planned gifts, such as a charitable bequest to a community foundation.

Help your client reduce capital gains tax via structured charitable gifts and planned giving strategies through the local community foundation.

Partner with the local community foundation to help your client evaluate the most beneficial distribution of assets to minimize taxes — giving more to your client's heirs while at the same time pursuing your client's charitable goals.

Contact your client's local community foundation for information about a donor-advised fund as a simple and cost-effective alternative to establishing a private foundation. The community foundation can provide a comparison showing advantages and disadvantages of private foundations, donor-advised funds, and supporting organizations.

A donor-advised fund or planned gift at a community foundation may make your client eligible for an income tax deduction measured by the fair market value of appreciated stock (less any planned gift value).

Sometimes charities are too small to accept direct stock gifts. Establishing a fund at the local community foundation with a gift of appreciated stock allows your client to receive a tax deduction on the full market value, avoid the capital gains tax that would otherwise arise from sale of the stock, and direct the funding to benefit your client's philanthropic choice.


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Over the years I have explained to my clients the fact that all of us are philanthropists. Some of us do our giving voluntarily, while others do so on an involuntary basis through taxes – but we are ALL philanthropists one way or the other! Why not plan to do your giving in a way that benefits the people, causes and the community you care most about? That’s where organizations like the many fine Community Foundations in our state come in. I have worked for many years now to help my clients do good for their community, their families and themselves by partnering with their local community foundation. In reality I think the things we’ve accomplished together over the years in strategic charitable and estate planning have been the most fulfilling for them and for me as their advisor. Helping my clients explore their passions and fulfill their mission in life gives me renewed energy and passion to do the same in my own life every day!

A. Wayne Potter, RFC, AAMS, Topeka, Kansas

The local community foundation is a ‘silent partner’ in my practice. Not a day goes by without my thinking about or discussing ways in which my clients can further their financial planning goals, estate planning goals, or charitable objectives via a fund or program at the community foundation. Working with a community foundation is a true ‘win-win’ for all parties involved – the advisor, the client, and the foundation itself.

Peter L. Peterson, JD, CFP, Salina, Kansas