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Michele McKinnon

Michele A. W. McKinnon Partner

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Richmond T +1 804 775 1060 F fax +1 804 698 2115
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Michele leads the firm’s nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations practice team. With more than 40 years of experience, Michele routinely represents many public charities, major colleges and universities, supporting organizations, family and corporate private foundations, and charitable trusts on a variety of federal tax and governance matters.

She assists tax-exempt organizations in all aspects of compliance with the federal tax laws, as well as with governance, endowment and investment matters. Her practice includes advice on compliance with the excess benefit transaction rules and the private foundation rules, including self-dealing, excess business holding, and taxable expenditure issues, participation in joint ventures, and consequences of unrelated trade or business activities. She also assists these organizations in dealing with the IRS in tax controversy matters and compliance audits.

Her work also includes structuring planned gifts to charitable organizations, including the use of charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, charitable gift annuities and conservation easements. She also works in the areas of estate planning, and estate and trust administration, handling the administration of large complex estates, fiduciary income tax matters, fiduciary litigation, and risk management for corporate trust departments.

Michele is a Fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and a member of its Board of Regents, and she previously served as its Virginia State Chair. She also is a Past Chair of ACTEC’s Charitable Planning & Exempt Organizations Committee. Michele is also a member of the Exempt Organization Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association and is a former chair of the Trusts and Estates Section of the Virginia State Bar.

Experience

  • Implementation of numerous planned gifts, including charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, gift annuities, and gifts of remainder interests in personal residences, including related gift documents and plans to meet unique donor objectives.
  • Establishment of and advice to numerous family and corporate private foundations regarding self-dealing, excess business holding, jeopardy investment, minimum distribution, and taxable expenditure rules. Requests for IRS rulings on tax classification changes, including conversions to private foundation, publicly supported organization, and Type I, II, or III supporting organization.
  • Establishment of affiliated private foundations and private operating foundations to operate and support a museum to hold a family art collection in perpetuity.
  • Advice to donors and implementation of gifts of significant art collections and the income tax rules and substantiation requirements associated with the gifts.
  • Advice to family, corporate and healthcare conversion foundations on targeted grantmaking and avoidance of self-dealing under the incidental and tenuous benefits exception, as well as the application of the private foundation tax rules to foundation activities.
  • Advice for a number of university-affiliated foundations on restructuring of governance and operations to ensure independence and avoidance of applicable freedom of information act rules.
  • Advice to foundations and grantmaking organizations on developing rules related to restricted gifts and protected characteristics and the modification of restrictions on funds under applicable state law, including the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act.
  • Advice on unrelated business income tax issues, including affinity card agreements, debt-financed income, and gift shop sales.
  • Preparation of planned giving forms for a number of educational institutions and corporate fiduciaries.
  • Legal, tax, and governance compliance audits for several university-affiliated foundations and a large national membership organization.
  • Excess benefit transaction advice in connection with executive compensation of chief executive and other officers of universities and other public charities and sales transactions involving substantial contributors to public charities.
  • Planning and implementation of sale and gift of major art collection valued at more than $40 million to museum-affiliated foundation.

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