Tax season has arrived! It’s time to dig through that shoebox of donation receipts, review bank statements to make sure you remembered everything, and email nonprofits to track down missing documents. Well, that sounds like fun.

Philanthropic planning is an important element of overall legal and financial planning. By discussing charitable goals with your clients, you can help them increase their impact, decrease tax liability, and leave a lasting legacy. Along the way, you deepen your relationship with them as you give them a space to talk about their values and priorities.

This issue of Charitable Insights follows the story of donor Laurina Harper and illustrates how donors can easily execute a Gift Intent Memo to communicate their unique charitable intent for assets received through their will, trust, or beneficiary designation forms.

Many individuals donate their qualified charitable distribution (QCD)—or, more colloquially, a charitable IRA rollover— directly to a qualifying nonprofit of their choice to provide immediate operational support. This approach makes sense in the case of smaller annual QCDs, but if individuals are considering donating tens of thousands of dollars to charities in a given year, there might be more strategic options worth considering.

The Columbus Foundation is pleased to announce the 2025 Summer Fellows and nonprofit host sites.

Browse our recent press releases, award-winning annual reports, community research reports, newsletters, and more.

The Big Give is a dynamic, 25-hour online giving event that provides a collective boost to the 1,100+ nonprofits in The Giving Store. In these unprecedented times, the needs of our community are greater than ever and these organizations are at the heart of meeting those needs. The Big Give is an opportunity to unite and lift up those who serve others in the community!

Create an account to access specific forms such as submitting scholarship recipients or to manage event registrations.

It is the policy of The Columbus Foundation that its operations are conducted according to the highest standard of integrity, and that its Governing Committee members, officers, employees, consultants, volunteers, vendors, and other agents avoid situations that might conflict with their responsibilities on behalf of the Foundation.

Vice President for Community Research and Grants Management Dan A. Sharpe shares details about the most recent evolution of The Columbus Foundation's grantmaking strategy—our most agile, responsive, and inclusive grantmaking, to date, and one that better reflects the intersecting qualities of race equity with class, gender, and climate change.