Grantmaking

Yes, a grant recommendation is a great way to honor or memorialize someone. When submitting your grant recommendation, select "In memory of" or "In honor of" from the drop-down menu in the "Use" field. From here, you will be able to add a special note with the information of the individual you are honoring or memorializing.

Yes, you can generally support these sorts of fundraising efforts. Please note that Account Holders cannot support their own fundraising commitments when there is a legally enforceable financial obligation. When submitting your grant recommendation, select "race, run, walk" from the "Use" field and enter the racer’s name and other relevant information such as race name and number. To help expedite processing, you may further specify in the designation that "the grant is not connected to a legally enforceable pledge or financial obligation."

You may recommend a grant for general support/recognition for the event; however, grants intended to pay any portion of the cost of attendance to a charitable event(s) cannot be made from your Giving Account. This includes bifurcated or “split” gifts* where a donor pays for the non-tax-deductible portion of the admission fee out of pocket, and then recommends the tax-deductible portion from their Giving Account. The full admission fee the charity requires you to pay in connection to your attendance at the event, including the tax deductible and non-tax-deductible portions, must be paid out of pocket and separate from any Fidelity Charitable grants. If you have paid the full admission fee to attend and intend to recommend a grant above and beyond that amount for which you will be receiving no goods or service, please indicate this to Fidelity Charitable when recommending your grant by selecting the "Create your own" option in the "Use" field and adding "the full minimum cost to attend has already been paid for outside of the DAF," in addition to any other specifics you would like to include. If you are not attending the event at all, please indicate this by selecting "charity event - not attending" in the "Use" field.

*For more information regarding bifurcated payments for tickets or event attendance from donor-advised funds, see IRS Notice 2017-73.

Here's an example:
Rebecca would like to attend the Annual Gala at her favorite charity. The charity offers individual tickets priced at $500 ($250 tax-deductible) or a Patron Sponsorship for $10,000 that comes with 10 tickets for seats at a premium table ($7,500 tax-deductible). Rebecca would like to use all 10 seats so her friends and family can attend the gala with her. For Rebecca to be within Fidelity Charitable policy, she would have to pay the full minimum ticket price of $500 for each attendee, totaling $5,000.

She may recommend a grant for the remaining $5,000 from her Fidelity Charitable Giving Account as long as this amount is considered fully tax-deductible with no goods or services being provided in connection to the grant. When recommending the grant, Rebecca can make Fidelity Charitable aware of this by selecting the "Create your own" option in the "Use" field and adding "the full minimum cost to attend has already been paid for outside of the DAF," in addition to the other event details she included.

You may not use your Fidelity Charitable Giving Account for lobbying, for political contributions, or to support political campaign activities.

Grant recommendations can be made in support of non-legally binding pledges. Accordingly, you may tell charities that you "intend to recommend a grant from your donor-advised fund in the amount of [$]" so they know your grant recommendation is being made in response to a charitable organization’s request for a commitment.

When submitting a grant recommendation online, once you confirm that the charity does not consider your pledge to be legally binding, select “Pledge (non-binding)” from the grant use menu.

A grant cannot be recommended for the tuition payment of a specific individual(s) chosen by the donor(s) or related third party. This includes, but is not limited to, grants for school tuition and other required fees, such as enrollment fees and deposits, fundraising obligations where the school considers the payment a non-deductible tuition payment.

You may, however, recommend a grant for the purpose of supporting a scholarship program established at and administered by a qualified public charity, so long as the recipient of the scholarship is not related to the recommending donor and does not satisfy a financial obligation of the recommending donor(s) or related third parties.

You may recommend a grant for this purpose if the organization confirms that its membership fee is 100% tax-deductible and that membership benefits are not more than incidental. If this is true, please indicate in the "Use" field that the membership level does not provide you with more than incidental benefits by selecting "Membership" from the drop-down menu when submitting your grant recommendation.

Benefits in connection with athletic funds (such as when the Account Holder receives benefits like the right to purchase tickets to sporting events) are prohibited. The full price required to receive these benefits must be paid out of pocket and separate from any Fidelity Charitable grants.

No. Fidelity Charitable cannot make grants that would provide a more than incidental benefit to the recommending donor or any third parties. This generally includes online individual fundraising efforts like GoFundMe.com.

No. Fidelity Charitable makes grants only to IRS-qualified public charities, and grant recommendations cannot provide any impermissible private benefit to the recommending donor or any third parties.

Grants must be recommended exclusively for charitable purposes with no more than incidental benefits to an Account Holder or related third party. A "more than incidental" benefit generally includes items with financial value, such as includes tickets to attend an event, raffle tickets, auction items, or the provision of any other goods or services. Certain items of minimal value are considered an "incidental benefit" such as logo-bearing keychains, coffee mugs, or calendars.

Three options are available for recommending grants. You may recommend grants online from your Giving Account, within our iOS and Android app or over the phone with a representative. Access our guide for how to recommend a grant.

A grant every two years is required to fulfill the minimum granting requirement. If no grants are distributed from a Giving Account for one year, Fidelity Charitable will make every effort to contact the Account Holder to encourage grant recommendations from the Giving Account.

After two years in which no grants are distributed from a Giving Account, Fidelity Charitable will grant 5% from the Giving Account balance to an IRS-qualified public charity approved by the Trustees of Fidelity Charitable.

Fidelity Charitable will make every effort to contact you regarding your inactive Giving Account and you will continue to receive notifications until your grant recommendation clears with the charity. If you received a notification that a grant recommendation is still required but recently submitted a recommendation that was approved, please allow time for our system to update.

Your employer is the best resource to reference when determining what their policy is on matching grants recommended from donor-advised funds.

If your employer does match grants you recommend to nonprofits from a donor-advised fund, you can follow these instructions to view your grant information and download a confirmation as proof of your donation for your employer.

You may indicate to the recipient charity how you would like the grant to be used by including a special purpose when submitting the grant recommendation. Ultimately it is at the discretion of the recipient charity to determine how the funds will be used, but the charity can take into consideration your recommended use. After selecting a charity, reference the grant detail boxes to the right of the charity information. Below the "Amount" field, the "Use" drop-down offers a set of standard grant uses, or you may create your own by selecting "Create your own" and entering your custom special purpose.

Please note: If you add additional details, or create your own designation, a Fidelity Charitable representative will review the purpose you provide, and we may have to call the charity or you to make a determination on the approval of the grant. This can significantly slow down the process. Including a contact name and phone number for the charity does help.

Fidelity Charitable can generally make grants only to public charities, private operating foundations and government units. Fidelity Charitable does not make grants to certain types of supporting organizations, private non-operating foundations, government instrumentalities, or testing for public safety organizations. An IRS-qualified public charity is a charitable organization that has successfully filed an exemption application with the IRS for its public charity status, or certain other organizations that the IRS considers to be "public charities" without filing, such as many religious organizations and educational institutions. Public charities include most organizations you might consider a charity, from national relief organizations, to your alma mater, to your local arts council.

Fidelity Charitable maintains a database of public charities that includes the most up-to-date information from the IRS. However, public charity status does not guarantee that a grant recommendation will be approved to any particular organization. Under policies set by the Fidelity Charitable Trustees, Fidelity Charitable conducts a robust review of each grant recommendation to ensure grants are made to IRS-qualified public charities, that those public charities use those granted funds solely for proper charitable purposes, and that grants do not confer impermissible benefits on donors or on any other person. Fidelity Charitable reserves the right to perform additional due diligence and to decline to make a recommended grant to a charitable organization.

A grant can still be recommended to such an organization but will require additional research to ensure its qualification status. Including a contact name and phone number for the charity if you have one could help expedite the research process.

You have two options for using your Giving Account to support causes outside the U.S. You can recommend a grant to an American charity that works overseas, or you can recommend a grant to an American intermediary charity that will, subject to eligibility for grants within the American intermediary’s grant diligence process, make a grant to your preferred organization for an additional fee. We have identified a number of intermediary charities that specialize in various regions of the world, and they can help you support the causes you care about.

To learn more about our foreign charities options, visit our Charities you can support page.

No. All grant recommendations are subject to review and approval before issuing; therefore, checkbooks are not provided to donors and Fidelity Charitable sends all grant funds directly to the charity grant recipients.

To easily recommend a grant, you may log in to your Giving Account at FidelityCharitable.org, use the app available for iOS and Android, or call us.

Some charities have provided us with their preferred addresses to receive checks and letters with grant details. We use this address to ensure faster issuing of the grant.

For other charities, if you think we do not have the most current mailing address on file, you can propose a different address for the charity by clicking the "charity details" link on your charity list when entering your grant recommendation. If you provide us with an updated address, we will conduct research to confirm what the best mailing address is before sending a check. Including a contact name and phone number for the charity if you have one could help expedite this research process.

For many charities, it is more efficient for the funds to be sent electronically. When charities enroll in the EFT program with Fidelity Charitable, we do not need an address from you because we have information for the charity’s bank account, where we send all grants.

If the charity you would like to grant to is not enrolled in EFT, direct them to our page for charities.

Nonprofits often want to thank you for the recommended grant and engage with you to further support their mission. We encourage donors to provide their name and address to nonprofits with each grant they recommend.

Each time you recommend a grant, you will be automatically defaulted to this full acknowledgement option; however, you may also choose to grant partially anonymously or fully anonymously. The option you choose, subject to Fidelity Charitable Trustee approval, will be sent with the grant via check or electronic funds transfer.

See below for an example of each acknowledgement option:
Full acknowledgement - includes name, address, and Giving Account name (see example)
Partial acknowledgement - Giving Account name only (see example)
Anonymous - no donor or Giving Account information provided (see example)

While the account default is full acknowledgement, all three acknowledgement options are generally available to choose from at the time of recommendation for each grant. You can call us to elect another acknowledgement option as the default.

When recommending a grant, use the "Acknowledgement" drop-down to select the acknowledgement that you would like to accompany the grant. To edit the acknowledgement of a grant, please contact us. All grant recommendations are subject to review and approval by the Trustees of Fidelity Charitable.

The Giving Account lets you support 501(c)(3) public charities. That generally should include all the charities you support today, with only a few exceptions, such as private foundations. Our online process makes giving easy. The minimum grant recommendation is just $50, and you can support as many charities as you like—with more flexibility and better bookkeeping than ever.

An IRS-qualified public charity is a charitable organization that has successfully filed an exemption application with the IRS for its public charity status, or certain other organizations that the IRS considers to be public charities without filing, such as many religious organizations and educational institutions.

Recently submitted, one-time grant recommendations may be eligible for cancelation by logging in to your Giving Account. From the Recent grant activity dashboard, click View all grant activity. Find the grant that you wish to cancel. If the grant is eligible for cancellation, you will see a Cancel button under Actions. Once selected, you will be asked to confirm the cancellation and the payment will no longer be processed.

At the close of the financial market, grant recommendations in Payment Processing status can no longer be canceled.

To edit a one-time grant recommendation, you should cancel and resubmit the grant with the corrected information.

Grants funded by advisor managed account cannot be canceled online. Please reach out to your advisor for further assistance.

Access our step-by-step guide for further assistance with this process.

Grant recommendations typically take 2–10 business days to be processed and are subject to approval by the Fidelity Charitable Trustees.

The time and due diligence necessary to process a grant recommendation may vary based on the grantee or use of the grant. We may need to request additional information from the charity, and the responsiveness of the charity can affect processing times, so including a contact name and phone number for the charity when entering your grant recommendation could help accelerate this step. Selecting "Where It Is Needed Most" as the grant use can also help expedite the processing of the grant recommendation and gives charities the most flexibility to use the grant in the way that they see fit.

During peak activity periods, processing of grant recommendations may take longer than normal. You can track the status of your grant recommendations in your grant history, but please be aware that it may take up to 30 minutes for the grant to appear at the top of your history.

Please note: We are experiencing delays in charities receiving grant checks due to COVID-19 disruptions with the postal service and the inability of some nonprofits to retrieve checks. If your recommended recipient charity is interested in enrolling in EFT to help them receive approved grants quicker, please direct them to our "working with us" page to learn more.

Under policies set by the Fidelity Charitable Trustees, Fidelity Charitable conducts a robust review of each grant recommendation. To learn more about Fidelity Charitable's grant review and due diligence process, please visit our Grant review and due diligence process page.

Fidelity Charitable sends all grant funds directly to the charity grant recipients via check or Electronic Funds Transfer (“EFT”). If your recommended recipient charity is interested in enrolling in EFT to help them receive approved grants quicker, please direct them to our "working with us" page to learn more.

To help your recommended recipient charity receive all approved grants from Fidelity Charitable quicker, please ask if they are interested in enrolling in EFT and direct them to our "working with us" page to learn more.

Please note: We are experiencing delays in charities receiving grant checks due to COVID-19 disruptions with the postal service and the inability of some nonprofits to retrieve checks. If your recommended recipient charity is interested in enrolling in EFT to help them receive approved grants quicker, please direct them to our "working with us" page to learn more.

When a grant is returned to your Giving Account, it is likely due to the charity not depositing the check after 90 days or the grant being returned by the postal service. For more information, see the "History" tab and further reference the "All other transaction history."

If your recommended grant was approved, please allow time for the charity to receive and deposit the check. Some charities are currently experiencing delays receiving grant checks due to COVID-19 postal service disruptions, the inability of some to access checks that were delivered to closed locations, or because Fidelity Charitable checks may not be forwarded for security purposes.

If the check was sent to an address that is no longer valid or the charity confirms they never received the check, please call to cancel the approved grant and reissue a new one. When recommending the new grant online, please indicate the new address by manually entering it. When recommending the new grant over the phone, please notify the service representative assisting you.