Solay: Clients' Charitable Impact

A Parkston South Dakota native, Kurt Solay has been practicing law for over 30 years. “Time goes by fast when you’re having fun," muses Kurt.

For the entirety of his practice, Kurt has worked in estate planning and business law. With estate planning being the focus of his work, charitable giving has naturally become a part of the process. The landscape of estate planning has changed drastically over the last 30 years, so maintaining a strong knowledge of current tax laws and estate tax exemptions is very important to Kurt.

He was drawn to work with the South Dakota Community Foundation (SDCF) because of the invaluable information the organization shares about charities. This partnership has helped him ensure his client’s goals will be met when they take the step to include charitable giving in their estate planning.

“The advent of donor-advised funds over the last 15 years or so has made the SDCF even more important…there are charities that are smaller and don’t have their own separate foundation. Donor-advised funds allow clients to make a donation to SDCF, and that endowment can then be distributed out to charitable organizations that align with a client’s giving wishes.”

Kurt appreciates the way donor-advised funds help ensure that a charitable gift will have a lasting effect due to the way the foundation distributes the funds—benefiting the charity receiving the donation as well as seeing that a donor’s gift makes a stronger impact.

One of the most rewarding aspects of his work is seeing the joy people feel when they donate while they’re still alive to see the impact their donations are making. He looks back on a specific instance where a client had a very strong goal in mind, and Kurt suggested he start giving while he was alive instead of waiting for others to distribute funds after passing. Every time he has seen that client in the years since, he thanks Kurt for inspiring him to give during his lifetime.

“He really enjoys seeing how the community benefits from his gifts, and if he had waited to fund this until he passed away, he would have never enjoyed seeing the fruits of his labor.”

If there is one thing Kurt would like people to know about SDCF, it's that they open the doors to all of the different ways one can give charitably. The organization is an invaluable resource for individuals looking to make a difference through donation.