More Money Podcast - 402 Reshaping the Way You Give to Charity - Founder and CEO of Charitable Impact, John Bromley

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

We talk a lot about investing, budgeting, and spending our money... but what about giving it away? An often overlooked but important element of personal finance is making sure our money flows through our communities and helps make the world a safer, kinder and better place. That's why I invited founder and CEO of Charitable Impact, John Bromley, on the podcast to discuss the importance of philanthropy, how to give in alignment with your values, and how to donate to make the biggest impact. Make sure to check out after this episode Charitable Impact. I stumbled upon it and just think it's such a great tool to help you donate your money to multiple causes through one simple account while also giving you that oh-so-nice charitable tax receipt for tax time. Follow me: Instagram @jessicaimoorhouse Threads @jessicaimoorhouse TikTok @jessicaimoorhouse Facebook @jessicaimoorhouse YouTube @jessicamoorhouse LinkedIn - Jessica Moorhouse For full episode show notes and transcript visit jessicamoorhouse.com/402 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. This is your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is episode 402. We only have a few more weeks left of the show until I get on summer break. And I wanted to make sure these last few episodes were amazing. And for this episode, I really want to focus on a topic that doesn't get enough attention on this podcast and in general in the personal finance community, which is charitable giving. And that's why I invited John Bromley on the show. He's the CEO of Charitable Impact, which is an online giving platform for Canadians to develop, navigate, and carry out their charitable goals. And what I thought was so interesting about charitable impact is it really

does help you make the really tough decision of, okay, who should I donate to? I think often, you know, if we're presented with like, hey, can you donate to my, you know, run for the cure or, hey, there's this GoFundMe or whatever, we're like, oh, yeah, absolutely, I'll donate to that. But then, you know, if it's not in our face, whatever we're like oh yeah absolutely i'll donate to that but then you know if it's not in our face if we're not like thinking about where should i give my money to we just don't donate and sometimes it's it's you know for me even especially like i make a like concerted effort to do a donation at least once per year in a lump sum usually at the end of the year around kind of the holidays but But I even realized, and having lots of guests on the show who do come from charitable backgrounds and philanthropy, it's actually really important to give more

regularly. These charities actually really prefer getting those more regular deposit, so they can kind of rely on that and budget accordingly. And charitable impact is kind of a great way to set that up. You can donate money and it kind of gets on that and budget accordingly. And charitable impact is kind of a great way to set that up. You can donate money and it kind of gets into an account. You get that charitable receipt, that tax credit receipt, which is lovely. But you get to choose what charity you want it to go to or multiple charities, and you can change it up. So basically, it's like you're making the donation first, and then you get to choose who gets it later, which I think is a really interesting concept. But we talk a lot about that. We talk about charitable giving in Canada and some of the stats out there. We're

actually becoming a little less charitable. And you know why it's so important to integrate donations into your budget, because I mean, I think we as a world, a community, global community or local community, we all benefit. I feel good when I donate and I know it's going to benefit somebody else who is in need. And you know, we really can be the solution. And I think, you know, sometimes we need to remember our dollars have power, they can really change the world. And we need to just, you know, go forth and take action. So with that, let's get to that interview with John Bromley. Welcome, John, to the More Money Podcast. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show.

I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. You're so welcome. I was really looking forward to talking to you because, I mean, obviously, you're very much in the kind of charity philanthropic space. And that's a topic that I feel like often gets forgotten in the personal finance space. But I really do think charitable giving, philanthropy, giving back in whatever form, whether it's your time or money, should be an essential part of every kind of financial plan, right? Because we may not realize it, but our dollars really do and our time or effort really have an impact on others. And I think sometimes we don't really, you know, like we can't really digest that because sometimes we don't see it,

you know, we make a donation and then we're like, well, I don't know what happened with that. But I know this is a really, you know, important topic for you. So to kind of get started, you're the CEO of charitable impact, you want to kind of start talking about your journey to get to where you are, because you used to work in corporate finance, which I thought that was very fascinating. And and and why you wanted to be part of this organization? Yeah, so I did used to work in corporate finance. And that's what I thought I wanted to do with my life, to be honest. And if I started all over again, I would probably do the same thing. Because, you know, I learned so much doing it, I really do appreciate finance, even more so than accounting, find it more fun, economics, all that kind of

stuff. But you know, I just didn't find the sort of culture fit I wanted for myself in the working world of corporate finance. And that led me to just start to explore other things. And at the time, I'm lucky to have two loving parents that are still around. And at the time, this is 20 years ago, I was like, oh, what should I do? You know, mom, dad, what do you think? And with my dad in particular, he started to say, well, why don't you look at this? Why don't you look at that and help me out with some things while you continue going along your own path? And that helping him out with a few things led to me learning more about charity, you know, from a legal perspective, compliance, sort of fundraising, all the aspects that drive the charity sector,

because he happened to be, you know, he's my dad, but he just happened to be one of the pioneers of charity law in Canada. So I stumbled into learning a whole ton about charitable giving. And from there, I would say that I kind of accidentally became an entrepreneur. I never had a goal or a pathway that I saw to become an entrepreneur. I never thought that way really in my life. Yet when I got into the charity space and learned it really deeply, something that's difficult to do because there's nowhere really to go to learn about giving, I ran into things that needed addressing. And because I understood the sector so well, thanks to my dad and getting to work with

many of his clients, I birthed Charitable Impact, which in short was to address problems that donors have. So much of what we do on the charity world is focused on charities themselves, and that's really important work. But who's out there working for the donors, helping them understand how to go about giving, how to manage of the problems you saw within it? Because I think as a donor, we have no clue. It's a very foreign industry. I don't know anything really about how lots of these organizations function. And I know at least the minimal stuff that I do know is when I'm looking for charity to donate to, I want to take a look at how much is going to administration and marketing. So I don't want to donate to a company where almost nothing is going back to the actual cause. It's all going to just funding the organization.

You're like, well, what's the point of that? So I'm curious, when you were at that stage, what were some things that you're like, this is a problem? How is no one talking about this? Well, you kind of just answered my question in that. So what I saw was what you just described. I saw a whole bunch of people who were well-intentioned, educated, knew what they cared about. They could identify,, yeah, that's important, but I actually care more about this. And here's why, but didn't quite know how to go about creating change for it. And sometimes that was at the level of, oh, well, how do I identify a charity? You know, are there ways to determine quickly whether or not a charity spends too much

on fundraising administration, something you just said? The answer is yes, there's very quick and easy ways to do that. If you know where to look. And, and but then also, you know, the problems kind of ramp up from there. Oh, maybe something in the higher net worth space, I just sold my company, you know, I've got this big, you know, tax issue, I care about resolving that at some level, and I care about giving back, how do you go about doing it? But I don't know all the charities that I'd give $10 million to right now. How do I go about doing that? Oftentimes, helping people structure projects. Oh, you know, is there a charity for that? Maybe not. Is it Charitable Law? If yes, how do I go about doing it? So really sort of creating the architecture and strategies for people to carry out their giving, starting from a place of good intention where they know what they care about, but not necessarily what to do about it. That's the problem I saw.

In addition to seeing that problem, I saw that, generally speaking, no one was there to address it. So, so, so, I mean, outside of very niche places that really were only accessible to the most serious hardcore charity people and or the high net worth crowd, and usually actually the ultra high net worth crowd, not even, you know, the really rich people, just the really, really rich people, you know, and that wasn't cool, because everyone cares about something changing the world. And everyone has something to give back towards creating that change, whether it's money or time or talent, you know, or connections that they have. And so I got really excited about addressing that, in part, because I saw the problem as so obviously, and it was weird that no one was really addressing it. And secondly,

and this I wear a bit as a burden, but I really actually thought, and I continue to think, I actually had the skill set to address it. Like I understood enough of sort of human behavior mechanics, finance, thank you, corporate finance, you know, and the charity world and what it's built on top of both sort of philosophically and legally regulation-wide to address it. And again, that's where Charitable Impact was birthed from. So I know a big part of Charitable Impact is obviously curating some of those charities so people can be more aware of them, of the ones that have the biggest impact. So what does that mean? Is it kind of true that some of those really big charities that have been around for decades that do a ton of marketing maybe aren't necessarily the best places to donate to just because they are so big. The CEO is making

a lot of money. You know, sometimes when you see some of these numbers and you do some digging, it's kind of outrageous that you're like, I'm sorry, that CEO for this charity that's all about donating to dying children or something like that is making a million dollars. You're like, that doesn't make any sense. So what are some of the criteria that you started looking at? Like this is important for people to know this is a charity that will, you know, really provide the most value for your dollar.

Well, that's a really interesting question. And I'll try to give you some sense of what we do there. And I'm happy to get into everything you just said. But so first of all, we start with our brand promise, which is you're giving your way, our support, right? So at its base, charitable impact doesn't curate charities, it says, here are all the registered charities in the country, every single one of them is there, you can have the confidence that these are all legitimate charities. So go ahead and choose anyone you want.

And then we provide, you know, publicly available information on them all, which includes things like, hey, how much do they spend on fundraising administration? So you can start to find that more easily. So that, for example, if you, Jessica, or anyone listening, you know, kind of goes,

you know, oh, I don't want to give to one of those charities that spends more than X percent on fundraising administration. You can find that out and please don't want to give to one of those charities that spends more than x percent on fundraising administration you can find that out and and please don't don't do that right so so what we really don't do at some level i mean we're starting to do it through a program we have called cause funds and i'm happy to speak to that but um but what we really don't do is we don't provide and say hey here are the best charities because like, you know, a, you know, I know a lot about charitable giving, but what do

I know about the impact that all these charities have? And the analogy that, and the other thing is that everyone's sort of different, a decent analogy there is restaurants, you know, like, first of all, these are all the restaurants period, right? All the ones with business licenses. So that's what we say. And then we sort of say, Oh, these are like this is japanese food and this is sort of you know you know spanish food and and and but we don't know what people like right and and you might like japanese food but never

tried spanish food and so we really just say here they all are go and try them and and and the charity like a restaurant you know they can exist but they they can exist, but they're not all good. And they're not all good in the eyes of everyone. So one person might rate a restaurant as really good, and another person might go to the exact same restaurant, the exact same chefs and the exact same servers on the day, and sort of have a different experience, maybe because of, you know, the way the wind was blowing at the time, or maybe just because their taste buds are different, right? And so charities are a lot the same way. And so charitable impact really starts from a donor-centric perspective. And it says, how do we give you the tools and create the conditions for you to have the best chance at becoming more comfortable and confident as you give? So underneath everything, there's an account that we give you, and it's a giving account for you. And with that account, you can add money into it.

It's a charitable donation. You get the tax seat right away. And then from there, you can hold the money. You can even make investments with the money if there's enough of it there. And when you're ready to, when you've got the comfort and confidence to actually make a decision that you're good to stick with, send the money to that charity. And Charitable Impact delivers it there for you, in which case you can send it there and let them know who you are. You can give it to them anonymously or, or whatever. So, so we act a little bit, we're like an intermediary between

the donor and the charities where our bias is working for the donors. Um, if someone has questions, they can call us. We've got a philanthropic advisory team. We're there to work with our customers and say, hey, how can we help you understand this stuff better? If they ask us questions about charities and we can help them figure out how to look at charities better, then we do that for sure. But what we try not to do is tell them what charities are the best because we frankly don't know. It's kind of like going to a bank and asking them to pick a stock for you to invest into. Well, I can tell you how to invest in stocks. I can tell you the theory.

I don't know necessarily without too much discussion with you what your risk parameters are, et cetera, et cetera. Therefore, how about you pick the stock and I'll give you the infrastructure to enable to buy that stock and track that stock and hopefully make lots of capital gains from that stock. Well, do you think there will be a point at which the company does have like a customer rating system? Like just giving the, you know, with the example of restaurants, and then you can see with all the users, what are kind of the ones that people are liking the most or feel like they're, you know, they did their research and hey, here's what my opinion is. I don't know if that's

something that you're thinking about. That's such a great thought. You're hired, Jessica. Yeah. So what we know or what I know because I've just spent so much time working in this space is that there are people in society that really do know the merits of pretty much every registered charity in the country. And even more than that, there are people who really know the causal areas. So they're like, oh, if you want to help kids who go to school without food in the morning, here are the three or four charities in your community that do that best. Okay, so there are people that know that. So instead of hiring them

all, because that would be, you know, a huge workforce, we see a future where we give them tools, like really sort of social tools, to really be able to sort of share their opinions and thoughts on these registered charities to help their friends and outside network get a better sense. The goal is to have more people feel confident and comfortable when they participate in charitable giving so that they can that they continue to do it. Because what the problem is, without going too far, see, fewer people today are actually participating in charitable giving than they were yesterday. And so the question is, is that because like, you know, we're becoming less generous, and we care about the world less than we did before? Or is it because something over the past 20-30 years has really changed the level at which we have really gotten comfortable with how to go about participating in community? Right? And I'm of the strong view that generosity is not the problem. People are

still very generous. The problem is rather, they don't quite know how to go about giving. And when they don't feel good about it, they don't do it. Yeah, I mean, that's a big reason why I thought it was so interesting, the infrastructure you created, where it's like, here's an account, you get your charitable receipt right away, and then you can decide who to donate to. Because I've even found this with myself, I typically make a couple lump sum donations to a variety of charities every year. But the hardest part is picking which ones. And because you're taking so much time doing research or thinking about it, and then your life gets busy, and then a month goes by and you didn't make a donation. You know, sometimes I'm scrambling by the end of the year to make that donation so I

can, you know, get it done. And I think this is a really great opportunity for people to make that decision. And I'm sure you've done some research on behavioral economics. It's like, if you don't do it now, you're not going to do it for, you know, you're going to regret and then a year goes by and you didn't make that donation. So having people take that action, and then then make the decisions on where you want it to go, which I thought was a really interesting, smart idea. Because I think that's so true. We're not less generous or charitable. I know so many people want to make an impact.

They just don't know how. And then there's so many more charities than there were 10, 20 years ago. It's actually overwhelming to know which ones should I choose. And maybe I want something more local. And then you do a deep dive and you're like, I don't know what to choose. So this is a really great, I think, funnel to kind of make that. But yeah, kind of going off some of the things that we were just touching on, when people are looking for a charity that has like, this is the one for me, obviously, it's your personal

values, maybe you want something local, maybe you want something animals based. But also, what are some maybe numbers or, you know, just factors that they should look for to be like, oh, this is important. Like you mentioned, I don't want to make a donation to a company that spends more than X percentage on an administration. Is there kind of a number that people should be kind of keep their eye on? Be like, yeah, that means 50% or 80%. There are some guidelines that are theoretic. And it's actually really analogous. It's really the same. It's kind of like, are there numbers to guide you when you're picking stocks, for example,

you know, and how much they spend on administration and people, right? Are there real proper guidelines on like on how much a company should be spending on R&D, research and development, in order to succeed for sure in the future? And what you know if you've spent some time in the corporate world and or the stock market world is that, yeah, there's some general guidelines there that help you establish an understanding in order to determine on a company by company or sector by sector basis, what the norms start to look like. And so the charitable, the charitable, the registered charity world, and in particular, the charitable organization world is no different from that,

right? So so you can say things like well gee like if it's a charity that's been around for 10 years and is and and more and and it's maybe spending over like maybe i don't know i would say something like 30 percent on on on on fundraising administration there might be something going on there right however if it's a brand new charity and they've never heard of them before and they're spending like 80% on fundraising administration and you stop to think about that, it's like, well, that actually makes sense because you know what, in my startup world, you know, I don't know a lot of companies that earn a ton of revenue in year one.

Right. So, so then it comes back to, so what type of donor are you? Are you the type of person that wants to help this fledgling new charity that might be driven by maybe young or new, you know, charity entrepreneurs that have really great ideas, but need to stay alive long enough in order for them to effectuate, you know, or are you the type of donor that wants to come in and support something that's totally established, in which case, sure, be a little bit more critical about the numbers and how they've been spent. Right. So unfortunately, now, here's the unfortunate part is that answer is kind of complicated. Right. And so it's just it'd be nice, wouldn't it be nice if like, you knew you were going to enjoy the restaurant that when you bought those shoes, you knew 100%

that they were going to be the best thing for you. And therefore, you knew the charity you're going to give to was going to be super effective. That would be nice. But it's not like that. And I said, it's unfortunate. But actually, when you start getting into the giving world more, more seriously, it's that aspect of it, in part, that makes it interesting and fun. So so the biggest advice I I give when it comes to sort of thinking about how you go about giving and what you give to is I get cheesy and I talk a lot about love. Like, what do you love? Right? Because and partly it's because of the passion that love brings, right? And so you're dealing with something that you're willing to put up with the wrinkles on. Like, for example, I love my children.

And that helps me through the moments when they do things when I'm not sure if I should love them anymore. Yeah. Right? Okay. And then the other thing is with things that you love, it's not necessarily the case, but it's usually the case. You know something about it, right?

I know something about my children. And as a result of combination of passion with some real knowledge about it, you actually have, you're starting from a stronger place to determine whether or not what they're doing is effective. So for example, if you love the environment, you love being outside, every moment you have free, you spend outside, you go on hikes, in particular, you love the mountains every moment you have free you spend outside you go on hikes in particular you love the mountains and the and the trees okay i'm sitting in vancouver right now place where there's lots of that and you love that and you know about the trees and you know about deciduous and you know about this and you know about that because you spend time reading it

and you enjoy that don't you think you've got the setup to be a pretty decent donor to the environment to be able to go in and find a what happens to be a charity that's doing work in that space and determine whether or not they're probably good right as opposed to loving all that and spending on all your time on that and then being like oh i just got asked to give to this cancer charity should i give to that this isn't me saying no this is me asking you to analyze yourself and go if you're really the type of donor that wants to know whether your donation was effective or not and you don't know anything about science and you don't know anything about cancer and you don't know anything about this or anything about that how are you ever going to assess that i mean maybe the charity's

awesome you just have no idea right so these are one of the things that i really talk about with donors is focus on some of the stuff that gives you a chance, that gives you a chance to have a pretty good idea of whether or not your donation was impactful or not. And then from there, you can start branching out and starting to understand how to really use your time and talent to assess how to place your money well into the sector. Now, you kind of touched on something. Often, at certain points in the year, we are asked to donate. So sometimes it is our decision. We have a plan. We have a schedule. But often, maybe we don't think about it until someone asks us. They have a charity run, or we're at the grocery store, and they ask us to donate, or it's just the season, giving Tuesday or something

like that, which happens in the fall. I know from talking to a lot of people in the charitable space, it's best to give throughout the year, not just those really high impact times, but again, they'll take your money whenever they can. What are some things to think about in terms of maybe shifting from this charitable season kind of schedule that most people are on to making it more a part of your daily life, your monthly life? Should people save some money in advance for when they know there's going to be lots of charitable runs, which I know is probably like throughout the whole spring, summertime? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such a great, that's such great, you're asking such great questions. Thank you. So the first thing that

I'd want to say is that like, you know, especially when it comes to giving, and this is a little different than the stock market, if you're a really social person who's driven by connections and friendships, and maybe that you're a bit extroverted, whatever it is, I don't know. It's totally okay, in my opinion, to give when someone asks, particularly in that friend thing. Oh, you know, my friend's riding their bike for cause A or B. I actually don't even know whether it's cause A or B, but I really want to support this friend. That's, that's like, it's important to recognize that that's giving. But then you want to recognize why you're giving and you're giving to support your friend. Okay. And so that's a, so you should

be assessing the returns you get on your giving when you're doing that, right? If you start going, well, gee, that's a bad charity. And, and you know, you're, you should be reassessing how you're giving. So that's the first comment I want to make is it's okay to give when asked, particularly in a social network scenario, in my opinion. Now, if you're getting asked by a fundraiser on the street, I do think this is where you need to stop and assess. All bias included, okay, this is why I think it's so important that charitable impact is providing giving accounts to people.

Whether you give throughout the year or not, the first thing is just to remember that there's two sides of every charitable gift. One is the releasing the money from your own pocket. Okay, it's the charitable donation at law. You've now let go of the money. The second part of it is how and where do I want that spent? So what cause and what specific charity. Okay. So, so on the, so, so my, my advice is to separate those two things. So maybe you just got a big bonus check, you know, maybe grandma just gave you something for your birthday, take a little slice off the top, put it in your giving account. That type of thinking is, is, is good for some people. Other people say, look, I've got a decent job. Uh, I want it giving to be part of my life. I'm going to take 1% of my salary and just give it away. Every month, I'm going to give $150.

Okay, boom, right? So here now what we're doing is we're establishing a way to be in the giving world, contributing into an account where you're going to have to allocate money from, but making it a part of your life without getting too complicated about, well, gee, if I don't know what charities to give to yet, should I even be donating money? Because the answer at charitable impact is yes, you should be donating money, even if you don't know, because, you know, it's like healthy eating or healthy lifestyle, you should always be doing something healthy, even if you don't know yet whether you prefer running to yoga, you can figure that out later by practicing and going and doing stuff with friends. Okay.

So continually giving through the year or giving lump sums through the year or even once a year is totally fine, but you need to make a decision what type of donor you are, how you manage your own money. And that way, whatever you do with your other life, your vacation and your free spending life, I would say, start there and do the same thing with charitable giving. Then when it comes to allocating the money, that's where we'd really say, okay, we'll dive into what you care about, look to who your friends and social networkers that cares about some of the same things, and get involved with them and start maybe giving money out on a social basis. Because when you come together with people, there's more research that can be spread out.

You can come together and have a nice dinner or a bottle of wine and have fun about it, just like we do with book clubs and other things like that. And then there's more shared accountability, too, on what we're doing. So I really think that the important thing is for people just to sort of think around their charitable giving budget, the way they do other things, maybe like going to restaurants and maybe like vacations and approaching it in a really type of a similar way. I'm curious too, since, because this was just happened to me the other day, I feel like lots of grocery stores around this time of year are like hey donate do you want to donate a dollar to xyz cause i always

say no and this is why it's like i i'm not getting a charitable receipt for my money and i know the corporation is just making they're just there's there's i don't know i just don't want to be involved i would you know i'd rather give personally know exactly who it's going to and where and how it's going to be used than let the corporation take my money and then do whatever they want with it. Because sometimes you're like, wait, what charity is that? Oh, it's a charity that they set up? Wait. You think it's going to helping sick kids, but really it's going somewhere else. Do you have any, during your time researching it and looking into this, do you have any thoughts on that? Do you think it's like, oh, whatever, it's a couple bucks,

and if you can make an impact, do it however you can, or maybe it's best to do it, you know, say, not right now, and then do some research on your own to see if you actually want to donate to that charity, because sometimes you don't have a minute to look at, wait, whose charity is this? What is this? It's another great question. I mean, there's sort of two i have a love hate relationship with that stuff too um also i say i appreciate your cynicism i think that it's like i think it's it's it's like it's totally legit that cynicism right you know why are these corporations doing that 80 of canadians say they give to charity 20 actually claim% actually use the tax receipt to claim it on their donation. Okay, so there's a pretty big spread there.

Like there's a huge delta, huge. So something's going on there. And I think when you get to 80% of people actually say they give, it's because like, I don't know, 80% of people at some point during the year said yes at the till when they were asked. And gee, so I'm a terrible person. I would sort of question that so one of the concerns i have with some of that giving is it gives people like the excuse to be like oh yeah i'm a terrible person because i gave

a little bit of money away at the till a little bit and here they are making you know 80 000 bucks or 100 000 bucks and they gave you know they rounded up on there, right? So I have some cynicism there in terms of how it translates into the market. Oh yeah, I've totally given, done my thing this year, you know, next, right? On the one hand. On the other hand, because so few of us participate in thoughtful, regular charitable giving,

without these kind of like you know oh most people are going to say yes to a dollar types of scenarios you a lot of money doesn't get raised for this for the charity sector right so it's also important to recognize that these types of things do raise money for the charity sector however however they only raise money for the charities that these corporations choose. And that's usually very biased towards the biggest, most well-known registered charities in the country. Okay. And I could explain why that is, but...

Yeah, I'm curious. Yeah. Why do they do that? Is it just, is it taxes? Is it just tax breaks? No, it's not taxes. It's usually because like, you know, it's like you're sitting in the boardroom and kind of going, oh, what charity should we choose?

And if you get really into sort of corporate philosophy and remember that, rightly or wrongly, corporations are really here to return value to shareholders. You don't have to agree with that, but that is the theory of modern corporate economics. Then you really shouldn't be giving money away unless it's doing something for the value of the brand. To be seen to be giving is arguably value added. I could go on at length on that too. And so when you kind of like, oh, what charity should we choose? You're kind of looking for something that the vast majority of people recognize as good. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, if you find this small homeless shelter that actually probably needs the money more than the children's hospital in your neighborhood um they're going to choose the children's hospital because everyone's heard of it and most people either have kids or have heard of kids or know someone with kids and

therefore it's a good charity right and so so it's often that the biggest charities get the money because they're the easiest brands to to get um to win to win with yeah right when you're just saying look we did something for that big brand oh you've heard of that big brand so we must be easiest brands to, to get, um, to, to win, to win with, right. When you're just saying, look, we did something for that big brand. Oh, you've heard of that big brand. So we must be good people because you've heard of them, et cetera. Right. So I think that's why generally speaking, they do it. And I don't think you can really, um, uh, uh, shame them for that. I mean, I think that's logical. That's logical thinking, even if it's not the most effective way to spend charitable dollars all the time. But here's the other point.

I'm like you. I go shopping at stores that do the same thing. And first of all, it's important to acknowledge, first of all, I say no almost all the time. Oddly, when I say yes, it's usually when I'm in a different country other than Canada. Because in Canada, I know that I'm someone who participates in charitable giving anyway. I give money away anyway. And so I don't need to give, I don't feel like I need to give a dollar or two at the till because I'm giving some percentage of my income anyway in participating and I want to choose. So I usually say no, but then I kind of

look behind me and I go, wait, who heard me? Who heard me say that? You know, cause it's a little bit of public shaming and I don't particularly like that either because it rubs, it can rub people the wrong way. And then that gives them a more of a bad taste in their mouth with regard to giving and things like that. So here's what I think the future is. And it's a future charitable impact intends to bring about. It's going to take some, a whole bunch of work, but the future will be, Hey, you know, thanks for buying these groceries at our store. Would you like to add some money to charity? And if you do, we're going to match it up to a certain amount and it's going to go into your own impact account.

I love that. Right. So, so now you can sort of be like, well, yeah, as I spend money, I think I should be allocating into my, right? Because here I am with privilege buying groceries. Yeah. And yeah, sure, I'll take, you know,

a couple percent, you know, and throw it or half a percent and throw it into my own impact account. And later, when I'm thinking about also the money that I put in off my salary and I don't know other things, I'm going to think about how to allocate that money to have the type of impact that I want to create. Right. And this also solves the problem of, you know, it's not always about religion, but it makes it more obvious. Like there's a Jew and a Christian and

a Muslim who all shop at the same grocery store. Like how is the corporation going to choose a charity that they all agree on? Well, Children's Hospital, right? Okay. Or something big like that. And again, that's a real serious thing. So, but do you think the Jew, the Christian and the Muslim and the atheist would all agree on the same charities if they were allocated the money to give themselves? And the answer to that is no.

And here's what's interesting. My hypothesis is that the corporation returns way more on their generosity, ROG. It's a new measurement for ROI. Return on giving is going to be higher when they can make the individual who's shopping with them happier. So the corporation actually does- Yeah, when there's more of a personal kind of connection, I think. Yeah, that's true. Correct. So the hypothesis is that corporation actually does. When there's more of a personal kind of connection, I think, yeah, that's true. Correct. So the hypothesis is that corporation actually does better by giving when they can impact the cause of the individual's choice. The problem is without a system like charitable impact, you can't do that scalably or cost effectively.

I'm just thinking in practical terms, the only, because it's like, it's got to be so quick, right? So would it be like, would you like to make a donation to charitable impact and we'll match? And then you just show your phone and there's a QR code they scan or something like that? I mean, I'm not a technologist. I've got a talented team of people who, but that's an important question, right? And exactly. If it's not, if it's not super fast, it's not going to happen. And by the way, and not to belabor this conversation, but that's another reason why corporations don't let you choose. It's not that they don't want to let you choose i mean i think

corporations are smart at the end of the day they they know that if you know the the the person who loves trees can choose the tree charity etc they know that's better but what are you going to do like have a list of 85 000 registered charities at the till and like meanwhile the you know the mom or dad with the crying baby is like behind them they they're late for soccer practice and you know here's steve at the front trying to figure out what charity wants to give 14 cents to you know it pragmatically it doesn't work right so it's got to be super fast and it's actually a relatively easy problem to solve with good technology but you have to uh you have to have an organization like ours that really wants to

solve it and that is there consistently to work with the donor after they've added those 14 cents to their impact account no i mean i would absolutely say yes because i i have no problem with like rounding up my groceries a couple bucks to donate but yeah it was always the i'm not really into that charity that you're giving to or yeah it, it's a really big charity that I don't want to support. I'd rather support something local, smaller that really does need my money. Not that, you know, the hospital doesn't, but again, you know, it's, there needs to be something kind of a personal connection. And that's why like, I feel like I love giving to charity because I do take the time to look at what's out there and which ones I know will have a really big impact and that'll make me feel good. Whereas honestly, when I make a donation to a

bigger charity, it doesn't have the same impact on me. And then anyway, I don't feel the same excitement of like, oh, I wonder what this is going to do. I'm like, this is just a drop in the bucket for them. They don't care. So rather than saying that's right or wrong, because I don't know what's right about what you're saying saying isn't that like big charities are bad. I don't think that's right. I think what's right is that you are listening to yourself and going about making decisions that are consistent with your worldview and or your values. And I think that is definitely right.

So many people focus on, well, what's the impact with the charity program, with the charitable activity? And they focus so much on that when it comes to charitable giving. And first of all, let's just stop and say that's critically important. But it's also the hardest part of the entire go about giving to charity, how we feel ourselves about general things like, do you like big companies or small companies? Do you like international or do you like local? Because that's part of the journey too. And the better you feel about these things up here, the more you can kind of go, well, I don't always totally actually understand the impact and I'm not going to spend all the time and I'm just willing to believe because i'm in a category of charity that i actually believe in so the probability that they're going to completely waste my time and money is is probably low because i'm actually a believer in that right and and that's and that

comes back to this love piece right which is why like you really want to focus your giving on things that you you that that that you, including loving yourself and knowing that you love to give to smaller local things as opposed to, I don't know, bigger national things. Not because it's better, but because that's who you are as a person. One last thing I kind of want to touch on is this idea that also sometimes doesn't get enough attention. Charity, you know, in your estate planning. I know sometimes I think people often think, well, I'm not rich enough to think about, you know, philanthropy thing. Like when you think of the word philanthropy, it sounds like you have to be wealthy in order to be a philanthropist, but anyone can be a philanthropist.

It just means giving back and using your money in a different way. But does charitable impact also take that into account? How can investors donate some of their assets or integrate that into their estate plan? Or maybe that's not something integrated yet, but it might be in the future. Yeah. So there's two things there. One is the assets and one is the estate. So let's separate those two things and they can come together at the end if they need to um so first of all yes people can donate uh non-cash assets into their impact account with charitable impact um so so cash is what most people have right and they use a credit card to access that cash um but we take all sorts of cash you know you can send us a wire and you know we're we're kind of like a bank in the sense, we're not a

bank, but we're like a bank in that we know how to deal with these assets. You can give us publicly traded securities. You can give us life insurance. You can give us private company shares. You can even donate crypto to us. We don't let you hold crypto, but we let you hold all those other things. So you can donate assets to us and assets can be held inside your impact account. So what's referred to in fancy lingo as inter vivos giving or giving while you're alive is something that you can do and people do all the time. And we take tons of non-cash assets. I mean, well over half of the donations in terms of the quantum of the money we get every year comes in non-cash assets because big donations don't usually come in cash they usually come in oh my apple shares went from

five dollars to a hundred dollars and geez i got lots of wealth in in something other than cash right so so by the way the way the charity deals with that is that the charity sells the apple shares and now you've got cash and you can allocate cash out to the charity that's the charities that you choose so that's that's ultimately how it works. So you can deal in non-cash charitable impact, no problem. It's smart to think that way. In many cases, it's more tax affected to give appreciated non-cash assets than it is to give cash. Unfortunately, everyone dies. So maybe Google will solve that one day but uh everyone dies and so what does happen so a couple things so first of all you can you can write charity quite easily

into your will um and you can say like when i die this is what i want to have happen right and then allocate this money so and i encourage people to think that way. However, and I'm not a lawyer, but I've spent a lot of time around this stuff, like the wills and estates stuff gets really complicated. Right. And so what I encourage people to think about is, is it more fun to give away while you're alive, when you can actually experience and have a say on how that money is going to go, I think the answer to that question is yes. I'm very biased towards intervivos while you're alive, charitable planning and giving, partly because it's simpler and partly because it's more fun. However, here's a couple benefits of this giving account that we have at Charitable Impact. First of all, in your will, if you write it in you can you can

write your giving account in okay and and then that's one place to give and from there multiple charities can benefit in the future and as a result of that you can start thinking around planning like if it works for you don't have to do this way you can just say send it out to all these charities but you can say you know what children are awesome, or this friend of mine is awesome, or my grandkids are awesome, and I want them to take the charitable dollars that I leave at death and have them distribute it. Oh, I like that. So when I die, send my money to all my different grandkids, split it up evenly between all their giving accounts and let them give it away. And so in this regard, with a structure like ours, the option, of course, is to allocate the money out to the charities you want, and there's totally up to you. You could either do it all that way, or some of it that way, or all of it the way of giving it to someone else

for them to give away after your death, leaving them instructions or just believing in them. Estate type of planning is really important. I encourage people to think about charities in that way. But ultimately, especially if you've got excess disposable income and you're comfortable, have fun with giving and create impact while you're here and model that decision making for the next generation who with without you doing that won't appreciate as much the importance of giving and if that doesn't happen then Canada continues to slide on the way that we're sliding right now which is lots of generous people not participating in charitable giving yeah I mean just before this interview I was looking at some of the stats and we're at like a historic low for not giving. So we need to change that. And I know a lot of people out there, myself included, the reason charitable giving is such an important aspect of their financial. And so we need to make sure we continue to have those conversations with our peers, but also the next generation.

And I think, you know, Charitable Impact is a really important organization. I'm really excited to have you on the show to discuss it. It's a very different way of thinking about it, which I think is much needed, because there's not a lot of innovation in the charitable space, especially in Canada. And so I really appreciate you coming on. Where can people find more information about Charitable Impact and any other kind of resources you'd want them to check out? Yeah, thanks, Jessica. We're online at charitableimpact.com. We're on all the social medias at We Are Charitable. And I would encourage people to reach out to us. We have a really strong

team of people who are there to answer the phone and answer emails and talk to you about charitable giving. One of the foundational goals of charitable giving, which recognizes what you just said, which is that generally speaking, there's not as much place to learn about giving, is that there's nowhere for people to go to get objective, neutral, cause-neutral help with their charitable giving, to help them explore who they are and how to go about doing it. And that's really one of the things, the primary things charitable impact really exists to provide an answer for. And so, even if you're not using the system yet, even if you don't have money to give away, you're not sure you do or not, just feel free to reach out

and talk to us about charitable giving and hopefully we can help you out. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, John. It was a pleasure having you on. Thank you, Jessica. I enjoyed that conversation. And that was episode 402 of the More Money Podcast

with John Bromley, CEO of Charitable Impact. If you want to learn more about Charitable Impact, you can go to charitableimpact.com. You can also check them out at We Are Charitable on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram at We Are Charitable. And you can also find John Bromley on LinkedIn too if you're one of the LinkedIn crew people. I'm on LinkedIn, FYI, if you ever want to see what's going on there. So yeah, make sure to check all that out. I will include important links that we discussed in the show notes for this episode. JessicaMorehouse.com slash 402 is where you can

find all of that good stuff. And you know, use this as your kind of call to action. Make a donation today. You'll feel really good. I always feel really good. After making a donation, I always feel good. As opposed to some of the other, you know, things that I maybe waste money on, like, oh, did I really need that? I don't know. Donut? No, I didn't. It made me feel good in the first bite, then after I feel terrible. Donating money always makes me feel good. So just a thing to think about. Okay. So a few updates. Like I mentioned, we're getting close to the end of the season. We only have next week and the following week, we're going to wrap up this season, season 18 of the More Money

Podcast, June 5th. Next week, we've got Sierra Rogers on the show. She's an entrepreneur. She's the founder and CEO of Babes. And she has a book coming out called The Outsider Advantage because you don't need to fit in to win. And I absolutely loved talking to her. Nicest person in the world. Also gave me some really great tips on Instagram because that's kind of how she grew her business. And back in the day, not during the COVID kind of explosion. Way before that, she really built a business from the ground up. So really inspiring episode, you're gonna love that. Also a reminder that if you don't know, I'm giving away books, including hers on for right now. I'm gonna be wrapping it up probably sometime in August. So if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest says where you can find all the books that I'm giving away, all the authors that have been featured on the show, I'm giving

away a copy. And other things, other really exciting things, actually. So and I'm sure I've mentioned this on a few episodes, but so obviously, I've been working on my book that's still happening. No news, no new news on that. But once I kind of had some spare time, like I'm not dealing with book stuff right now, I was able to really dedicate some time and energy in updating my wealth building blueprint for Canadians course. I've had this course since 2021. There's over 400 students in

there. It's by application only, though I will be kind of I'm changing a few things, but I can't really share now because they don't exist right now. I'm still working on that. But I'm going to be doing a webinar, I'm going to, you know, be kind of creating a few different ways that you can enter the course. Previously, for the past three years, it's been you have to apply, you have to be approved by me to see if you're a good candidate. And then you have to get on a call with me just so we can have a good chat about what your needs are, what you're looking for. And if this course is a good solution for you, I think I'm going to be kind of opening it up just to make it a little bit more accessible for people who, especially people who don't want to have a call. Some people don't want to be on a call, and I totally understand that. But I'm particularly very excited because I

literally went through the entire course, updated it, refreshed it, added a bunch of new stuff, and it's better than ever, if I do say so myself so if you want to learn more about that go to jessicamorehouse.com slash course you can apply there and whether you book a call or not you get on my email list so I can send you more info about the course and any updates and kind of the new things that I've been alluding to that don't I don't have much more information about them so very excited about that. Not only that, though, this is the other exciting news. Over the past several months, I've been working with this contractor that I've used to who helped me maybe a year or two ago to totally re

like do all my budget spreadsheets. She's wonderful. And we have done a huge update to all of my budget spreadsheets. And they are now available. I mean, yeah, the updated ones, obviously, you can't get the old ones because they're gone now. We've gotten some new and improved ones on my shop page, jessicamorehouse.com slash shop. But not just that. Not just that. I am also finally, because I do have a little bit more capacity and I really enjoy doing it. So finally, I'm excited to offer this. If you buy a budget spreadsheet, then you also have access to book a budget session with me. So basically, you have an hour with me, we go through your budget, I review it, I give you some feedback, help you just make it more

efficient and workable. And I'm very excited to be offering this. Finally, this was an idea I had, gosh, a year or two ago, and I just was not able to offer it. And now I am. So you can also find more information about that at jessicamoorehouse.com slash shop. So there you go. Very excited. There's obviously limited spaces every month that I open up for these review sessions. So check it out. Check it out. So I think that is plenty of info for you. Have a good rest of your day. Shout out to my wonderful podcast team video edit by Justice Carrar and produced by mrabcanada.com. And I will see you back here next Wednesday for the second to last episode of the More Money Podcast season 18. Have a good rest of your week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network.

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