Philanthropic Giving
Do you have a desire to help create a better world? Is there a particular cause that is close to your heart? Giving can take the form of money, goods or services, with around 1 in 4 charities depending on giving and philanthropy for 50% or more of their total income, and smaller charities depending even more heavily on giving and philanthropy for a higher proportion of their income compared with larger or more well known charities.
We have a particular speciality and passion in helping our clients to identify their philanthropic ideals. From this we then create a strategic plan that aligns them with their goals in a tax effective way.
Tax Effective Philanthropy & Charitable Giving
Our in-house Tax Group integrate your taxation and accounting affairs with your strategic philanthropic goals and on-going wealth management.
Our specialised services include; tax planning, entity administration, ASIC and ATO compliance, superannuation management, the establishment of self-managed super funds, family discretionary trusts and companies, as well as superannuation and tax advice.
The team is highly qualified and is led by Ross Rickard, who is a Fellow of Certified Practising Accountants (CPA) Australia and is a Chartered Tax Adviser. Ross is an advisor and Board member for several Not For Profit organisations and has a wealth of experience in this area.
Our Philanthropic Journey
Over the last decade Financial Professionals Group has been active in its community volunteer work and charitable giving. We have progressively refocused and fine-tuned our contribution in this area to maximise the good we can do and the benefit for our community.
Our volunteer work really got more focused about 10 years ago, in the wake of the GFC in early 2010, the Financial Professionals staff were a little shell shocked after buffeting our clients fears and concerns after such a dramatic event. Ross decided to take the team to Laos to facilitate a personal growth and fulfilment experience by providing them with some material community service to give back to those less fortunate and put their worries in Australia in true perspective.
Having a senior staff member who had spent 15 years in Asia, including Laos, providing economic and agricultural advice, we had a rough idea what we would like to achieve but little idea how to actually do it.
On that trip we forged a relationship with a village in Sanakham, gaining authority from the Army General in that region and utilising a friend who took 2 weeks off his position with UNICEF to translate for us.
Our efforts were focused on establishing micro-businesses and pragmatic support for the village, as the concept of charity was not encouraged in Laos.
As a result of that visit, over the coming years we have successfully established the following microbusinesses;
- A chicken farming project
- A mushroom farming project
- A fish farming project
- Built a large village market structure for all which is used for all villages in the area to come and trade their produce 3 days per week
Other Village Projects
- Built a preschool at the village and assisted in the funding of the rebuilding of the primary school, which was so dilapidated that the walls had fallen down and the floor was dirt. The children of the area have benefited immensely from this, both in tangible ways and emotional/psychological ways, as they now feel such pride in their school, and enthusiasm to attend.
These projects were initially funded by the Financial Professionals Group business alone but more recently by a Private Ancillary Fund that we run. Our work at the village continues.
Additional Projects in Laos
On that same trip we established a relationship with an orphanage in Suan Luang. Over the last few years we have funded the building of a dam and the piping from the mountains to the orphanage, over 2.3km away, to provide continual water for the children to drink, bathe and wash with, as well as allowing them to irrigate their individual food plots that each class maintain for their subsistence.
We also financially supported ‘COPE’ which assists in the identification and removal of unexploded bombs left after the Vietnam war, which still maim people to this day.
Evolution of our philanthropic journey
The journey we have been on led to establishing a Private Ancillary Fund as a result of the generosity of a much cherished client. Financial Professionals Group provide all principal and operational support for this charity at no charge as part of our personal contribution to this amazing opportunity to give back to our community. The charity is called The Cody Foundation and one of its aims is to support those extremely good causes that are not otherwise fully supported by the public as they are not as visual or just new in their endeavours.
Read more about Cody Foundation here.