Representative Experience

Family Offices / Family Businesses / High Net Worth Individuals Experience

• Advised Senator Herb Kohl on the sale of the Milwaukee Bucks and his landmark $100 million charitable gift to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation to fund a new arena. He received the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s 2015 Herbert J. Mueller Society Award for Outstanding Professional Adviser of the Year for his work on this project.
• Implemented an estate plan strategy using charitable lead trusts to save millions in estate and income taxes while simultaneously creating a charitable endowment to make a significant and lasting philanthropic impact for the community.
• Successfully negotiated a school naming gift valued in excess of $100 million.
• Long-term administration and implementation of a charitable remainder trust and a family foundation with assets in excess of $70 million, including creation of a grant-making process to facilitate family involvement and compliance with IRS rules.
• Successfully resolved IRS audit focusing on client’s income tax deduction for multimillion-dollar payments made to a public policy organization. The IRS’s initial position was that the client owed millions in additional income tax and penalties; the IRS closed the audit while assessing the client with a de minimis adjustment.
• Managed the interview process and the hiring of a new CEO for a family office. This included developing a strategic plan and new position description, screening and soliciting qualified candidates, coordinating family interviews and providing advice to family members. This project also included negotiating a pay package, an employment and confidentiality agreement, and developing an onboarding process. Family members lauded the process for both providing key insights into the CEO role at the family office and for general family involvement.
• Developed an education series for second generation family members focused both on investment management (diversification, types of investments, and costs) and the legal roles of trustees and beneficiaries. The education series culminated in a new investment policy statement developed with significant input from the family and the investment consultant.
• Advised clients regarding estate planning, including an installment sale to a defective grantor trust for family business entities valued in excess of one billion dollars. The planning also included business succession planning to ensure family members involved in the business will have the power to make important business decisions.
• Creation and ongoing advice to numerous family foundations on both tax-exempt and governance issues, as well as grant-making strategy, direct charitable activity, philanthropic involvement, program-related investments and mission-related investing.
• Led a team of Foley attorney trustees and advisors to conduct an investment consultant selection process for a significant single family office. This process included selecting, coordinating and summarizing submissions from over 12 different possible providers, working with a committee of family members to develop a family-centric selection criteria, and assisting family members with reviewing submissions and interviewing potential providers. The project included assisting the new investment manager with plans for a tax-efficient transition.

Tax-Exempt Organizations Experience

• Serves as primary outside counsel for an independent college with a national reach, providing advice regarding governance, tax, fundraising, real estate and transactional issues. The work has included drafting major gift agreements, tax planning for complex gifts, litigation related to bequests, revisions of corporate documents and investment advisor contracts.
• Provided on-going outside counsel regarding all tax, corporate and other legal issues to the U.S. branch of a Christian denomination.
• On-going tax and corporate counsel for a specialty hospital system (including clinics and insurance provider).
• Provided tax exemption and corporate advice for the merger of two major nonprofit health care organizations including drafting new bylaws and the governance provisions of the merger agreement.
• Advised a nonprofit organization relating to the purchase of 14 senior living communities and the simultaneous issuance of tax-exempt bonds to fund the purchase.
• Provide on-going outside counsel to a national hospital system relating to all aspects of charitable giving, including complex gifts, charitable trusts and donor-created supporting organizations.
• On-going tax and lobbying counsel to a national trade association.
• Counsel (including service as corporate secretary) to a donor advised fund making grants in excess of $8 million annually.
• Provided tax and corporate structuring advice for a successful conversion of a for-profit college to nonprofit status.
• Creation and advice regarding lobbying affiliates and political action committees.
• Significant pro bono work related to nonprofit organizations both nationally and in the community.
• Developed Foley’s Charitable Academy, a presentation series to prepare professionals for board service and involvement with nonprofits as pro bono advisors.