Women in Wealth Profile: Schwab's Kim Wright-Violich

Wright-Violich has made Schwab Charitable an innovator, allowing qualified registered investment advisors (RIAs) to continue to manage clients' assets after they have been given to the DAF, starting a program in which donors can grant microloans to recipients outside the U.S. with a portion of their DAF holdings, and enabling them to become a guarantor of groups of microloans. These are amazing ways to stretch the value of a donor's reach and use of their funds because these microloan grants and guarantees can be done again, and again, as the microloans are repaid.

Effective Giving

Many non-profits now use business metrics to plan and to maximize the effectiveness of their efforts—and donors are keen to give to those charitable causes where they can see that their gifts are used efficiently, effectively and wisely.

For advisors whose clients have philanthropic intentions, DAFs make it easy to fund charitable giving strategically, maximizing tax breaks and taking many different kinds of assets, cash, appreciated securities, real estate, or collectibles like art or jewelry to fund the DAF. Grants to non-profits from DAFS can be anonymous or attributed to the donor. DAFs also make it easy for families to get involved at a large or small level—from the five-figures to hundreds of millions of dollars, and to grant out to any charitable 501(c)(3) that qualifies—and there isn't the overhead that a private family foundation requires. In addition, DAFs offer help to donors to vet the non-profits they are considering grants to. All of this helps donors to become better philanthropists.

For her part in bring the DAF to masses of investors, Wright-Violich "can't imagine departing from this," she says. "There's a magic in mixing the for-profit and non-profit worlds;" as she puts it, "it's a magical combination."