Depending on your children’s various passions and how well they get along, it might make sense to split your account into new accounts, one for each child, at your death.
DONATIONS FROM DONOR ADVISED FUNDS AND LOOKTHROUGH FULL
Two account advisors can get full access to make investment choices and recommend grants, or you can just give out read only access as homework before a family philanthropy meeting. But would they know what to do with it? Some families create new accounts for their children so they can take it for a test drive, Gill says.
If you have adult children, you can name them as successor advisors on your account. Alternatively, the fund can be distributed in full to charities of your choice at your death, or to the Vanguard Charitable general fund. They name specific charities and choose a dollar amount or percentage amount that should be distributed over a certain time, maybe five or 10 years, or until the account balance goes to zero. More and more donors are interested in creating a legacy for a period of time after their deaths, Gill says, especially for charities they support that might not be able to absorb a large gift all at once. It’s easy to check off a choice for succession plans for your fund when you set it up and forget it, but that can be a mistake. At Schwab, subsequent contributions (after the initial set up) are $500 versus $5,000 for Vanguard and the National Philanthropic Trust. If the minimum gift size is an issue, the family can or friends can make gifts through a portal like Network for Good for the benefit of a donor advised fund in memory of the deceased, says Eileen Heisman, president of the National Philanthropic Trust. In another case, as part of an estate plan, a lawyer recently created a $10 million legacy memorial fund for a couple that will support causes they were passionate about.Īnother approach is to list a donor advised fund on a death notice in lieu of flowers or naming a specific charity. In one case, Gill explains, when a wife died after a long illness, her husband made grants out of their DAF in her memory to support the research of the physician who had treated her. It could be a new DAF altogether, or granting in memorium out of an existing DAF. One creative giving idea is for a widow or widower to establish a memorial fund in honor of his or her late spouse.
Here are some ideas.Ĭreate in memorium gifts. I chatted with Ann Gill, chief program officer at Vanguard Charitable about ways donors can improve their charitable giving through donor-advised funds.