Fidelity Charitable reports surge in DAF grants for 2019

• Date: 01 April 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nba.30742
• Published date: 01 April 2020

APRIL 2020 NONPROFIT BUSINESS ADVISOR

5

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

DOI: 10.1002/nba

Industry News

Fidelity Charitable reports surge

in DAF grants for 2019

Fidelity Charitable, the nation’s largest admin-

istrator of donor-advised funds, awarded a re-

cord-breaking $7.3 billion in grants from its DAF

accounts in 2019, far exceeding the previous record

of $5.2 billion set in 2018, and offering further con-

rmation that DAFs are the fastest-growing vehicle

for giving in the United States.

The data, included in the firm’s 2020 Giving

Report, provides key insights into the motivations

and behaviors of Fidelity’s DAF account holders.

Similar to individual donors, grants from DAFs

often aligned with issues receiving media attention,

with donations to disaster relief, environmental

protection and civil discourse organizations surging

as these issue areas were highlighted in the media.

According to Fidelity, the use of DAFs has freed

up many donors to contribute more to charity than

they ordinarily would have. For example, since

inception, Giving Account investment growth has

generated $10.8 billion in charitable dollars availa-

ble for grants above and beyond the original donor

contributions, the rm said.

DAF account holders also have more options for

what they give. While most charitable contributions

are made in cash, checks or credit cards, more than

60% of Fidelity Charitable contributions in 2019

were made in the form of more strategic noncash

Software companies partner with CECP to streamline donations,

volunteer data reporting

Under a new partnership with Chief Executives

for Corporate Purpose, users of software from

Benevity and YourCause that is used for tracking

donations and employee volunteerism will now have

access to a streamlined reporting mechanism that

will make it easier to report social investment data

to CECP’s Giving in Numbers survey.

These “Innovation Partnerships” with Benevity

and YourCause, two of the leading providers of

corporate social responsibility software in the indus-

try, will benet hundreds of employers—including

for-prot companies and nonprot organizations

with their own employee volunteer programs—by

formatting data in a way that will easily translate

to the Giving in Numbers report.

Employers that use Benevity will be able to

access data in a format that directly corresponds

to the Giving in Numbers survey questions. Using

the Benevity Reporting platform, which currently

provides Benevity clients self-serve access to over

30 stock reports, they will now have access to the

new CECP Giving in Numbers Support report that

includes data on total social investment, matching

gifts, employee volunteer program hours and more.

According to CECP, by streamlining data sub-

missions, the partnerships create improved “busi-

ness case” arguments to support giving strategies,

as well as benchmarking, trends and insights for

leaders in all sectors that use the resulting Giving in

Numbers report. For employers already participat-

ing in CECP’s research, their data will be pre-for-

matted to save time and effort when lling out the

Giving in Numbers survey.

“These customers will be able to submit their data

to CECP using the same formatting and specica-

tions required for the Giving in Numbers research,

which will streamline the process and reduce time

spent on manual report building, formatting and

congurations, so they can focus on what matters

most—their social impact programs,” said Rachel

Hutchisson, vice president of corporate citizenship

and philanthropy at Blackbaud, the corporate par-

ent of YourCause.

“The new functionality creates a turnkey process

for Blackbaud customers using YourCause solu-

tions to submit their data to CECP for the Giving

in Numbers survey. It signicantly streamlines the

process and will improve the overall data health of

the submissions,” Hutchisson said.

This will be useful to both CECP-afliated em-

ployers and nonafliated employers, she added,

because the CECP report workbook is available

as a standard workbook for all YourCause users

(See PARTNERSHIP on page 8)

(See FIDELITY on page 8)