Dan Rebmann, President and Founder of Beneficent Financial, joined Social Venture Partners San Antonio in 2021. We sat down with Dan recently to learn more about his background and interest in SVP.
Tell us about your background and how you came to be involved in philanthropy and Social Venture Partners.
I’ve been a financial advisor for 30 years and am very motivated to help people make a difference. I’ve been blessed to work with people who want to have an impact in the world. A good example is I just helped clients establish a foundation for scholarships to a private school. For most of my career, I worked with big investment firms. Two years ago, I started my own practice which gave me the opportunity to brand my work in a way that I let people know that is an important focus.
What drew you to Social Venture Partners San Antonio?
I came across SVPSA through LinkedIn. When I read about the organization it sounded like exactly the kind of group I wanted to be a part of. Becky Dinnin was recommended for my network, and I guess the algorithm got it right! I contacted Becky and met with some folks. They were just starting to have events again after the pandemic, so I was able to meet partners at those. I serve on the committee that measures the effectiveness of our own programs – where we discuss how we measure success and whether we are moving the needle. That’s one of the cool things with SVP. We measure ourselves just as we advise other nonprofits to measure their impact.
How do you personally or professionally benefit by being involved in SVPSA?
I’m a big believer that by being involved in SVPSA, that I am fulfilling an obligation to love my neighbor. That is first and foremost. But it is also very inspiring to be surrounded by people who are doing so much for San Antonio.
What do you think are the biggest issues facing the nonprofit and/or funding community right now?
Nonprofits suffer from the same issues that all organizations have right now in terms of talent acquisition and retention. But the largest funding issue in the nonprofit world remains that 80 percent of all gifts are cash while more than 80 percent of all the wealth is in non-cash assets. There are vehicles to help in this area, but some funders aren’t aware of them and don’t have a plan for engaging these types of solutions.
For those people who want to support nonprofits, there are a number of ways beyond providing cash to help. Donating land is an extreme example. Think about other ideas like giving an appreciated piece of stock – by donating, you will avoid the capital gains and the organization will get the full amount. My advice to nonprofits on this issue is to leverage people’s expertise in tax strategy and legal vehicles that are available to donors. A lot of times donors want to access this.
What do you see on the horizon for SVPSA?
I couldn’t be more excited. We just had our second group of Fellows graduate and watching them and supporting their efforts to transform San Antonio will be important. But we still have some bandwidth. I look forward to expanding our Partner base and finding organizations where we can move the needle. I would encourage every Partner to find one other person to get involved with SVP. I would also love to see SVP form a subcommittee of like-minded financial professionals that can help support each other as they make efforts to reach out to their client base to do this kind of work.