Melanie Schnoll Begun
Managing Director, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Philanthropic Services

Melanie Schnoll Begun is a Managing Director and Head of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Philanthropic Services. Melanie has served as a philanthropic counselor to families, foundations and family offices for over 16 years.  She works with the firm’s ultra-high-net-worth clients to develop areas of focus for their philanthropy; engage multiple generations in their foundation’s governance, programming and evaluation; help clients to design customized domestic and international grant-making portfolios and gift agreements; facilitate giving circles and retreats; and coordinate with clients’ tax and legal professionals on the formation of tax-exempt nonprofit organizations as well as their dissolution or merger.  

Melanie joined Smith Barney in 1997 as Associate Estate Planning Counsel in the Estate & Trust Services group. Prior to Smith Barney, Melanie was an estate planning attorney in a New York City law firm.  

Melanie is the Vice President of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Global Impact Funding Trust, Inc., the nonprofit organization sponsoring the firm’s donor-advised fund, and is on the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning (formerly the National Committee for Planned Giving).  She is also on the advisory boards of Girls, Inc., the Salvation Army and Grameen America, a non-profit microfinance organization whose mission is to help entrepreneurial individuals, especially women, build credit and defeat poverty.  She has published articles on various tax, estate and charitable planning strategies in Trusts & Estates magazine, Tax Notes Today, Exempt Organization Report and various other trade journals, as well as appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy.