Fidelity Charitable continues to expand support for West Coast donors, advisors

BOSTON, August 30, 2017 – Fidelity Charitable, an independent public charity and the nation’s second-largest grantmaker¹, is continuing to expand its engagement with and support for its West Coast donors and the advisors who work with them. Fidelity Charitable has established a strong regional presence on the West Coast. To make this support even more robust, the organization today announced the appointment of Christine Switzer as Regional Director of Philanthropic Strategies for its Private Donor Group, based in San Francisco, California.

Switzer will be focused on the development of community, connectivity and innovation among this generous group of West Coast donors. These donors embrace innovative approaches to funding their giving, and Switzer will work to help them implement philanthropic strategies to drive change and impact causes they care about most. She joins a team of other West Coast-based experts at Fidelity Charitable dedicated to supporting the philanthropic endeavors of the region’s advisors and philanthropists.

“Christine is an expert in global philanthropy, donor engagement and nonprofits,” said Elaine Martyn, Vice President and Managing Director, Private Donor Group, Fidelity Charitable. “She is deeply committed to helping donors and their families achieve their philanthropic goals and maximize their impact. Christine’s ability to work with founders, entrepreneurs and private capital investors on donations of private capital assets to charity will be vital to meeting the evolving needs of the West Coast donor community.”

Switzer most recently served as a philanthropic advisor to the Faraway Foundation and It’s Time Network. Previously, she worked for the Global Fund for Women, where she was a development director and established a major donor program. She has also served as director of development and external affairs at the International Museum of Women, director of corporate and foundation relations at the University of California (UC), Berkeley Law School, director of UC Berkeley Extension’s International Programs and Business & Technology programs, director of alumni relations at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund. She was also a management consultant at Accenture in Washington D.C., France and the Netherlands, and worked for the U.S. Embassy in Paris and Madrid.

Switzer earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia and a Master’s degree from The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she studied international development and education.

¹Based on a comparison of Fidelity Charitable grant dollars with the grants made by private, corporate and community foundations, as listed in the Foundation Center’s “Top 100 U.S. Foundations by Total Giving” list.