The Dunphys: Our financial planner introduced us to donor-advised funds in 2018.
The Lagoudas: We learned about them five years ago.
The Dunphys: The tax benefit appealed to us.
The Lagoudas: We liked the fact that it allows you to easily donate to recognized charitable organizations.
The Dunphys: We use it to make a few large grants each year, like our Texas A&M scholarship, the United Way, etc. We also make smaller, charitable gifts each year as the need arises.
The Lagoudas: We have used the account to make contributions to Texas A&M for various opportunities and also support other nonprofit organizations. We typically use our fund to make many small gifts and a few larger contributions.
The Dunphys: Our DAF is very easy to use. We use Fidelity, and the process is very streamlined and simple.
The Lagoudas: Yes, it’s easy to execute because we can easily make electronic transfers to the account and then to charities. It is also convenient to set up recurring donations and organize our overall giving, and we can easily invest assets into our account.
The Dunphys: We make all of the charitable decisions ourselves, but Fidelity does ensure the charity meets the grant criteria.
The Lagoudas: We make these decisions. It is easy to manage all of the details online.
The Dunphys: Yes, but our account lets us support most qualified 501(c)(3) public charities.
The Lagoudas: We have not experienced any restrictions with donations we’ve made so far.
The Dunphys: We benefit from receiving a tax break.
The Lagoudas: It streamlines our IRS reporting because we can very efficiently transfer our annual charitable giving information directly to our accountant for tax preparation.
The Dunphys: We are using it to support chemical engineering scholarships. It is important to us to encourage more women and minorities to pursue engineering careers. We also wanted to give folks the opportunity to attend Texas A&M, who might not otherwise be able to. We felt like establishing scholarships would help in these areas.
The Lagoudas: In the past, we made several donations to support scholarship efforts at the departmental and college levels. Recently, we established a scholarship to support first-generation students pursuing a degree in aerospace engineering. With both of us being first-generation students and faculty members, we have experienced the difference education makes through our own lives and the lives of our students, especially at Texas A&M.
The Dunphys: It is as simple as notifying Fidelity to request a grant to the Texas A&M Foundation.
The Lagoudas: All we had to do was add the Texas A&M Foundation as one of the charities in our database.
The Dunphys: Work with your financial planner and use an investment firm with experience in DAFs.
The Lagoudas: It is very convenient. Once you work with the Foundation and identify what you want your gift to support, the logistics are easy. Investing in the education of the next generation is investing in our future.
