The Role of Philanthropy in Wealth Management – Episode 514           

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, on this episode, we’re going to be talking about the role of philanthropy. And so giving back, but doing it with intention and complete prosperity. So how does one do it? Well, first of all, it’s called giving forward. Oh, we’ve talked about this before. You corrected me. You’re right. You’re right. Scratch that. It’s good, Spencer. The listeners need to know you’re human. Okay. Okay. We’ll, we’ll keep trying then. Yep. Yep. So, and it’s such an important distinction, right? Giving back implies that you took something and that’s not accurate at all. Giving forward enables money to keep moving. And we apply the velocity of money method, the idea of money moving.

[00:56] Lisa Sasevich has a great quote. She says, I want my money to be flowing like a river, not stagnant like a pond. Cash flow. Robert Kiyosaki has talked about that forever. Well, philanthropy is a way that if we don’t feel like our own personal economy is moving, philanthropy is a way that we can get it moving by giving forward. So I have, I believe shared this story before, but it’s worth repeating. I have a brand new example. So in 2008, money was stuck. I was frustrated. I was having all kinds of cashflow issues. As I’ve said numerous times, cashflow issues don’t go away. They just get bigger zeros on them. And kiva.org came into my view. I think maybe the gal had just published her book, which is clay, bricks, water,

[01:49] something like that. And I loved it and donated, I, I’d have to check this story. It is probably in a podcast somewhere, I think $25 might’ve been a hundred bucks. Can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I donated the money and I didn’t have it, but it was at a time that I felt like things were stuck and I wanted to get them moving. And it was one of the only ways that I felt like I could get money moving was to give forward or to pay it forward, if you will. And what’s so cool about kiva.org is they do all these micro loans to typically entrepreneurs in third world countries. They may be doing some in the US too. I don’t know. And I don’t even know where they are these days, but it was an important step for

[02:33] me. It doesn’t even really matter what happened after that because it got money moving. Well, just recently two things have occurred in the philanthropic space. The first is I have wanted to stay on a track of writing a book once or twice or once every other year or two. And so we have this whole busting series and I wanted to make our next book busting the charitable giving lies. And Elizabeth Hagenlocker on our team, who is my ghost writer slash co-author slash teammate writer person, went, oh, she was like, that sounds great. And I’m not your person for that. Like, that’s hard. And I still may do it at some point. Thankfully, our current app came along. And so we’re writing instead a book called Busting the Budgeting Lies since

[03:33] we know the budgeting doesn’t work and we have a way that does work. And so we’re super excited about that. And Elizabeth’s like, that one I can get behind. I’m all in. So just kind of a funny side note around the idea of giving. And I had a conversation with somebody recently that was looking for some ways to give and they wanted to control the money, which usually those two things don’t go together very well. But I shared with them the donor advised funds that are available at Fidelity and Vanguard and other places like that, where a family or an individual can donate money and it goes into a legit charity whereby they can then pick the I should say it goes into a fund, which is a legit structure

[04:23] so that then it can go on to a legit charity and do the job. So it enables the family to like get a donation’s deductibility today. But then over the next year or two or three, define where those dollars go. So check that out if that’s an area of interest for you. Donor advised funds. Well, we are currently heavily invested in a variety of projects. And so our alma mater reached out because they were doing this huge giving day, literally like 24 hours, like a day. And my initial reaction when I knew it was coming up, so like a couple of weeks ago before the day, which was two days ago, I believe, I was like, I’ve got like some special gifts that I do with them every year. I’m not going to do their day thing.

[05:13] And then the email came. I’m like, of course I’m going to do their day thing. Like it takes $125. That’s what they had said as their minimum and it unlocks all these other amazing opportunities and it feels awesome. And I love my alma mater. And of course I’m going to contribute to their 24 hour. I mean, they were literally like calling people at midnight, you know, with permission, of course. And, you know, just because they do work worldwide also. You know, it was a super cool thing to be involved in. And I don’t even, I didn’t bother following up as to whether they met all their awesome goals that, you know, this gift and that gift were supposed to unlock, but we as human beings get such a good

[05:53] feeling when we give forward, especially when we give forward in spaces that we know is going to do the work and, you know, just a last comment, there are certain people in public life. I’m being very careful with my words here that have to provide their tax returns so that you can see their charitable donations. Right. And sometimes I think we see those and we’re disappointed and sometimes we see those and we’re quite like amazed and pleased and even proud of that person for the work that they’re doing. And if I happen to be one of those people that was required to provide my tax return as proof of some of the charitable donations that we make, I would be very, very confident in providing it.

[06:42] And so I’m grateful for that. Like I get to give and I get to be grateful for giving. What an amazing space that is. Absolutely. It is, you know, you’ve looked at it and you’re not looking at it from a miser perspective, which I see a lot of people do. They’ll say, well, what I’m going to do is I’m just going to continue to work and grind. And then when I get to this age, then I’ll be able to do it. Or this dollar figure. Exactly. And so it could be as small as the $25 or the $125. And whatever it is that we do, we put energy behind and we put thought behind and prosperity behind and more and more happens. That’s really interesting. It’s a fun, fun space and it can be done so minimally and so optimally.

[07:43] Right. And so for our families that feel, and I love our client base, I have that 22 year old kid that can barely afford the $25 donation. Um, by the way, at Heifer international, you can donate $3 for a check, like C H I C K a chicken, right. So, and I have a extended member of our family that used to do that. She would, that was all she could handle $3. That’s what she did for our families that are on the other end of the scale, the donor advised fund is amazing. The ability to create a formal public charity, which we’ve done, like a legit 501 C three full on public took some time, uh, like a couple of years actually, and some accounting, illegal work, but you as a family can create a full public charity whereby all dollars are.

[08:41] Donate a bowl and deductible up to, I think the limit is 50% of your income, uh, when it’s a full public charity, if it’s a private charity, I think it’s only 25% of the income. Don’t quote me on either of those statistics. Please confirm that with your CPA, but there’s, there is a limitation there that the government has set. So it’s amazing space. It’s fun to get involved with it’s unique. Um, it can be incredibly personalized, which seems to be our theme of the day. And what I mean by that is that you can get involved in causes that are a part of your purpose, your value system. It’s an amazing conversation to have with family members. We have a whole family that has a third generation business and they

[09:29] get together every year to do a family retreat, which we write about in our perpetual wealth book. And they choose as a family where the family’s going to make their donations every year and they go and research these charities and come back with reports and then they make the donation and they follow up and it’s a super cool space for that family to be involved in. So there’s everything in between, right? You have the family doing it optimally and you have individuals doing it minimally and there’s everywhere in between that works just fine for you. That is perfect. So what I’ll do, and I put a note down, I’ll put a link to the perpetual wealth book so that for any of you listeners that are

[10:13] looking to start, this is a great guide of where you may want to go. And for the listeners that are there and they’re looking for a place to manage where their interests and charity and other philanthropy needs, then that book will help be a guide. So I’ll put that inside the show notes. Thank you, Cam. This was really helpful for our listeners. You’re welcome. And I’ll add a request for our listeners. If you have an awesome story that can go with our book, I’m thinking it’s going to be the year 2025, Busting the Charitable Giving Lies, because I want to stay with our theme, but that’s like tricky because there are horribly detrimental spaces around charity and there’s amazing good. So if you have a story or a thought or any suggestion for me at all around

[11:05] the book, Busting the Charitable Giving Lies, please send that in to hello at ProsperityThinkers.com. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.