Best Strategies for You and Your Clients to Be Charitable Under the New Tax Reform

Tony Oommen is a vice president and charitable planning consultant for Fidelity Charitable®, an independent public charity that has helped donors support more than 278,000 nonprofit organizations with nearly $35 billion in grants. The mission of Fidelity Charitable® is to grow the American tradition of philanthropy by providing programs that make charitable giving accessible, simple, and effective.

In his current role, Tony builds relationships with advisors, enhancing their understanding of Fidelity Charitable’s donor-advised fund program, and discusses creative and impactful ways that advisors can incorporate charitable giving into wealth management plans.

Before joining Fidelity Charitable in 2015, Tony spent nearly two decades as an advisor himself, developing a passion along the way for helping develop charitable giving plans for clients. He held various roles as a wealth advisor and financial planner for private wealth management firms in Chicago and Cincinnati since 1998.

He is currently a member of the Chicago Estate Planning Council and the Chicago Council on Planned Giving. He volunteers as a board member of the non-profit organizations Associated Colleges of Illinois and 21st Century Dads. He also serves on giving advisory committees for the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, Greenhouse Scholars, and WTTW/WFMT. Tony is the author of the philanthropy chapter in Tools & Techniques of Estate Planning for Modern Families, 3rd Edition, National Underwriter, 2018.

Tony received his bachelor of science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He has a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) designation since 2004.

Kirk Hoopingarner is a partner in the firm's Estate, Trust & Wealth Preservation Practice Group and focuses his practice on all facets of wealth planning and philanthropy for high-net-worth families and individuals. Mr. Hoopingarner counsels his clients on a broad range of matters involving the management and transfer of wealth and has extensive experience in sophisticated charitable planning, both for individual donors and for substantial charitable organizations.

Ed is currently the Regional Wealth Strategist for the eastern U.S. for U.S. Bank's Private Wealth Management, where he concentrates on thought leadership and planning ideas for high net worth clientele in tax, asset protection and estate planning areas. Previously, he was a Director in Key Private Bank's Family Wealth Advisory Group, analyzing tax, trust and estate planning needs of ultra high net worth clients of Key Private Bank nationwide in conjunction with local teams of credentialled financial planners, trust officers, investment specialists and private bankers.

Ed was previously in private law practice working in taxation, probate, estate and business planning. Other experience includes research and writing of legal memoranda for the U.S. District Court of Portland, Oregon as a law clerk. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC). He is a Board Certified Specialist (through the Ohio State Bar Assn) in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) professional and a Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor (CM&AA). He is also a Non-Public Arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Probate Law Journal of Ohio.

Ed is a frequent speaker at CLE/CPE courses on asset protection, tax and financial and estate planning topics, and recently co-authored, with Stephan Leimberg, Paul Hood, Martin Shenkman and Jay Katz, the 18th Edition of The Tools and Techniques of Estate Planning, a 997-page practice-based resource on estate planning.