Giving Back Like a Pro | PGA Players' Podcast

Aaron Goldberg (00:01):

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the PGA Players Podcast. This is your host, Aaron Goldberg, certified financial planner and private wealth advisor at AWM Capital. Today, we're going to talk about giving back. This is something that's really important to me. Something that's very important to AWM and it's really what's very important to the PGA tour community as a whole. That's one of the things that I miss the most probably about being out on tour is the interaction with the community and the involvement that we were able to have with a lot of the charities, both in the communities we played in and at home. We did everything from visits at children's hospital, special Olympics events, boys and girls clubs, First Tee. I mean the list goes on and it's so neat to be able to reach out and interact with a lot of the kids.

Aaron Goldberg (00:54):

But with a lot of the people that are involved with those organizations. It really hits home for us. And when we're out on the road, multiple weeks in a row, so much of the year we're out on the road, it's a way for us to stay grounded, stay humble and really remind us what's important. Because as everyone knows, when you're chasing a little white ball around and it's not quite going how you want it, things can get negative pretty fast, so it's a good way to keep things in perspective. So a couple of things we want to keep in mind when we're going to be supporting charities, supporting causes. At the end of the day, we want to figure out number one, who do we want to support? And that could be multiple organizations, that could be multiple charities, that could be multiple entities, and then two, how are we going to do it?

Aaron Goldberg (01:46):

So the how can be time or it can be money or it can be our likeness in terms of helping raise other funds outside of just the funds that we're going to donate or the time that we're going to donate. So what these three choices then develop are a plan of what's going to be the best conduit to do this. So, as we start to get involved with charities and giving back and organizations, one of the benefits to us on top of everything else is the tax deductions and the ability to save some money on the tax side. And guys and girls, don't feel bad about that. That is a benefit for all the other benefits that you're giving. It's not selfish to try to be as tax efficient as possible when working with a charity or an organization, because the more efficient you are with it, the more that you can help and support these organizations.

Aaron Goldberg (02:47):

So think about it in that context, there's really three main ways that you're going to support an organization with money. And it's going to be with direct donations, setting up your own, what's called a donor advised fund, which you donate to either every year or in one year, and then you can make gifts from that fund in the future or you can set up your own foundation. All three their pros, all three of their cons and really, it depends on how you want to support a charity. If you want to start your own, that's probably going to be when you go the foundation route, but you will also realize that it's going to be more costly to do that. So less of the dollars that you're giving, less of the dollars that you raise are going to actually end up in the hands of those charities and the community that you're trying to support.

Aaron Goldberg (03:41):

It's not necessarily a bad thing because that can help with running events and raising more funds, but we just want to know that for context. Donor advised fund is going to be really useful in terms of if we have money that we want to donate to a few different charities or even one, but someone that we want to support, it can be the most tax efficient in terms of we can donate in one year, we can donate in multiple years, but let's say we want to donate in one year, it doesn't all have to get dispersed to that organization or charity all at once. We can actually wait to pick who it's going to be dispersed to. And then with a direct donation, obviously you're just writing a check or giving something to those charities directly is also a great way to do it, there's just less flexibility there.

Aaron Goldberg (04:31):

So, one thing that we want to keep in mind when we're doing these gifting is cash is going to be great, but if we have some stock or an asset that's appreciated quite a bit, let's say you have an investment account where you bought Apple stock 10 years ago for $100,000 and now it's worth $800,000. Well, rather than selling that and paying capital gains on all 700 of the gain, we can donate the actual shares without selling them, pay no tax on the capital gains and actually get a tax deduction for the full amount. So again, it's not about trying to take something away from the gift, it's just trying to be as efficient as possible. With the tax brackets we're in, we're going to be paying a ton in normal income taxes but even if it's on capital gains, we're still going to be 20% most likely on the federal side and then your State is going to most likely treated as ordinary income.

Aaron Goldberg (05:41):

In California, that's all of a sudden a third of what your gains would be is gone and that's just less that can go to the charity. So we want to just make sure that we're being as efficient as possible to maximize what our impact is. Over time, if we decide our charitable causes and the things that we want to support have grown and the amount that we want to support these charities has grown to an amount that, hey, year over year, we're really putting together quite a bit of money and we're helping raise a lot of funds, whether it's through our own events. There's a ton of great events that players put on, everything from golf tournaments to concerts, to outings, I've seen car stuff. There's a huge gamut of things that you can do to help raise funds from other people to pool it all up to support the causes that you want to support.

Aaron Goldberg (06:41):

That's when we're probably going to get into starting a foundation but again, like I said earlier, there's going to be some more costs on the administrative side that we just need to be aware of. So that's where working with somebody on your team, both on the tax side and on the wealth advising side, that's really knowledgeable and experienced on the foundation and charity side can be a huge advocate for you because at the end of the day the reason why we help the athletes that we do maximize their net worth is our goal is to have a bigger impact in your community. Whether that's your community is going to be your family and your future generations, whether that's going to be the community you live in, whether that's going to be the charities that you support. We want to make sure that you as the client, you as the athlete are going to be able to have the most impact possible.

Aaron Goldberg (07:35):

And that's really where we come in or other advisors in your world that if they have the experience where they come in to help you reach that maximum potential for that impact. So if this hits home for you and you want to talk about it, please reach out at pgaplayerspodcast.com. We can hopefully answer some of your questions. We're going to be doing more podcasts that dive a little bit deeper into charitable organizations, ways that you can help support other charities and other foundations that have gone this route in the future. But really appreciate you guys listening. I hope that you continue to tune in and until next time, stay hungry, stay humble and always be a pro.

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