This week, we're diving into the often-overlooked world of philanthropy with a fellow UNCG alum, Dean Castaldo. Join us as Dean shares his extensive knowledge on the many ways we can support our favorite causes, from naming beneficiaries and directing stocks to establishing donor-advised funds and trusts.

Whether you're just starting your financial journey or looking to leave a legacy, Dean's insights will illuminate a plethora of options for making impactful contributions. Get ready to discover how you can make a difference, not just now, but for generations to come.

Tune in now to unlock the potential of your philanthropic spirit!

About Our Guest

Dean Castaldo, J.D. leads a dedicated team of fundraisers at the USNA Foundation, connecting with alumni and parents across the Southeast and Southern California to secure 6- and 7-figure philanthropic investments that enhance the midshipman experience. Prior to his role with the Foundation, Dean honed his development skills as Associate Director of Alumni Engagement at UNC-Greensboro, where he supported corporate partners, the military-veteran community, and young professionals. He has served in the development profession since late 2015 while bringing over 15 years of combined active and reserve experience leading teams of warfighters as a Marine Corps NCO and a current Naval Officer.

Dean has extensive non-profit advisory experience serving on multiple boards, including as a current member of the UNCG Alumni Leadership Board and the Naval Sea Cadets Foundation Board of Directors.

Connect with Dean

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deancastaldojr/

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Website: https://www.moneytalkwitht.com

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LinkedIn: Tiffany Grant

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Timestamps

[00:00] Philanthropy is reachable for majority of people.

[05:19] Designate beneficiaries flexibly with selection of percentage.

[08:24] Transfer accounts tax free or tax deferred.

[10:40] Utilize trust structures for financial and estate planning.

[13:58] Invest $100 monthly into donor advised fund.

[18:14] Gratitude for information and hope for day.

Key Themes

• Understanding philanthropy.
• Options for philanthropic giving.
• Beneficiary designations for donations.
• Tax advantages of estate gifts.
• Using wills and trusts.
• Donor-advised funds explained.
• Gifting stocks to nonprofits.

Additional Links & Resources

• Home Page - UNC Greensboro
• Habitat for Humanity
• Veterans Charity - Non Profit Organization for Veterans | WWP
• Charles Schwab
• Chase Online | Chase.com
• Fidelity Investments
• Acorns
• Robinhood
• US Naval Academy Alumni Association & Foundation - www.usna.com

Support this Podcast

Copyright 2024 Tiffany Grant

You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk money with your money

nerd and financial coach. Now, tighten those purse strings

and open those ears. It's the money talk with Tiff

podcast.

Hey, everyone. I am so excited because I have a

UNCG alum on the line. So, for those that don't know, I

graduated from UNCG, and his name is Dean Castaldo, and

he's here to talk to us about philanthropy, which we've never talked about

on the podcast before that I can recall. So, hey, Dean, how are

you? I'm doing very well, Tiffany, and glad to be here.

Thanks for having me. Yes, thank you so much for coming on and talking

about this important topic. So, first and foremost, let's just lay the

groundwork for our audience. What is philanthropy?

Hmm. So, in the broadest sense, philanthropy

is a way that virtually everyone, regardless of

where you are in your career or in your life, it's a way for

you to find the cause that you are

most passionate about and support it. Specifically, we're

talking about with money. But money has a lot of

different meanings, and you can do a lot of really good work

and support your cause through a number of ways. But generally

speaking, we're talking about making a donation to an organization

that you care deeply about.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So, if we have people listening, and

they're like, well, Dean, Tiffany, you know, that sounds amazing,

but what type of options do I have for this?

Like, you know, a lot of people think of philanthropy, and they think about

celebrities or, you know, they might think about

organizations or something, but what are the different options? If

somebody was like, you know, I want to leave something later on down the

road, what could that look like? Yeah,

great question. So, one, I would start by saying

philanthropy truly is within reach for the vast

majority of folks. And while we often think of philanthropy as being something

limited for high net worth or ultra high net worth, really

wealthy individuals, even if you're a

young UNCG grad, there are ways that you can support

your alma mater or support your local habitat for Humanity,

et cetera, in a very impactful way. And

so one of the things I encourage folks in my role

is, depending on where they are in their life and how

much they are looking to or how much is allocated in their

budget to support their cause of choice.

We often talk about deferred gifts, or sometimes you'll hear them

called planned gifts. And so these are actually a really

nice way to pledge your support for an

organization through something like, for example, let's say you

have a 401 or a 403 B, or

an IRA or a small brokerage account, even a Robinhood

account or acorns, any of these organization, any of these

entities, when you establish an account, you

have to also create a beneficiary of that account.

So in the event that something happened to you,

who will be the recipient of those funds? Whether

there's $5,000 or $5 million in that account,

it's got to go somewhere. And for most folks, the last place you want

to go to is to the government. So it's a great way,

or it's a great option for you to designate an organization.

So, for example, my wife and I, we did something very

small, probably a couple of years ago, where we, we designated

UNC Greensboro as the beneficiary of one of our

retirement accounts. And so, you know, many, many, many years down the

road, when something should happen to us and life

takes its natural course of action, then a certain

percentage of those accounts will go to very specific

programs and scholarships. And so deferred gifts

is one way that designating a

beneficiary of a current use account for

a deferred gift is one way that you can benefit your nonprofit of

choice. Interesting. So if someone wanted

to designate, you know, a charity or nonprofit or whatever

as the beneficiary, could it be with any account? So, like

checking savings, or is it limited to investment

accounts? Yeah. So good. Good question. For

the most part, you would have a transfer, what's referred to as a transfer

on death designation. And

for most accounts, it's as simple as going online. You

could log in whether you have a Charles Schwab account or

a chase account, whatever the financial institution might be.

And it's really a three to five minute process where you go

online and you say, x percentage of this account

goes to this legal entity. And typically

organizations, certainly well established

organizations like a university or let's say the wounded

Warrior project or something like that, they provide you the

information on their website. So they will say, you list our

official legal name, here's our exempt id

number, and here's our official address. And

the institution that is holding the account that you are trying to make the

designation with, they ask for that information, you put it in,

and you press submit, and literally within 60 seconds, you get an

email confirmation that says you have a new beneficiary

designation. And the great thing about this particular

option is, one, if you

are uncertain of how much money you will need from that account throughout

your life, this gives you some flexibility. You're promising a

percentage, as opposed to committing

$100,000 or $5 million.

So if you live until you're

110 years old and there's only $10,000

left in that account, what you've

committed is a percentage of that $10,000. And so it gives you a lot of

flexibility in that regard. But the other thing that's nice

for, let's say, relatively

young grad who's just getting started, not really sure what their

family plans will look like, how many kids they will have, whether they will get

married at any point. You can change

these beneficiaries. You could make a beneficiary designation

today and then three weeks from now, say, well, I've

decided to prioritize another organization. You literally go back

online and you change that designation in real time.

So it offers a lot of flexibility,

but it also affords you an opportunity to get

more closely aligned and connected with your organization of choice.

And it really is a popular and meaningful way

to support, at least in the interim. Very cool. Very cool.

So I know that there's tax advantages

while you're living. Are there

any tax advantages to, like, a philanthropy

philanthropic gift like this once you pass

away? Yeah. Great question. So this is where

I have to put my disclaimer out there. So

you should always check with your personal advisor. And

in my role, my day job, we always tell folks the

same thing. They should always talk with their estate attorneys and their

wealth managers to ensure that whatever tax

advantages may be afforded to them are, in fact,

available to them. But

there's a lot of nuances as to whether or

not a disbursement from your estate to a nonprofit

does, in fact, create or mitigate tax

circumstances. And so it's, in

short, it's likely that for many people,

you're not even worried about estate tax, because it's a relatively high

threshold, and there's a lot of ways that you can

transfer those accounts to your spouse tax free. You can transfer those

accounts to children tax free, or at least tax

deferred. And so there's a lot of reasons why you would not

transfer or designate a beneficiary

on one of your accounts outside of immediate family members.

So I'm being a little bit careful here, but the short answer is, yes, there

may be some tax advantages to that estate, particularly

if you're talking about higher net worth

estates. And, you know, which is why, you

know, we often hear about, you know, somebody who's named

a school at Harvard or MIT or Johns Hopkins, you

know, how, or even quite honestly, if you read the newsletters out of

UNC Greensboro, a lot of folks who have made their

designation through an estate gift, why they would

very carefully plan how much they are leaving to the university,

because they know that if that

particular dollar amount was going to some other heir or some

other recipient, that it would incur a significant tax

bill associated with it. Leaving it to a nonprofit

saves on those taxes, but also impacts,

positively impacts their organization. Yes, yes, and

yes, we do disclaimers around here. Cause, you know, this is just

to spread ideas and information. It's not going to be

specific to your situation. So, like Dean said, make sure that

you talk to your financial planner or a financial professional to see

what works for you. But with that being said, okay, so we know

that we can do beneficiaries. Is there any other way that we can

leave money to causes that are important to

us? Yeah, absolutely. So then the other very

popular way. So we'll set aside what

folks, a lot of folks understand. Of course, you can make a gift

with credit card. You can always send cash and check institutions.

I don't know of a single institution that would not take those kinds

of gifts. But another way is you can,

depending on your family setup, if you have a will

or a trust. And by the way, trusts aren't just

for the extremely wealthy. You know,

depending on your circumstances, many average middle class

american families, you know, leverage the power of various

trust structures for their financial situation.

You can write, have your estate attorney write

in specific organization to benefit

from whatever assets are left in your

estate. And this is great, because, again, you know, when the time comes,

you will not have a say. You will not be around to say

how much you loved your alma mater or how much you love the

humane society or whatever the cause might be. But

specifically listing that in your estate

plan so your official estate documents is a great way

to make that gift. Additionally, if you are working

with a fundraising shop to do just that,

you'll also very likely be afforded certain

benefits during your lifetime. So, you know, many organizations, if you

say, I'm going to leave my alma mater

$15,000 in my estate, and you let them know

and you provide them that documentation, you may be

afforded some sort of recognition, whether that's on a donor wall or

maybe you name a scholarship, or at larger amounts, you can name a

particular facility or a room or something like that. And so when you go

through that more formal process, there may be some advantages

of enjoying the benefit of your future gift. If you work with

that institution. I won't say downside,

but the other piece of that is you are very

likely, unless you're an attorney yourself and you're doing all of your estate planning

yourself, you will likely have to go to an attorney

to get an official will or trust document

created and filed and make sure that it comports with all the

state laws, just to be on the safe side. Yes,

yes. That's really good information. And, you know, honestly, like, when I

was walking the halls of the university and stuff, or when I get, like, the

updates, I'm like, oh, I would love to have a grant in my

name, or, you know, my name on the wall with a plaque so all the

students can walk past my name, too. You know, it's like legacy that

you leave, and I feel like that's really important.

You know, maybe not for everybody, but for some people, I feel

like legacy is important. Yeah. And,

you know, one of the things that we talk about, you know, if you're in

the development space for a nonprofit, particularly universities

or community foundations, things of that nature,

we talk often about, maybe it doesn't make sense.

You give it all away, either

current use or in a deferred gift capacity. But maybe you

create a vehicle where your children or your grandchildren

can take over that responsibility of being sort of a

family philanthropist. And very popular these

days are donor advice funds. These are funds that you and

I could go out and establish today. Typically, they're very

low minimums for some entities. So, for example, fidelity,

which is one of the largest in the country, you can create a donor advise

fund online, probably in about seven to ten minutes.

And, you know, you put $100 in there, and you could

budget into your monthly bills. You know, I want

to put x number of dollars in this donor advise fund. And then every year,

or maybe not every year, you can choose when you can

send gifts from that donor advise fund to your

organization of choice. And oftentimes, if you

forecast 30, 40 years down the road in your life and say, well, I've

got quite a bit of money in this account, instead of saying, well,

I want it all to go away as soon as I pass away, I want

to go to my alma mater, you could say, well, in

fact, I would actually prefer my children or my grandchildren to,

to learn the value of philanthropy. You teach them throughout their life, and then

they take over the responsibility of issuing grants from that donor

advise fund, which is very popular. It's, you

know, for anyone who's familiar with family foundations, this is

very similar construct, except for it's a lot easier to

establish a lot less burden in terms of annual reporting and

requirements with the IR's and that kind of thing. Awesome. Awesome.

Okay, so let's recap these options. Cause I know we covered a lot.

So we have adding as a beneficiary, so you can add the

organization as a beneficiary. You could do it yourself online

generally. Then we have just giving a gift.

So, you know, credit card, debit card, check, cash,

whatever that looks like. That's what people are most familiar with.

We have the donor advice funds that we just talked about

where you can open an account and then make gifts from that account.

And what am I missing? I feel like I'm missing something. So

I don't know if we talked about it yet, but I would just add one

more in there, which is advantageous to

most folks if you've started to build a stock

portfolio or a mutual fund or any

sort of brokerage account or IRA,

even if you are not old enough to be in

your retirement years, if you have a brokerage account and you have stock and it

appreciates in value, instead of selling that

stock and incurring a tax liability where you're going to have to pay capital

gains on it, and depending on how much you make from your

primary job, that could be a significant amount. You can

also transfer those shares of stock

directly to your nonprofit. Nonprofits.

Again, they make this process pretty easy, but you save immediate,

save on the capital gains tax and you get

gift credits and, you know, and, you know, most importantly,

you're supporting, you know, whichever institution that you care most

about. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you can just gift

stock and they'll, you know, use it however

they see fit. That's right. Awesome. Or how

you. You could. You can be very specific, too. You could say, hey, I've got

$50,000 in Apple stock. And, you know, if I cash in

on it right now, you know, I'm going to have a big tax liability. But

maybe you, you consider giving that away to university. You could talk with

their development team. You could say, I'm interested

in learning more about endowing a scholarship or establishing a

scholarship. And their team will most certainly work with you on that.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so we have that. And then

the other thing I forgot was trust. You can put it in a trust

in order to gift that. So thank you so much, Dean. This is a ton

of information. I'm even like, oh, I gotta listen to this

again. But if people were interested in

learning more about you or philanthropic giving

or anything of that sort, how could they find you?

So I would definitely encourage I am all over LinkedIn often

sharing some great tidbits from all the big

financial institutions about philanthropy. So I would encourage looking me

up online. So it's Dean Castaldo on

LinkedIn. You can't miss me. I work both at the Naval Academy

foundation but also in the navy and

fellow UNCG alum, so that's probably the easiest way to find

me. If you'd reach out, connect with me, send me a note, and I'd be

happy to connect by phone or email. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so

much, Dean, and I'll make sure I have all of that information in the show

notes for you so you can just click on the little link and go to

Dean's page. So thank you so much for coming on the show

and talking about this with us. I know for sure I have never talked

about all of these options, so I appreciate the conversation

and I'm sure the audience has taken something away from this. So

like I said, I appreciate you and I hope you have a wonderful rest of

your day. Thanks. Take care. Bye.

Thank you for listening, joining and being a part of the Money Talk with TIFF

podcast this week. You can check Tiff out every Thursday for a

new Money talk podcast, but if you just can't wait until next week,

you can listen to previous podcast

episodes@moneytalkwitht.com or

follow TIFF on all social media platforms at

moneytalkwitht. Until next time, spend wise

by spending less than you make a word to the money wise is

always sufficient.