Most of what we talk about on the podcast is the same job seen from different angles: build the wealth, protect it, grow it, and make it last, so that your money outlives you rather than the other way around. But there is a question that comes up an awful lot once people are comfortable they will be grand for the rest of their lives. It is quieter than the others, and it is harder to answer. Not “how do I make this last?” but “what do I actually want it to do?”

For a growing number of Irish families, part of the answer is philanthropy. Not the chequebook-on-the-kitchen-table version, but strategic philanthropy: giving that is planned, intentional, and sits alongside the pension and the estate plan rather than being bolted on after them. To get under the bonnet of how that actually works in Ireland, I sat down with Denise Charlton, CEO of Community Foundation Ireland.

What Community Foundation Ireland actually is

First things first: what is it? Community Foundation Ireland is itself a charity, and it is a mechanism for giving, part of a global movement of around 2,000 such foundations worldwide. It has been going 25 years, works with roughly 5,000 community and charitable partners across the island, and currently looks after about 120 individual, family and corporate funds.

Denise describes the work in two halves: the head and the heart. The head is the unglamorous machinery, the governance, due diligence, reporting and administrative hygiene most donors have no wish to run themselves. The heart is the strategic side, matching what a donor cares about (climate and nature, equality, communities, the arts, whatever it happens to be) to organisations doing the work on the ground. Her own summary is hard to beat: take the burden out of giving, and put the joy back into it.

The barrier nobody quite says out loud

Before any of the structure matters, there is a fear that stops an awful lot of people giving at all. We have all seen the headlines about charities and where the money ended up. It is a genuine worry, and to her credit Denise met it head on.

Community Foundation Ireland is a charity itself, with what she calls robust due diligence, quality and risk management. The part I found reassuring is the red-light system. Where money has gone to an organisation and something later goes wrong, they can catch it, recover the funds, and reinvest them in something similar on the donor's behalf. In the recent high-profile cases, that is exactly what happened. Donors were told early, the money was retrieved, and it was redirected. For someone weighing up a six-figure gift, that is not a footnote. It is the whole question.

It helps to keep the sector in perspective too. The Irish voluntary and community sector is enormous, with roughly one in eight people employed in it on Denise's figures and around 14% of the population volunteering. There is an awful lot of good being done, quietly.

Charity versus strategic philanthropy

So if you are already writing cheques to a few good causes, what exactly is the difference? Denise was clear that both are valid, and neither is the wrong way to give. What strategic philanthropy adds is structure and intention. Ad-hoc giving often feels scattered: a lot of asks coming at you, no real way to see whether any of it moved the dial, and a quiet sense that it could be more deliberate. What the Foundation does is put a shape on it, a strategy, a way to monitor where the money actually goes, and an honest read on the impact. For a family it can also hold very different passions in one place, with one person pulled towards climate, a parent towards education, a young adult towards mental health, all under one roof.

What does that pay-off look like? It tends to show up over years, not weeks. Among the Foundation's partners: a climate fund in Mayo, shaped with research from UCD and now in its second year; afforestation work with groups like Home Tree; around 230 communities working with an ecologist on nature and biodiversity plans; and an open grant round, like the one behind the RTÉ Toy Show Appeal, turning public generosity into structured funding. None of that is a single cheque. It is patient, structured giving with a strategy behind it.

The Donor Advised Fund: the practical starting point

The mechanism Denise returned to most often was the Donor Advised Fund. The simplest way to think of it is your own charitable fund, without the administrative weight of setting up a private foundation. You contribute to Community Foundation Ireland; the money is held and invested; and you advise, over time, on where it should go. You can name it, give it a mission, bring your family in, and lean on the Foundation's team for where each euro will do the most good.

It bends to how hands-on you want to be. Some donors direct it precisely, down to “young people in Tipperary, with a focus on addiction and mental health”. Others say, honestly, that they have no idea where to start, and build it out as they go. Others again want complete confidentiality and let the Foundation act as the trusted intermediary. Grants can flow through a closed round, where the Foundation shortlists a dozen or so organisations and you choose, or an open round. The RTÉ Toy Show Appeal is the best-known example of an open round, turning public generosity into structured grant-making.

And the entry point is lower than most people assume: between €25,000 and €50,000. Plenty of donors start there on purpose, to dip a toe in and see how the whole thing feels, then scale up once they are comfortable.

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What it actually costs

One question worth asking of any giving structure: how much of a euro donated actually reaches the cause, and what does the Foundation take for running it? Denise was straightforward about this. Fees are agreed upfront in the fund agreement, before a donor commits, so there are no surprises later. On its own endowment, the Foundation takes 5% a year: 1% towards its own operations, and 4% back out again as grants. It keeps the operational side lean, mostly staff time and expertise, and every donor knows exactly what they are paying for before they start.

Where the Irish tax picture fits

A word on tax, and let me be clear whose lane this is. Denise's expertise is the giving, not the tax code, so what follows is my own Irish footnote. Check it against your own circumstances before acting. Two things are worth knowing.

First, the Charitable Donation Scheme. If you give €250 or more in a year to an approved body, Revenue grosses the gift up. Here is the bit people get wrong, though: since 2013 that top-up goes to the charity, not back into your own pocket, at a flat blended rate of 31%. In practice a €1,000 gift is worth about €1,449 to the charity once they reclaim the tax, and a €250 gift about €362. There is a €1m annual ceiling on what qualifies. So the relief is real and generous, just not as a personal refund, and no longer “better the higher your own tax rate”, which was the pre-2013 rule.

Second, legacy. A gift or inheritance taken for charitable purposes is exempt from Capital Acquisitions Tax under section 76 of the CAT Consolidation Act. A charitable bequest, or an endowment seeded on your death, therefore sits outside the 33% CAT net that catches most other transfers. For families already weighing the €400,000 Group A threshold and what spills over it when passing wealth to the next generation, that is worth having on the table.

The real point is not the tax relief. It is that the giving conversation, how estate planning fits together, and having a will in place, all belong in the same room, not three separate ones.

Bringing in the next generation

One use of a Donor Advised Fund struck me as genuinely valuable: it is a way to bring children and grandchildren into a conversation about wealth and values, not just assets. Reviewing applications together, deciding where the giving goes, seeing what impact actually looks like, it teaches something a simple transfer of money never will. Denise has seen parents set up endowed funds for adult children who are at the busiest stage of life, young kids and careers in full flight, so that there is something meaningful waiting for them to engage with when the time is right.

Endowments and legacy giving

For larger estates, the endowment is the most permanent structure of all. The capital is invested in perpetuity, and the returns are granted out year after year to the causes you have chosen. The Foundation has grown its own endowment from €1m to around €60m over its 25 years, run with an expert committee and an investment manager. A donor's endowed fund is an irrevocable gift, but it can be attributed to a place or a theme, and adapted as the world changes. An endowment created today might be funding work in 2060 that does not exist yet, so a degree of flexibility is built in by design.

Why this is coming up now

There is a macro reason this question is surfacing more often. An awful lot of money is sitting still in Ireland, somewhere in the order of €120 to €160 billion in household deposits, alongside a large wave of intergenerational wealth now moving down the line. A meaningful slice of that is more than people will ever spend in their own lifetimes. Denise's view, and it is hard to argue with, is that philanthropy is one of the most underused things you could do with it.

Where to start

If you are curious but unsure, the first step is smaller than you would think. It is a conversation. What matters most to you? What kind of change would you like to see? What does the legacy actually look like in practice? You do not need those answered before you make contact; they are exactly what the first chat is designed to work through. Sometimes it is a quick coffee and you might not hear back for a while. Sometimes it moves in a matter of days.

If you have reached the point where the “what for?” question is louder than the “how much?” question, it might be worth a conversation. With us, about how giving fits your overall plan. And with Community Foundation Ireland, about the giving itself.

Two things stayed with me from the conversation. Denise mentioned, almost in passing, that President Connolly recently opened one of their events, for a community wellbeing project some of their donors had backed, and told the room it had given her hope in a dark time. And when I asked her for a book, she pointed to Phil Buchanan's work (in the episode she names it “Giving While Living”; the book and podcast are actually titled “Giving Done Right”) as a clear-eyed place to start thinking it through.

I hope this helps.

Paddy Delaney QFA RPA APA

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About the guest

Denise Charlton is Chief Executive of Community Foundation Ireland, the country's leading philanthropic foundation. Her career spans senior leadership at the Immigrant Council of Ireland and Women's Aid; she was a founder of Marriage Equality, and she currently sits on the board of Cuan, the State's statutory agency for sexual and gender-based violence. You can find Community Foundation Ireland at communityfoundation.ie.

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