Skip to content

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020

Do donor-advised funds allow donors to make charitable contributions anonymously?

Seth Smalley, Gigafact
yes

Donor-advised funds allow donors to charities to be anonymous. A donor transfers cash or assets to another foundation, recognizing a tax deduction at that date. The funds are legally no longer under the donor's control. The donor then makes "recommendations" for grants to final recipients then or at any point in the future. Documents and tax filings list the name of the fund, which may reveal nothing about the original donors. Fidelity Charitable, one of the largest specialized managers, says that most donors choose not to give anonymously.

The funds offer convenience and tax advantages for people who may want to recognize tax savings but prefer to defer or plan their giving over time. In 2018, there were 728,000 accounts, up 55% in a year, averaging $166,653 in size.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.