Why choose a Donor Advised Fund? Kevin & Amy share how it works for them.

Kevin and Amy Deardorff have always known that Kosciusko County is a special place.

So, in 2019, it made perfect sense to expand their giving with a Donor Advised Fund at the Community Foundation! In a recent interview, Kevin and Amy explained why a Donor Advised Fund works for them… and how it might work for you.

Q: Why did you establish a Donor Advised Fund at the Community Foundation?
A: We have both volunteered at the foundation in various roles over the years. The Community Foundation supports our community in so many varied ways, including leadership, philanthropy, and training and support to non-profit organizations. Our involvement educated us on the advantages of Donor Advised Funds, so it was easy to choose.

Q: How do you decide what grants to recommend?
A: We certainly each have our favorite nonprofits, typically because of prior involvement with those organizations, that we support regularly. We also want to support agencies that benefit from the volunteer efforts or provide to needs of our friends and families, which can change over time. A major benefit of the Donor Advised Fund is the flexibility to make those decisions at any time and in various levels.

Q: Gifts to a Donor Advised Fund can be cash, stocks, real estate, crops – any number of ways to give. How important is it to you that you have flexibility with the types of gifts you can make to this fund?
A: That was very important to us, specifically because we wanted contribute to our fund by donating stock from my former employer, which would have had a very low tax basis and thus generated significant tax liability if we had to sell. And we were also able to save taxes by having the flexibility to choose to donate in a year that taxable income was higher than normal. It also allowed us to better diversify our asset base. The same advantages can benefit others as their personal situation applies, such as farmers being able to reduce taxable income by donation of crops. Again, flexibility is so important! And it doesn’t require much to establish, both in effort and due to the relatively low minimum donation.

Q: Why is giving to charities you care about important to you?
A: This community has been very good to us as a family, and we feel an obligation to give back. We support agencies that have supported us directly or those we care about, for the most part. That usually means they are local and locally impactful, relatively independent allowing those funds to benefit those here at home, and have a high level accountability. We want to feel confident that those funds are used most effectively and efficiently.

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