Financial and legal professionals frequently help clients grapple with a fundamental question: how to create a meaningful and enduring legacy. Often, the answer lies in charitable giving—a solution that advisors are uniquely positioned to introduce when addressing their clients’ complex financial and estate planning challenges. Skilled advisors can offer more than just financial strategies—they can help their clients create plans that are a force for community good.
As advisors know, meaningful planning demands more than just financial acumen. It requires understanding how wealth, combined with generosity and smart strategy, can shape communities and transform lives. For more than a century, The New York Community Trust (The Trust) has partnered with financial advisors and attorneys as they help clients balance charitable aspirations with practical considerations. Whether clients are building a philanthropic legacy that stands the test of time or setting up a donor-advised fund to streamline giving today, The Trust makes philanthropy powerful, joyful, and surprisingly easy.
Partnerships with advisors and donors, built over the decades, fuel $200 million in grants every year to organizations in New York City, Long Island, Westchester, and beyond.
The generosity of thousands of individuals, families, foundations, and corporations make it possible for The Trust to swiftly respond to crises like COVID-19 and September 11th, bring New Yorkers safer drinking water and better wages, provide housing and health care to communities in need, and help our region of 12.4 million people thrive in so many other ways. Below are some of the scenarios in which professional advisors have found value in partnering with The Trust:
- You are building an estate plan with your client.
Do: Integrate strategic philanthropy that gives back to the community.
Don’t: Overlook tax-smart advantages of directing retirement assets to charity. - A client without heirs wants to be remembered.
Do: Propose an enduring fund that champions their causes in their name.
Don’t: Assume distant relatives are the answer. - A client with complex family dynamics wants to give.
Do: Recommend collaboration with community foundation experts or separate advised funds.
Don’t: Let family drama get in the way of charitable giving. - A client asks about a private foundation.
Do: Consider a personalized fund in a community foundation instead.
Don’t: Make charitable giving complicated and costly.
Integrating Charity into an Estate Plan
With The New York Community Trust, estate plans can create enduring charitable legacies that stand the test of time. Beyond tax efficiency, clients want their permanent gifts to remain relevant and address the pressing needs of the day for decades to come. The Trust’s extensive regional knowledge helps ensure these legacies adapt to contemporary challenges while honoring client wishes. These funds are designed to grow over time, ensuring distributions keep pace with inflation and maintain meaningful impact.
Creating a Legacy Without Heirs
How will future generations remember your clients? For those without direct heirs, the question of legacy is often top of mind. The Trust can create funds in a client’s name that support their community’s evolving needs across issue areas, or clients can choose to focus on one or more specific causes—ranging from medical research, education, and food and housing to the arts, the environment, and animal welfare.
A Great Partner—or Alternative—to Private Foundations
The Trust’s philanthropic advisors can help private foundations develop and carry out a variety of grantmaking programs, informed by its issue-area expertise and supported by its grants management team.
In cases where private foundations unduly burden families with administrative complexity and operational costs, The Trust offers a simpler solution: personalized charitable funds that honor donors’ wishes and carry on their names. The Trust handles the overhead and provides customized services from its deep bench of experts.
Converting private foundations into charitable funds is easy for clients with foundations they want to wind down. Clients can make grant suggestions from their funds in the short term while setting them up to live on as legacy funds that benefit future generations.
Navigating Family Dynamics
Philanthropy can be easy, even when families are complicated. Multigenerational philanthropic planning can be a force for good in families and communities alike. The Trust offers ways for families to come together and make grants collaboratively. When family perspectives on philanthropy diverge, The Trust offers separate charitable funds for family members.
Managing Liquidity Events
Business sales and IPOs create time-sensitive opportunities for tax-efficient giving. With the capacity to work with complex assets—from closely held business interests to real estate holdings—including The Trust in these transactions can maximize both tax benefits and charitable impact.
Why Advisors Work with The Trust
By collaborating with The New York Community Trust, advisors not only enhance their clients’ plans but also position themselves as forward-thinking professionals who understand the transformative potential of charitable giving.
Vision alone is not enough—execution matters. The Trust knows nonprofits and knows New York. Its philanthropy and issue-area experts specialize in making a tangible impact across our region. The Trust complements advisors’ work by performing due diligence on charitable organizations, managing complex asset transfers, coordinating family meetings, running grantmaking programs, and more. Advisors can stay focused on what they do best—providing expert financial and legal guidance—while knowing their clients’ philanthropic plans are in expert hands.
Join A Century-Long Tradition
For over a century, the most respected financial advisors and estate planners have trusted The New York Community Trust to guide their clients through strategic philanthropy. As the region’s community foundation, The Trust isn’t just a fund manager—it’s an established institution with deep roots in New York’s philanthropic landscape.
Trusted advisors have the power to help clients shape how they will be remembered for years to come. Connect your clients to a tradition of transforming charitable intent into meaningful action—where their values will endure through the lives they’ll touch and the causes and communities they’ll support.
