Donor-Advised Fund/Vanguard and Fidelity Charitable

[Which Roger]

DW and I are doing some "giving while living" and estate planning and are considering creating a DAF, likely with Vanguard Charitable or Fidelity Charitable since we already do a lot of business with Vanguard and Fido, and also because I like what I see when I read about how they handle DAFs. Curious to hear others' experience both with DAFs in general and with Vanguard Charitable or Fidelity Charitable. BTW, we are indexer/Bogleheads and manage all of our money ourselves.

 

[Montecfo]

I use Fidelity Charitable. I do not otherwise have funds there nor at Vanguard.

I've been happy with it.

 

[Dd852]

I’m with Vanguard charitable- I recommend it if you have other Vanguard accounts as donating across platforms is simple. In other words look at where you’re donating from and chose the appropriate charitable arm. When I donate it is truly only a few clicks to chose which funds, which tranches and it is done.

Then on the other side, when it is time to give from the charitable account , that’s simple and easy too. The couple of times when I needed a human being, they were very responsive.

 

[qwerty3656]

We use T. Rowe price charitable giving. I set it up a while ago - I don't remember why I chose them and don't know if they are better or worse than others, but we have no complaints (all my other money is at fidelity).

 

[athena53]

Mine is at Fidelity; I opened it in 2012. No issues at all and they have an extensive list of "known" charities. Getting one added to the list is easy as long as the charity itself responds to requests for information.

 

[Trailwalker]

Mine is at Fidelity, although most of my accounts are at Vanguard. Fidelity had easier opening requirements. I've been pleased with the service and probably have been more generous, especially towards public broadcasting where I had long been a freeloader.

 

[euro]

My charitable fund is at Schwab. When I set it up some 15+ years ago, it looked a bit superior for the aspects that were important to me back then. Low minimum for opening account and subsequent additions. Low minimum donation ($50). Low expenses and a reasonable array of investment choices.
If I recall, Vanguard had a $20'000 minimum at that time and Fido maybe around 10k. These could have changed in the meantime though. I have had zero complaints about Schwab over 15 years. Funding is easy, donations are easy, account maintenance if good. That said, I bet Vanguard and Fido are perfectly fine too.

 

[braumeister]

We've been using Fidelity for the last eight years and are very happy with it. One reason is that grants can be made for as little as $50. I believe Vanguard's version has a $500 minimum grant.

 

[timbervest]

Been using Fidelity Charitable for a number of years even though most of my accounts are with Schwab. Very easy -- for donating stock its a \form that you upload to Schwab and they do the transfer. Very satisfied. One advantage of the DAF -- if you don't include your contact information on the gift from the DAF (since you don't need the tax acknowledgement from the charity), the mail and phone solicitations tend to drop off dramatically.

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

I am happy with Vanguard Charitable; as pointed out above, donating assets held at VG to VG Charitable is easy. Having said that, the per-donation minimum at VG is $500, and it is only $50 at Fido. Sometimes I would like that lower minimum.

 

[athena53]

One advantage of the DAF -- if you don't include your contact information on the gift from the DAF (since you don't need the tax acknowledgement from the charity), the mail and phone solicitations tend to drop off dramatically.

I do this all the time. Must drive the charities crazy.

 

[jebmke]

I have both. Very similar interfaces. VG has higher minimums. We started there years ago before Fidelity got in the game. Simple to donate appreciated assets quickly (all our assets are at VG).

Opened up one at Fidelity more recently to take advantage of the lower minimums for a few small donations. Fund it with grants from our Vanguard DAF.

We do most of our dollar donations anonymously through the VG DAF and that saves a lot of headaches with mail solicitation and whisper lists. Also, for a couple of local orgs where I sit on boards, it simplifies things in terms of board participation.

 

[OldShooter]

One thing you might consider is to work with a community foundation (https://www.cof.org/page/community-foundation-locator). That's what we do. In our case it lets our money be used for small, local impact, purposes rather than just being a drop in a national charity's huge bucket. That's not to say you can't donate to big national charities, simply that working with a community foundation opens up more opportunities that may interest you.

You can do DAFs of course. Our funding to the community foundation is via QCD and our fund is explicitly not a DAF (not allowed with QCDs), but the people at the community foundation still contact us when they are considering a donation that is maybe a little bit outside the parameters we have given them. It's a tiny office, just four or five people, very economically run.

 

[YB88]

We've been using Fidelity for the last eight years and are very happy with it. One reason is that grants can be made for as little as $50. I believe Vanguard's version has a $500 minimum grant.

Ditto. $500 minimum was a non-starter for us, so with our assets at Vanguard we nevertheless have a Fidelity DAF, and it's been fine, just a little learning curve and a couple of local charities that aren't in their system.


The one issue that's a little annoying is transferring open-end mutual fund shares is slow --- like they print out physical certificates and strap them onto a mule train type of slow. I forgot about that this year and wanted to add to my DAF in December, only to be told there was no way to get the shares there in time to count in this tax year. But we just started the DAF in 2021 and don't plan to add to it for a number of years, so not a really big deal. If I were to convert the shares to ETF shares first, the transfer would, I believe, go a lot faster.

 

[audreyh1]

We’ve worked extensively with our Fidelity Charitable DAF and very pleased with it. Contributions of appreciated securities already held at Fido are seamless, it’s been straightforward to add new charities which we have done many times, very low cost investment funds are available although you might have to dig to find them. The Fidelity minimum charitable grant (donation) allowed is $50 a lot smaller than Vanguard which is $500, so that might be important to you. We give quite a few grants under $500.

 

[qwerty3656]

Does anyone know if you can move existing assets? I'm thinking since the money is already technically "donated", it's not my money anymore and maybe I can't move it? (our charitable fund is with T. Rowe Price, but all our other money is with Fidelity and it would be nice to have it all in 1 place).

 

[RunningBum]

Does anyone know if you can move existing assets? I'm thinking since the money is already technically "donated", it's not my money anymore and maybe I can't move it? (our charitable fund is with T. Rowe Price, but all our other money is with Fidelity and it would be nice to have it all in 1 place).

Yes, you can. I opened mine at Vanguard late in the year a few years ago, to make sure it was done by the end of the year since I was funding it with shares held at Vanguard. Early the next year I transferred it to Fidelity. I don't recall the process but it was pretty easy.

 

[audreyh1]

Does anyone know if you can move existing assets? I'm thinking since the money is already technically "donated", it's not my money anymore and maybe I can't move it? (our charitable fund is with T. Rowe Price, but all our other money is with Fidelity and it would be nice to have it all in 1 place).

This article claims that

Rolling over a donor-advised fund from one provider to another is a simple process.

https://www.donorstrust.org/donor-advised-funds/why-and-how-to-roll-over-your-donor-advised-fund/

This was also interesting about granting from one DAF to another https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=217409

 

[qwerty3656]

This article claims that https://www.donorstrust.org/donor-advised-funds/why-and-how-to-roll-over-your-donor-advised-fund/

This was also interesting about granting from one DAF to another https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=217409

After reading that article about Schwab stopping grants to certain non-profits, I wanted to make sure Fidelity wasn't doing the same. Apparently they are (So I won't be moving my funds to Fidelity)

https://www.cof.org/content/fidelit...-donor-advised-funds-nra-affiliated-charities

 

[DuluthGA]

We’ve used TRowe Price for years and have no complaints. I think it was $10k to open and as we had assets there was easy to donate to and make gifts out.

 

[MBAustin]

We've been happy with Vanguard Charitable, have had it now for 3 years. The $500 minimum means that some organizations that used to get $100-200 a year from us now get $500, which was OK with us. When we have the odd occasion to give less, we do it by check or credit card as before.

The option to give anonymously is very useful. We wanted to support an organization our daughter had volunteered with and she did not want them to know about it (for complicated reasons) but the DAF made that easy. And as others have said, no solicitations for more $$!