What is a Donor Advised Fund? 8 reasons you might want to consider opening one.

8 reasons a DAF might be beneficial for you:

1. Giving through your family’s private fund allows you to give anonymously.
2. Simplifies your giving by allowing you to make one donation that supports all your favorite charities.
3. Simplifies your tax preparation. Instead of tracking down multiple  receipts, you only need to know how much you put in your DAF last year. This makes filing taxes so much easier.
4. It often amplifies your giving by growing the money inside your giving account before you give it away. You want your charitable donations to be as effective as possible when you give and having a DAF allows you to do that and potentially give more than you set aside.
5. It’s a powerful vehicle for your corporate giving. In the same way a DAF benefits your personal giving, having a corporate DAF can help your company to have a greater impact on the causes and charities it supports. It could even be a way that the staff can decide as a team which charities to support in a simple and streamlined way.
6. It is advantageous for your taxes. According to Fidelity Charitable, “Donor-advised funds are the fastest-growing charitable giving vehicle in the United States because they are one of the easiest and most tax-advantageous ways to give to charity.
7. A wide range of assets are accepted as donations including  cash, publicly traded securities or mutual fund shares, restricted stock, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, private equity interest, hedge fund interest, and certain complex assets such as privately held C-Corp and S-Corp shares.
8. You can automate all of your giving and most DAF providers will send your money to the organizations you love for you at no extra charge.