Tax reform didn’t stop Americans from giving from their donor-advised funds -- it may have encouraged them.
According to a Schwab Charitable release on Tuesday, a record $2.2 billion in grants were given to 86,500 charities in 2018 from donor-advised funds, a 35 percent increase from the previous year.
All told, Schwab Charitable said on Tuesday that its donors made more than 487,000 grants from their donor advised funds, an increase of 32 percent from 2017.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 doubled the standard deduction for most taxpayers, which caused some concern that givers seeking additional tax deductions from charitable gifts would cease their philanthropy, but that was not the case. In the fourth quarter alone, Schwab Charitable’s clients requested 210,600 grants totaling $807 million, up from 163,600 grants totaling $655 million in 2017.
Kim Laughton, president of Schwab Charitable, said that the new tax law may have helped inspire more giving from her clients.
“Our extraordinary donors demonstrated that giving can flourish in a range of tax and market environments,” said Laughton in released comments. “Under the new tax law, charitable giving is a relative bright spot for donors who itemize because the charitable deduction was preserved while several other popular deductions were capped or eliminated.”
The most commonly named grant recipients in 2018 were Feeding America, Planned Parenthood, Doctors Without Borders, the Salvation Army and the Campus Crusade for Christ.
More than two-thirds of the contributions to Schwab Charitable’s donor-advised funds came in the form of appreciated non-cash assets, most commonly publicly traded securities, restricted stock, real estate and privately held business interests.
Schwab noted that some of its donors chose to concentrate -- or bunch -- their contributions in 2018 by donating several years of gifts to their donor-advised funds.
Schwab Charitable, which celebrates it’s 20th anniversary in 2019, has now issued more than $11 billion in grants to more than 142,000 charities and causes.