Use of a donor-advised fund to donate to donors-choose

[euro]

I have been supporting the educational charity "donnorschoose" for quite some time. My megacorp used to match my donations, so everything was good.
Now that I'm FIREd though, my comany match is gone, so I want to simplify my charitable donations and just use my donor-advised charitable fund (at Schwab) for future donations. This works well for most charities, but because donorschoose is based on sponsoring individual classroom projects, I'm not sure how that would be done. Does anyone here have experience with this particular situation?
I have questions in to Schwab as well as the charity, but I figure someone on this board may have a ready answer.

 

[jonat]

I use a donor-advised fund through Fidelity. When I "recommend" a grant I can say what I want the money used for. I see that donorschoose.org is listed as eligible for donations this way but you probably can't get the level of detail in targeting that you can with direct donations.

I'd wait for the charity to get back to you to be sure how it works. I do see that for matching gifts they send the donor a card asking how they want the match apportioned - perhaps it's the same for a DAF.

 

[euro]

Thanks Steve - just heard back from the donorschoose folks, and there is indeed a way to get this done. Apparently, they have an understanding with the more popular DAF players (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard) in that one can pick the projects first and have the charity attach an identifier to the selection. Then one simply provides this number to the DAF in the disbursement request and everything should work fine. That's good news for me!

 

[jonat]

Good to know! I like using a DAF - for some charities I decline to provide contact info, so they don't deluge me with requests for still more money. It also provides a painless way for me to convert appreciated stock into a charitable deduction for any charity, not just the large ones that can deal with stock gifts.

 

[MaryJane]

Retired Teacher

If you need a project to donate to, please let me know. I am a retired teacher who is teaching again. I love DonorsChoose.