Fidelity Charitable appoints Amy N. Danforth as President

BOSTON, February 26, 2014 – Amy N. Danforth has been appointed president of Fidelity Charitable, an independent public charity with a donor-advised fund program. Prior to assuming her new role, Danforth spent more than five years as senior vice president of marketing and program for Fidelity Charitable, with responsibility for setting and executing strategy for marketing, analytics and research, investments and program management. Danforth succeeds Sarah Libbey, who has taken a new executive position at Fidelity Investments.

“Amy has played a critical role in shaping and achieving Fidelity Charitable’s strategic goals over the past five years, particularly those related to enhancing services for donors and their advisors, raising awareness of donor-advised funds and supporting the overall mission of the organization,” said Anna Nelson, chair of the Board of Trustees for Fidelity Charitable. “This proven ability to move Fidelity Charitable forward instills great confidence in the Board for Amy in her new role as president. Under her leadership, we anticipate a continued focus on furthering current programs and driving new innovations that make giving simple and effective for donors and the charitable causes they support.”

“Our donors are truly inspiring philanthropists who are achieving fantastic things through their giving, and I look forward to supporting their efforts through resources, tools and services that ultimately enable them to give more,” said Danforth. “As more donors adopt donor-advised funds to support their philanthropy, it also becomes more important for nonprofits to understand who these donors are and how they give. So we will continue to advance our initiatives to educate and support nonprofits to allow them to better tap into the growing number of donor-advised fund donors.”

As president, Danforth will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of Fidelity Charitable, which was the first national donor-advised fund program when it launched in 1991 and has helped donors support more than 170,000 nonprofit organizations with over $16 billion in grants to date.

Danforth joined Fidelity in 1986 as a sales representative for Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Company. Between 1986 and 2000, she served in increasingly senior positions in several Fidelity companies, responsible for marketing, high net worth services and digital initiatives. Danforth left Fidelity from 2000 to 2005 during which time she worked for Boston Private Financial Holdings Company (BPFH) as senior vice president of Affiliate Services for three years. She returned in 2005 as vice president, Board Operations, for Fidelity Management & Research Company (FMRCo), holding this position until 2008.

In addition to her new role at Fidelity Investments, Sarah Libbey will serve in an advisory capacity to Fidelity Charitable through the transition.

“Sarah has accomplished all that she set out to do and more at Fidelity Charitable,” said Nelson. “Over the past six years, she introduced a number of innovations to support donors’ charitable giving plans and raised Fidelity Charitable’s outgoing grants to nonprofits to nearly $2.1 billion in 2013 from approximately $1.1 billion in 2008. We thank Sarah for her dedication and commitment to the organization and its mission, and wish her the best as she takes on new challenges.”