Generosity – The Joyful Steward

God’s Prompting

As a collaborator/connector I always find myself searching over social media sites and business forums for new potential connections. As I was on one of the business social sites last week I was reading through an article that a peer of mine had written on generosity. I am not one who usually reads through the comments section of posts, mostly because of my distaste of the many internet trolls out there who are just filled with ignorance and hate, but there was one really great comment by a lady who is a consultant to businesses. She was speaking about generosity in the workplace and a certain new initiative she was working on to assist companies in their expressions of generosity and care. Well my bell was ringing now because one of my major focus areas with the Foundation is to create giving structures within the workplace environment and we have been seeing great results. As I closed the article I felt this prompting in my spirit to find a way to get in touch with this lady. I went to another social platform and found her profile and sent her a message along with a connection request, to which she immediately responded and recommended that we get together to see how we might be able to collaborate. As I arrived for our appointment I was a few minutes early and had the opportunity to meet the individual she had been meeting with prior to me. Turns out he is an attorney that specializes in something I need an attorney for, and he is going to prepare the documents that I need for our charity to start a new project in Sarasota, Fl.

At this point we are all feeling very strongly that God had preset this specific set of people meeting, and we said a prayer right there in the coffee shop and asked God to continue to bless each of our endeavors. Continuing on with my meeting and sharing with each other what our individual organizations can do it became very apparent that we knew a lot of the same people and that each of our services complimented the other’s without doing exactly what the other person does. Needless to say this was a great moment to watch God at work and we will be moving forward with some more discovery of how we will begin working together on some generosity projects. This was indeed an answer to my prayers for new avenues to expand this program. Thank you God for your prompting and for my being a willing and obedient steward of your resources.

Gratefully,

A Legacy Of Giving

As I’m now in my full return to the Non Profit space a very large component of my job load is to go into the community and share with trusted advisors and business owners the opportunities that lie within their reach to truly make a difference in their own lives as well as the lives of those in their communities, through planned legacy giving structures. When a business owner sells a business that they have a low cost basis in they will inevitably incur large capital gains tax consequences, or they can use 1031 exchange programs to delay the inevitable or maybe they will use another tax strategy that can spread that gain out over years to minimize the tax burden for each annual period, but in what other ways can they do good by the way of their family, and the causes that they care about, while easing the tax burden they will potentially owe.

I think these are great questions that any socially conscious business owner should be asking themselves and their advisor teams. But the biggest impact is made prior to the sale transaction, not after.

One modern day business legend that has figured out the concept of legacy planning is David Green of Hobby Lobby. Can you imagine this… he started with less than $1,000 and now his empire is worth over $4 Billion. He has a new book coming out in Late April that speaks to the concept of giving your wealth away. I’m not going to go into the details but this is going to be a must read for anyone who is considering developing a solid exit plan that benefits the family, the causes they care about, and minimizes the affectual tax amount owed on a wealth transfer. Look for Davids book on April 25th everywhere books are sold.

Then if you have questions concerning this concept reach out and we will be happy to introduce you to our friends who are experts in the creation of these types of legacy strategies. They would be happy to meet with you and your trusted advisory team to discuss the process and share insight from their decades of proven success in the giving space.

In As Much…”A life of generosity”

I think when we live the lifestyle of servant evangelism the model that we should always look to is Jesus himself.
He cared for the sick, the hungry, the poor, and physically touched them and ministered to their needs.
The message at church this weekend was about living a generous life. I like the following verses from the sermon notes.

Philippians 2:4-8 NIV84

4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing,taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross!

“go the extra MILE”