Resources for Professional Advisors
Many individuals work with professional advisors making financial decisions throughout their lifetime and especially when planning their estates. That puts advisors into relationships of extraordinary closeness and trust with their clients. This relationship can be even more evident between LGBTQ advisors and LGBTQ clients, as both share the life experience of being LGBTQ in a not-always-welcoming society. It can offer an opportunity for advisors not only to help their clients but also support the LGBTQ community in highly effective ways.
That’s what the Stonewall Legacy Project is all about.
The Stonewall Legacy Project’s goal is to develop a cadre of estate-planning and financial professionals who regularly work with LGBTQ+ people. The Project asks these advisors to make four commitments:
- Raise with each of their clients the possibility of leaving a charitable gift to LGBTQ+ organizations in professional and culturally sensitive ways;
- Develop expertise and comfort in having that conversation in ways more likely to result in a gift.
- Be aware of the organizations locally and nationally serving the LGBTQ+ community to receive such bequests; and
- Given the urgency of this moment, share with clients and friends the singular opportunity that the current generational transfer of wealth can provide to protect the LGBTQ+ community.
The impact that professional advisors can have is particularly powerful in working with members of the Stonewall Generation, who today are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and older. The legacy left by this generation is that of a society transformed. The Stonewall Generation made great strides in fighting for hard-won rights and increasing LGBTQ+ visibility, and we need to protect it.
LGBTQ+ elders helped us get to this point in history, and their resources can make profound differences to future generations of LGBTQ people through their lifetime giving and estate plans. The Stonewall Generation represents the single best estate-giving demographic in human history, with recent data indicating that an estimated $2.7 trillion will flow out of the estates of LGBTQ+ people in the next 20 years alone. Currently, only a tiny sliver of that number goes back to organizations protecting our progress and fighting to ensure the future of our movement. The Stonewall Legacy Project aims to transform that small sliver into a river of resources for organizations performing critical work for our community.
The Stonewall Legacy Project evolved as a volunteer-led effort to inform and train professionals about the unique perspectives and needs of their current and future LGBTQ+ clients. It is a crucial component of the National LGBTQ Legacy Giving Initiative efforts to promote legacy gifts for movement organizations. We invite you to join this groundbreaking project.
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