"It can also be hard to navigate the balance between stewarding well for your family’s future needs and releasing resources to support the causes you care most about.”
Philanthropists can feel burdened by a heavy sense of responsibility as they tackle the big questions, such as:
- How much and to whom should they give?
- How can they do that tax effectively?
- Should they do that publicly or anonymously?
- Who can they trust to help them administrate their philanthropy well?
Steeden says this can be an overwhelming and lonely process without expert advice to hand.
With the right support though, for example by giving with a Donor Advised Fund, philanthropists can develop a proactive giving strategy and so experience significant freedom and joy in their generosity.
A DAF is like having your own charitable foundation under the DAF provider’s umbrella, for the sole purpose of supporting charitable organisations you care about. It is a simple, flexible, and tax-advantageous way to give to your favourite charities.
You create an account that you give into and then decide which charitable causes you want to allocate your fund to. For major donors, has become one of the fastest-growing philanthropic vehicles because it is flexible, convenient and tax-efficient.
According to the National Philanthropic Trust's 2023 Donor-Advised Fund Report, there has been continued growth for DAFs, albeit at a slower pace than in recent years.
Some data highlights from the NPT's DAF report 2023:
- Grants from DAFs increased 9 per cent to $52.16bn (£41bn) in 2022, a new high for grant dollars.
- Grant-making has increased every year since 2009 and has more than doubled in the past five years.
- DAF assets reached $228.89 billion in 2022, the second-highest value on record after 2021.
The DAF effectively partners with them in their giving, taking care of the admininstration so the donors are free to focus on supporting the causes they are passionate about.
The DAF model allows them to give anonymously if preferred. According to Steeden, Stewardship philanthropists also benefit from knowing that any charitable causes on their database have only been verified following a strict due diligence process.
For those giving more than £500k a year, there is also the option of using Stewardship’s Donor Advisory Board, which allows the donor to include family, friends and trusted advisers in their grant-making decisions, in a similar way to trustees but without the bureaucracy and legal responsibilities of trusteeship.
Global Returns Project
Another organisation taking a particularly innovative approach to working towards protecting the planet against climate change is the Global Returns Project.
The organisation was founded by a group of former investment bankers and environmentalists who decided to get together to encourage savers to donate a fraction of their net worth to a selection of charitable causes that would be carefully assessed and selected by the GRP.
These selected high-impact charities include:
- Global Canopy
- Rainforest Trust
- Client Earth
- Whale and Dolphin Conservation
- Trillion Trees
- Blue Marine Foundation.
GRP's chief projects officer Jack Chellman explains how the GRP aims to make climate philanthropy easy and convenient to donors: “The Global Returns Project makes high-impact climate philanthropy easy.
