Corporate-Originated Charitable Funds

Abstract

This chapter explores the operations of the important new charitable funds originated by a number of the major US financial services firms, such as Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab. These are registered as public charities but operate very much like community foundations, making extensive use of donor-advised funds and certain other fairly complex charitable giving instruments such as charitable remainder trusts. Though only twenty years old, these corporate-originated charitable funds already equal the nation’s community foundations in the aggregate donor-advised fund assets they manage and have surpassed these foundations in terms of the number of such funds. The chapter documents the operation of these organizations and examines the important innovations they have introduced into charitable giving and the management of charitable assets, of middle-class donors faster, simpler, and relatively inexpensive.