Fidelity Charitable Reports $7.3 Billion in Grants From Donor-Advised Funds

Donor-advised-fund sponsor Fidelity Charitable reported its donors made a record-breaking $7.3 billion in grants in 2019. That’s a roughly 40 percent increase over the $5.2 billion in grants made from Fidelity Charitable in 2018.

In 2010, by contrast, Fidelity Charitable account holders made $1.2 billion in grants.

According to Fidelity, 74 percent of the 2019 grants went to a charity the account holders had previously supported. Also, 60 percent of those grants came with few strings attached and were designated for use “where needed most” by nonprofits.

Fidelity said, without providing hard numbers, that Doctors Without Borders USA was the most popular charity for its grant makers, followed by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Fidelity said millennial donors now account for 13 percent of new donor-advised-fund account-holders on its platform, double the proportion from five years ago. These donors, according to Fidelity, are more likely to give to social-justice and civil-liberties charities, with the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood among the most popular.