As a gift officer it's really my role to talk about philanthropy with professional advisors. And these are people that are very good at what they do, but often times it's in their niche. They are great stockbrokers; they're great at advising clients on markets and retirement planning. They're great at advising clients on estate planning and their legacy or maybe just doing their taxes and the complex tax planning.

Where I feel I come in and add value and can shine is around philanthropy and really having and bringing up that conversation that philanthropy should be part of any complex plan for whether it is part of your estate plan or part of your financial plan or your tax planning.

Philanthropy goes across all of those areas and I feel like it's my role to educate advisers so they can then educate their clients when they're looking to make an impact in community.

So I think one of the most exciting things about this work is the opportunity to work with an advisor when they bring that complex asset to our attention.

One of the ones that we talk about a lot when we talk to advisors about our ability to work with complex assets is the time where we were able to accept gifts of highly depreciated farm equipment from a southern Minnesota farmer who was looking to retire from the business and they had about a million dollars in farm equipment that had been pretty much depreciated all the way to nothing over the years. But it still had significant value and so with their attorney and tax advisor we were able to help them place that farm equipment into a charitable remainder trust with a flip provision.

We accepted that into the trust and then we held an auction and we auctioned off the farm equipment and raised a million dollars and now that's a million dollar charitable fund that's generating an income stream for that farmer but also going to have a nice charitable impact for the community.

I think it's really important for professional advisors if they're really trying to have a holistic approach in their client service, to ask them about charitable giving. Oftentimes there's a misconception. I think advisors feel that they shouldn't talk about charitable giving or philanthropy with their clients because it's not their place. It's such a personal decision but a lot of research suggests that high net worth individuals want to hear that from their advisors because the advisors are the experts they go to about all financial decisions they make.

And so really I think where there's such a great opportunity for an advisor to deepen and expand a relationship with the client is if they are asking about, you know, the charitable giving.

I think one of the greatest things about the Foundation is that we're willing to have any conversation with anyone about how they can make a really significant impact in the community. So whether that's giving a cow or whether that's giving soybeans or the equipment or the land the farm sits on, we're happy to be a resource and again that's what's so fun about the work.