Donor-Advised Fund
Do More with Your Capital
We help you invest creatively in the things you care about most.
- Greater Impact Return
- Recycle Your Capital
- Creative Philanthropy
The Philanthropic Challenge
More Than Just Grants
Have a DAF? You might also feel like it has:
- No meaningful vision
- No creative ways to deploy funds
- Financial investment first, impact second mentality
Introducing Impact Charitable DAF
Investments That Create a
Exponential Impact
Innovation is the Difference.
- Prioritize the effects and results rather than financial gains
- Recirculating capital for greater impact
- Pooling DAFs creating larger investment opportunities
We have a range of investment options, and we love working with DAF holders who bring us new opportunities for impact-first investments. We work across a broad range of impact themes from affordable housing to economic development to closing the racial wealth gap and many more.
Coordinating the use of different forms of financial resources, including grants and investments, supports a larger range of solutions that can tackle problems in different ways. Impact Charitable has extensive impact-first investing experience, combining the expertise of our staff in philanthropy and finance to help people move money directly into impactful organizations to make lasting change.
Our Success Stories
Discover How Rebecca Transformed Her Philanthropic Dreams into a Meaningful Impact
For those of us interested in making catalytic investments, using a DAF just makes sense, and Impact Charitable makes it very easy. Recently, I was interested in investing in a Repararative Notes offering with Black Farmer Fund and reached out to Impact Charitable to see if they could help facilitate this. Not only did the Impact Charitable team take care of all the details for my investment, but they also shared the opportunity with others who might be interested, leading to multiple other DAF holders investing together. This felt like such a win-win-win. Less admin (including tax paperwork) on my side because the loan is held in a DAF and less admin on the side of Black Farmer Fund because multiple lenders are grouped together through Impact Charitable. And, most importantly, it's so meaningful to know that my loan played a role in mobilizing others to support an organization I care about!
- Rebecca Blumenshine
Donor-Advised Fund Fee Calculator
Impact Charitable’s Administrative Fee Calculator
Calculate the administrative fees for Impact Charitable by considering the anticipated balance of your donor-advised fund.
*additional fees apply to direct, impact investments
Got Questions? We Have Answers
Frequently Asked Questions
A donor-advised fund (DAF) is like a charitable bank account. Once you’ve opened a DAF, you can contribute to it as frequently as you’d like, receiving a tax benefit each time. As the donor-advisor to your fund, you can recommend grants or investments to your favorite charitable organizations or social enterprises.
DAFs are often used for grantmaking, but there’s so much more you can do with this tool! At Impact Charitable, we leverage DAFs in uniquely high-impact ways—like low-interest loans, equity investments, and pay for success investments. We specialize in impact-first investing because this approach allows for capital to be reinvested over and over again.
To get started, fill out our online form. Our Client Services Coordinator, Cam Welch, will reach out to you to complete the process and welcome you to the community. If you already have a DAF, you can roll it over to Impact Charitable, too!
If you know what you’d like to do with your DAF, that’s great. If not—or if you’d like to hear about some creative ways our DAF holders are using this philanthropic tool—James would be happy to walk you through your options.
We view philanthropy as one of the best places to take risks. Why? Because philanthropic capital is unique. Once it’s granted, it no longer belongs to the donor, and the donor knows that they’ll never see those funds again.
Without the expectation of return, philanthropic funds are far more flexible than business or government ever could be—allowing them to be applied to more innovative and higher-risk strategies.
At Impact Charitable, we are all about impact first. That’s why we like to call our strategy not just “impact investing” but “impact-first investing.”
This approach is centered on impact above all—ensuring that every dollar is leveraged for the highest-impact change, whether that’s providing low-cost startup capital to BIPOC-owned businesses or creating the infrastructure for large-scale direct cash transfers.
Learn more by viewing our portfolio or the spectrum of capital in which we work.
Impact Charitable’s fees are competitive for boutique impact investing but are certainly higher than big-box DAF providers like Schwab or Fidelity. Our DAF holders come to us because we offer far more unique opportunities for impact, not because we have the lowest fees in town. Contact us to explore your impact opportunities and discuss cost in more detail.
Our minimum to open a DAF is $5,000 (or the expectation to get there). We do not have a minimum for grantmaking.
Possibly. We do connect nonprofits and social enterprises with loans, grants, and direct investments, but we most often work with established community partners to identify and vet recipients. We do not have any kind of direct application for funding.
Still, you’re welcome to reach out to us at info@impactcharitable.org and see if we can help.
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