Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp has a long tradition of providing a broad range of services to charitable organizations and their donors, including the formation of nonprofit entities and processing their applications for state and federal tax exemption and counseling nonprofit boards concerning a wide variety of issues, including employee relations (in conjunction with our Labor & Employment Group), policies and procedures and trustee responsibilities. We also advise clients concerning regulation by state and local authorities of fundraising activities.

We have considerable expertise in the legal and tax aspects of charitable gift planning, and have developed a national reputation for innovation and creativity in structuring current and deferred charitable gifts. A primary strategy of our work in planned giving is to integrate the donor’s financial planning with his or her philanthropic objectives. This practice group regularly drafts charitable remainder trusts and other documentation of charitable gifts. We also design ESOP transactions including the use of charitable remainder trusts, to accomplish charitable objectives and obtain meaningful tax benefits. We make a special effort to develop systems to deliver services and documents routinely required by charities in their development programs at the lowest possible cost.

At any given time we are doing work for dozens of public charities. Representative long-time clients of this practice group include:

• Amnesty International of USA
• California Community Foundation
• California Institute of Technology
• Claremont McKenna College
• Greenpeace 
• Jewish Community Foundation
• Los Angeles Music Center
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Salvation Army
• The Nature Conservancy
• UCLA Foundation
• Whittier College
• World Vision