Donor-advised funds

[Xan]

I like different features from different houses. Fidelity is not a co-op, but their website is so much better in so many ways. If i hadn’t been “born into” Vanguard, I might’ve gone with Fidelity.

I mainly switched to Schwab because their donor-advised-fund parameters were most advantageous.

[vnatale]

I like different features from different houses. Fidelity is not a co-op, but their website is so much better in so many ways. If i hadn’t been “born into” Vanguard, I might’ve gone with Fidelity.

I mainly switched to Schwab because their donor-advised-fund parameters were most advantageous.

I have a donor advised fund with Vanguard. In what ways do you find Schwab's to be more advantageous?

[Xan]

I have a donor advised fund with Vanguard. In what ways do you find Schwab's to be more advantageous?

Vanguard charges $250/year minimum, Schwab $100. Vanguard requires each contribution be of at least $5000, Schwab no minimum. Vanguard won't send a grant to a charity unless it's at least $500, Schwab $50.

[vnatale]

I have a donor advised fund with Vanguard. In what ways do you find Schwab's to be more advantageous?

Vanguard charges $250/year minimum, Schwab $100. Vanguard requires each contribution be of at least $5000, Schwab no minimum. Vanguard won't send a grant to a charity unless it's at least $500, Schwab $50.

Vanguard does not charge me any annual fee. It's built into the fund's expense fees. The contribution limit has not been an issue for me since I only make contributions every two years. The charity grant limit is not an issue because as I was advising a friend the other day .... from working at a non-profit I know there is a certain overhead to process each donation.

I told him that if he was donating $1,000 a year it'd be much better for the organizations if instead of giving $50 to each of 20 organizations, he, instead, donated $250 to just four of them.

Before I started my donor advised fund and was giving direct donations every two years ... I was giving extremely healthy amounts to just four organizations. Costs far less on their end to deal with my donation than it would to deal with the same total but from many different donors.

[Xan]

Vanguard does not charge me any annual fee. It's built into the fund's expense fees. The contribution limit has not been an issue for me since I only make contributions every two years.

Both charge 0.60% of assets. I keep my assets at effectively $0. Vanguard has a minimum charge of $250, Schwab $100.

You keep more than $40K in your DAF at all times?

The charity grant limit is not an issue because as I was advising a friend the other day .... from working at a non-profit I know there is a certain overhead to process each donation.

I told him that if he was donating $1,000 a year it'd be much better for the organizations if instead of giving $50 to each of 20 organizations, he, instead, donated $250 to just four of them.

It would be much better for the four, agreed. Not better for the remaining sixteen. And in any case, your recommended $250 is only half of Vanguard's minimum.

[vnatale]

Vanguard does not charge me any annual fee. It's built into the fund's expense fees. The contribution limit has not been an issue for me since I only make contributions every two years.

Both charge 0.60% of assets. I keep my assets at effectively $0. Vanguard has a minimum charge of $250, Schwab $100.

You keep more than $40K in your DAF at all times?

Yes, I do. I've been building it up since 2012 and have made few distributions from it.

The charity grant limit is not an issue because as I was advising a friend the other day .... from working at a non-profit I know there is a certain overhead to process each donation.

I told him that if he was donating $1,000 a year it'd be much better for the organizations if instead of giving $50 to each of 20 organizations, he, instead, donated $250 to just four of them.

It would be much better for the four, agreed. Not better for the remaining sixteen. And in any case, your recommended $250 is only half of Vanguard's minimum.

I was just using the $250 as an example. So, I could amend to only 2 @ $500 each.

But my main point is, instead, of each of the 20 of us giving $1,000 in total and each adopting the same 20 charities to which we give each $50 ..... it'd be far better financially for each of those charities if, instead, we each gave our $1,000 to one of the charities. So, they still get the same $1,000 but with much less administrative cost.

Plus for several years now Massachusetts has had this special thing wherein if you give $1,000 or more to certain non-profits (of which I worked for one of those qualified one) then you get to use 50% of that donation amount as a credit against your state taxes. Massachusetts otherwise does not allow any form o charitable deductions.

This is what one of the qualifying organizations put out regarding the tax credit:

https://asiancdc.org/citc#:~:text=What% ... nonprofits.