Donor Advised Funds For Workplace Giving?

According to an article in the May 3, 2007, Chronicle of Philanthropy, donor advised funds are now paying out to charities about the same amount annually as the entire United Way system (my observation, not the Chronicle's).  What I found especially interesting was that the Renaissance Charitable Foundation set up donor advised at three companies, which gave their workers the option of contributing.  This is new, and I hope to see more of it.  Replacing United Way donor option ("write-in gifts") with donor advised funds could be good news for both the United Way (which doesn't really want to process write-in gifts) and corporations that want to offer their employees freedom of choice in charitable giving at work but don't want the administrative burder of running that program in-house. 

Independent Charities of America (ICA) offers donor advised funds, too, and it has been ICA's experience that  the interest earned on the assets contribution mostly pay for the administrative costs of the eventual distribution to charities.  (ICA requires a minimum distribution of five percent of the donor's account annually).

That's the good news.  The bad news is that when ICA has offered this option to corporations, the response has been "that's too complicated for our employees to understand."  Maybe so.  It's a new idea for workplace giving.  But once that AH-HAA! moment happens, and employees get it, I think they will love this idea.

What do you think?

Comments

[maygan]

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