Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) present a unique opportunity for you, the financial advisor, to engage more deeply with your clients, particularly across generations. By facilitating meaningful conversations around family values and philanthropic goals, you add significant value to your clients as their trusted advisor while earning the loyalty of the next generation. Here’s how you can leverage DAFs to connect with families on a deeper level.
Family Planning Meetings and Trips
Regular family planning meetings are an excellent way to engage clients and their heirs in DAF discussions. These meetings can be formal or informal, held in your office, the family home, or even during family trips. The goal is to create a comfortable environment where all family members feel included and heard and where they can bond and discuss philanthropic goals away from the distractions of daily life.
Enhancing Your Role as Trusted Advisor
As an advisor, you often focus on the logistics of financial planning: the “What”, “When”, “How Much”, and “Who”. However, when it comes to DAFs, it’s essential to delve deeper into the “Why” of family wealth. Understanding the motivations behind charitable giving can foster a more meaningful dialogue.
Encouraging families to articulate their values and philanthropic vision is truly transformative. This process often reveals underlying motivations and passions that might not surface during typical financial planning discussions. For younger family members, this might be the first time they have been asked to consider what is truly important to them.
Engaging Future Heirs in the “Why” Conversation
Involving future heirs in the conversation about “Why” the family is engaging in philanthropy is crucial. This engagement should be age appropriate. By helping families discover the “Why” of family wealth, you are well-positioned to add value to your client relationship as trusted advisor.
This process can also reveal differing values among family members. For instance, children might prioritize different causes than their parents. Facilitating these conversations allows families to find common ground and develop a philanthropic strategy that reflects the values of all members. Through this process the family develops its “Family Mission Statement”, making it far easier to steer your family in that direction.
Helping Families Discover Their True Values
For many families, DAF discussions might represent the first time they have talked about what is truly important to each of them. This setting provides a great opportunity for you to guide and contribute to these conversations, helping families articulate their values and identify causes they are passionate about supporting.
This discovery process is deeply rewarding. It strengthens family bonds and empowers each member to contribute meaningfully to the family’s philanthropic efforts.
Adding Value and Reducing Client Attrition
By engaging with families and helping them discover what they truly value, you can add tremendous value to your role as trusted advisor. This personalized approach will differentiate you from your peers and foster strong, lasting relationships with your clients and their future heirs.
Moreover, this level of engagement significantly reduces the threat of client attrition. As heirs become more involved in the family’s philanthropic activities, they are more likely to maintain their long-standing relationship with you, thus reducing the high risk of client attrition that more often happens on the death of the client and spouse.
The Magic of DAFs
DAFs are not just a tool for charitable giving; they are a gateway to deeper family engagement and meaningful conversations about values and legacy. For you, understanding and leveraging the potential of DAFs can transform client relationships and secure long-term loyalty.
By creating opportunities for families to connect, discover their values, and engage future generations, a DAF becomes a powerful strategy for client satisfaction and retention.
For a complimentary guide, authored by Phil Tobin, iGiftFund Founder/Chairman, the foremost authority on DAFs, click here: The One Page Legacy Plan.
The One Page Legacy Plan complements financial, accounting and legal expertise,bringing a value-added philanthropic dimension to the relationship with your client and the client’s next generations, who will manage inherited wealth.
This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on The Great Wealth Transfer, elaborating on the benefits of Donor Advised Funds to financial advisors and their clients.
Follow this link to read Part 1.
Follow this link to read Part 3.
A Note from iGiftFund Founder and Chairman, Phil Tobin:
I am happy, as is the iGiftFund team, to answer questions and discuss ways to use DAFs in your practice to mutually benefit both you and your clients.
iGiftFund prides itself on the same personal relationships that financial advisors value with their clients. In that spirit, iGiftFund does not operate a call center. When you call iGiftFund, rest assured a real person will take your call and answer your questions, or direct you to an iGiftFund principal, representing the longest DAF experience in the industry. Additionally, your clients will appreciate knowing that they will save 25 to 30%, or more, in administrative fees vs. fees of the large national DAF sponsors.
If you are a financial advisor wanting to learn more about Donor Advised Funds and iGiftFund, please feel free to contact us at your convenience.
800-800-0366
Phil Tobin
Founder/Chairman
iGiftFund