Donor-Advised Funds and Your Personality Type 

Personality type matters, even when it comes to supporting community causes. Your “social impact personality type” is especially important as you gear up to structure your donor-advised fund at the community foundation. A donor-advised fund is a terrific vehicle to help you and your family organize gifts to charities, whether you identify as an “investor,” a “connector,” or an “activator.”   

Why should you ask the professionals at your community foundation about opening a donor-advised fund in the first place, though? Donor-advised funds are the fastest growing philanthropic planning vehicle in today’s wealth management marketplace. Donor-advised funds are popular because they allow an individual or family to make a tax-deductible transfer that qualifies as a charitable contribution, and then later recommend gifts to favorite charities from the fund when the time is right. A donor-advised fund operates a lot like a checking account just for charity, except it’s established according to the IRS guidelines that create the tax advantages. Plus, when you establish a donor-advised fund at your community foundation, you know you are setting up your charitable giving to make the biggest impact in the community through the causes you love the most.   

So how does personality type fit into the equation? People who lean toward the investor personality type are typically a good match for setting up a donor-advised fund to maximize tax benefits. If you’re the investor type, you probably enjoy acting independently as much as you enjoy “doing good” with a group. You look at the bottom line when you invest in the community, both from the perspective of your own financial objectives as well as those of the nonprofit organization you support. In other words, you’re looking at charitable giving and social impact as an investment to improve the lives of others, and you want to maximize results not only for the people you intend to help, but also for your own tax and estate planning portfolio. Investors love the elegance of the donor-advised fund to achieve many goals through one vehicle.  

Does it work for non-investor types, though? You bet! Activators, who like to focus on a particular cause, are also well-suited for a donor-advised fund because they can gain valuable insights about community impact by working closely with the team at the community foundation. Connectors love donor-advised funds because they enjoy the opportunities through community foundations to get together with other donors and involve their friends and family members in their favorite charitable pursuits.  

Investor, activator, connector. Where donor-advised funds are concerned, everybody’s got a good side. What’s yours?