Client Service June 2, 2020

Advisers Giving Back: Grant Arends at intellicents

Some people are called to give back and invest in their local communities, while others are compelled to go farther afield.
Reported by

Art by Iris Lei


Over the course of our Advisers Giving Back profile series, one common thread has been an expressed desire not just to “give back” to great causes and communities, but also to invest in them and to provide people the opportunity to improve their own lives and livelihoods permanently.

Grant Arends, co-founder and president of retirement services at the fiduciary advisory firm intellicents, says this theme is front and center in his giving efforts. Whether he is driving shallow water well supplies across the open bush in Malawi or teaching children about financial literacy in impoverished regions of South Africa, Arends says his focus is on “teaching people how to fish.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

“We in the advisory business know all about investing,” Arends says. “In my experience over the years giving back in an international setting, I have seen that even just the phrase ‘giving back’ can have the wrong connotation. Really we are not giving back, we are investing in people and causes. It’s not a new idea, but it is important—rather than giving someone a fish, we ought to teach them how to fish. What better industry is there than ours to promote this concept?”

Arends’ giving efforts match his personality—they are adventurous. At the same time, he says, Arends required a bit of a push to get going.

“My friends and my wife will tell you I’m not super handy,” Arends jokes. “I do the cooking at home, and my wife does the handiwork. That was always my excuse for not doing anything in the mission field, either at home or abroad. I had always equated giving back to pounding a nail or building something with my hands, so I felt happy just writing a check now and again.”

That was the case until a pastor in Arends’ church put him on the spot.

“He came up to me years ago and said, ‘Grant, I need you to go to Africa,’” Arends recalls. “I said, ‘What the heck am I going to accomplish there?’”

As it turned out, the church community had been working directly with the World Bank to develop a curriculum focused on teaching impoverished women in Africa to start their own businesses in order to supplement their family’s income. They needed a group of business people to go and teach lessons “on basic business 101.”

“He looked at me in the eye and said, ‘You can do this,’” Arends remembers. “That moment changed my life, really. My wife and colleagues supported me, and so I went and it was one of the most life-changing things I’ve ever done. I found myself in Malawi in Africa—it’s the third poorest country in the world. We went and we taught these women who were actually so brilliant. All they needed was someone to invest a little time and effort to change their lives permanently.”

From there, a bit of serendipity opened other doors for Arends.

“As you can imagine, the vast majority of people in the hotel in Malawi, besides our mission group, were folks who were black,” Arends says. “It was not common to see another white person while you were there. But one evening when I walked out of my hotel room, I bumped into an older American gentleman and we started talking. We asked him to tell us his story over dinner and this was a gentleman who educated me on the issues surrounding water and sanitation, and how a lack of water and sanitation were a leading cause of death in that area.”

The man was the leader of an ecumenical nonprofit called Marion Medical Mission.

“He had started a nonprofit as a way to build water wells in the most remote portions of Africa,” Arends says. “They do shallow water wells, in particular. Most water solutions you see are much larger and more capital intensive. The idea is that you dig a big centralized well, and that’s great in some regions. But in Malawi, the average village has between 25 to 100 people, and they are so far spread out that the centralized model doesn’t work so well.”

Marion Medical Mission, Arends explains, is doing something different with its less capital intensive shallow water wells. He also commends the organization’s commitment to allowing the local African people to decide for themselves where the wells should go.

“The local people would dig the well and maintain it, basically doing everything apart from shipping in and installing the final pumps and pipes,” Arends says. “Our job as Americans coming in was largely to drive and transport people and materials all over the African bush, as 97% of people in that region do not drive. As a group, we were doing over 3,000 wells per season, and I would personally work on about 120 wells per trip over a three-week period. It has been amazing. You go in and get training and are paired with a local person, and then you are given a cellphone, a GPS tracker and a truck full of supplies. My love of adventure certainly helped. It’s not for everybody.”

In addition to working with Marion Medical Mission, Arends has led two additional mission trips with American youth.

“I’ve had the chance to take two of my own three children over to do work in Africa, and it has been life changing for them,” he says. “Let’s be honest, we really protect our children and keep them in a bubble. So, for them to see other cultures and to work for two weeks teaching preschool children in a city that was literally built on a trash dump in South Africa, it’s so meaningful for them.”

Arends notes that it is by no means necessary for everyone to travel so far to give back. In fact, he says, most people should not.

“I always like to tell the extreme story but, of course, most people won’t be able to do what I’ve been given the opportunity to do,” Arends concludes. “The extreme story provides, hopefully, some motivation for teaching financial literacy in our junior highs and high schools, for example. Nobody in our education system is teaching my kids how to balance a checkbook or to understand things like debt management. That’s investing in our community in ways that will have an immeasurable ROI [return on investment]. Hopefully the big stories lead people to do just a little.”

Client Service May 28, 2020

Advisers Giving Back: Attila Toth and Portfolio Evaluations

Investing in the local community has been an important part of the firm’s identity from its founding in 1992, and it makes sure to involve its staff members’ spouses and families to make its giving even more meaningful.
Reported by

Art by Robert Hunt


First launched last September, PLANADVISER’s Advisers Giving Back series has at this point profiled a dozen different firms’ efforts to give back and invest in their local, regional and even international communities.

Some of the profile subjects, such as CAPTRUST or CBIZ, are large national firms that have established independent programs and foundations to coordinate their sizable giving efforts. Others, given the smaller footprint of the firm, do more localized giving that still has a tremendous impact.

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

“I think we fall into the latter camp,” says Attila Toth, partner and co-founder at Portfolio Evaluations in Warren, New Jersey. “We are not a huge organization that can create a standalone foundation at this point. Maybe in the future. Right now, our giving efforts are all about the experience we can provide to our employees in giving back to the communities that we all care deeply about.”

That is not to say that Portfolio Evaluations’ efforts have been small or insignificant. In fact, the firm has been an advocate of investing in the local community since its inception back in 1992. In its very first years, the firm got involved in the local March for Dimes, for example.

“They do a huge national fundraiser every year and we are always thrilled to participate,” Toth says. “Their march always takes place on a Saturday, and it has allowed us to also bring in the families and children of our staff to participate. I actually have a picture here of my oldest daughter being pulled along in a little red wagon, when she was just 2 years old, which was printed in the newspaper. I still cherish those memories.”

Also from day one, the firm’s staff has maintained a meaningful partnership with a local food bank.

“A few days of the year they deem it a family day, and we can bring along our kids to box pasta and prepare meals,” Toth says. “The director of the food bank always speaks with us and the children about where our work is going—showing us how we could help families that were down and out.”

Toth and his firm embody a common theme that has emerged in the Advisers Giving Back profiles—these giving efforts tend to go all the way back to the vision of a founder or somebody else highly placed in the organization during its early days. Such firms make social responsibility a part of their DNA over time. Another common thread is the importance of the impact on staff and the workers within firms and how positive it can be to create a firm that is more than just a group of people sitting together in the office.

“When I think back to the start of our firm, I can say the giving back events were so great because it was an opportunity to get to know our staff better, along with their spouses and children,” Toth says. “That’s how you build a sense of family in the firm. We always felt that was important, and it has really served its purpose well.”

Portfolio Evaluations took its giving efforts to the next level in 2013 by creating a dedicated charitable engagement committee that today consists of eight people.

“We get together at least twice a year, and one of the big things we work on is conducting a survey of our own people,” Toth says. “It’s just a few questions. We ask our employees about their passions in terms of reaching back out to the community. Is it cleaning the beaches and parks? Something outside and hands on? Might it be something more intellectual? Or maybe helping people who are struggling with drug and alcohol problems? Would it be better to do something during a weekday or on the weekend? These sorts of questions.”

Toth says the surveys have been extremely helpful in boosting engagement.

“All the events that took place early on were almost always during the weekend,” he recalls. “But over time, we were hiring more people who had children, and it was hard for them because of things like weekend sports and family trips. We were always comfortable with the idea of allowing people to use their working time to give back, and so the survey showed us that we should indeed hold most of our giving events during the week. Even better, it has shown our people that we want to help them pursue their passions.”

In terms of advice for his peers who want to get involved in community, Toth says the first and most important step is to ask what the goals are.

“We created a mission statement,” he explains. “For us, the purpose of our mission statement was to say that we would differentiate and separate the employees’ focus and passion versus our corporate philanthropy goals. Our mission statement was created by looking at both of those themes.”

From the corporate perspective, the firm may choose to, for example, participate in an annual golf tournament to benefit the Wounded Warriors Project. One of the firm’s clients is UNICEF, so the firm, from a corporate perspective, is committed to supporting its cause.

“And then on the other hand, we have a distinct effort dedicated to our employees’ passions,” Toth says. “In that sense, our giving is not about getting the recognition from the outside. It’s about getting the recognition from the inside. We want our employees to know and feel proud about what kind of firm they are working for. When we are interviewing new people, we let them know from the start what kind of organization we are. It’s about communicating our culture.”

Looking forward, Toth says the firm is studying ways to provide financial education to more people in need.

“There are already some of us within our firm that have always been involved in this effort, so we are now aiming to get serious about how to do this at the corporate level,” he says.

«