Latest news with #MargaretRichardson
Forbes
02-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Is This The Boost That Donor Advised Funds Need To Hit Their Stride?
The Donor Advised Fund market is big with an estimated $250 billion held in these consumer-level, tax-advantaged charitable savings accounts, but the industry still needs technological and marketing innovation to realize its potential. Big news in DAF-land was this week's launch of GoFundMe Giving Funds, a virtual space that enables consumers to easily create their own DAFs. 'This new giving tool brings the power of donor-advised funds (DAFs) to a broader audience, eliminating traditional barriers like high minimums and fees,' explained Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe's chief marketing and corporate affairs officer. Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe's chief marketing and corporate affairs officer. More than 200 million people have made $40 billion+ in contributions via the GoFundMe giving platform during the last 15 years. The skills GoFundMe has amassed at moving donors to donate excites Mitch Stein, head of strategy at Chariot, a fintech company focused on DAFs. Awareness of DAFs is the greatest limiting factor in the field's growth, explained Stein who has co-authored two annual studies of the DAF field. 'So now we have a company with a business model solely driven by giving, with phenomenal reach and a consumer marketing engine that's pushing a DAF product,' Stein wrote on Linkedin. 'It's brilliant! And it's helpful for every player in the DAF industry.' Chariot Head of Strategy Mitch Stein Those players include major financial firms like Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity who each manage billions of dollars in DAF assets. 'My biggest gripe with the DAF market and major providers is that they don't market DAFs to their full client base, and so the utilization is typically below 1%,' wrote Stein. 'The vast majority of people with a brokerage account at these places don't even know what a DAF is! Trust me I ask just about everyone I meet.' Richardson said that initially GoFundMe's major marketing push for Giving Funds will be to its community of 200 million giving platform users via email, and social channels. While it will be free to set up a DAF and give from a DAF, donors can choose to leave an optional tip to help sustain the GoFundMe Giving Fund, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that powers Giving Funds, she explained. If GoFundMe's Giving Funds initiative is successful it should significantly move the needle when it comes to establishing more DAFs. In addition, the company hopes that online tools it is releasing will move more people than the national DAF averages to actively find and support nonprofits with contributions. Making it easier for DAF holders to donate has been the bread and butter of Chariot since 2023. Traditionally if a consumer was inspired to give from their DAF, they could not simply go to the website of the nonprofit they wanted to support. They had to visit online the financial services company that manages their DAF and fill out forms to make the contribution. This form of 'contribution interruptus' derailed many a gift. To counter this, Chariot markets a DAFpay widget to nonprofits which can integrate it directly into their donations forms thus making it easier for donors to give spontaneously. Making such transactions easier is particularly important because – unlike conventional wisdom that assumed DAFs were only used by the ultrawealthy for major gifts -- 69% of all DAF gifts are less than $1,000, according to the recently released DAF Fundraising Report 2025.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
GoFundMe launches new funds aimed at maximizing charitable donations
– Funding the future. Even when they are not the breadwinners, women tend to make many of their households' financial decisions, including charitable giving. And with the impending great wealth transfer, in which women in particular are expected to inherit trillions upon trillions of dollars, that could have profound effects on charitable giving throughout the country in the near future. That's according to Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe's chief marketing and corporate affairs officer, who I talked to last week about women and philanthropy and the company's newest product launch. According to Richardson, women are busier than ever. And while they can and have managed many of these household tasks, many are also looking for ways to make managing their finances more seamless. 'Women are often the charitable decision makers already in their families, and we see that that trend just continuing as women have more resources and more responsibilities,' says Richardson. That is one of the reasons GoFundMe is launching its newest product today, one it hopes will make charitable giving easier and more impactful—and attract some of those trillions. Called Giving Funds, it is a type of donor-advised fund that will allow users to contribute to the charitable investment accounts right on GoFundMe's site. Donor-advised funds, or DAFs, are growing in popularity, as I wrote last year. They are tax-advantaged accounts for charitable giving, in which lump sum or automated recurring contributions can be invested; eventually the contributions and gains will go to charity, and they grow tax-free. It can be helpful to think of DAFs as similar to a 401(k), health savings account, or 529 account. Money contributed to a DAF cannot be taken back, it is effectively a charitable contribution and donors are generally eligible to take an immediate tax deduction. The benefit is that you can donate now, get that tax deduction now (if you itemize), invest the funds, and then have more to give in the future. GoFundMe is partnering with fund managers like BlackRock, State Street Global Advisors, and Vanguard to advise on the investment options, which are a number of exchange-traded funds. Though plenty of financial institutions offer DAFs, Richardson says the benefit of doing it on GoFundMe is that users will have all of their charitable giving centralized, and receive one annual tax document. There are no management fees and no minimum balances, and users can give their funds to any of the 1.4 million charities on the platform. Despite their tax benefits, DAFs are still fairly niche products—only about 1% of Americans use them, says Richardson, though an increasingly larger share of the U.S.'s total annual charitable contributions stem from them with each passing year. But a site like GoFundMe offering them could be the start to broadening their appeal—after all, the site has some 200 million users from all income levels, races, and genders. It could be many peoples' first exposure to the investment tool. And, she says, it makes it easier for people to plan ahead. Many users come to GoFundMe after a natural disaster or other event to find causes to donate to. If they already have a pot of money waiting there that they previously donated—and that has possibly grown as it was invested—it can make all of their charitable giving more seamless. 'This could be a really efficient and effective way for people to…get [funds] out the door quickly when organizations need it most,' she says. Alicia The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune's daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today's edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
BBC News
06-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Family of Guernsey WW2 doctor meet with patient's relative
'I would not be here if not for WW2 doctor' 12 minutes ago Share Save Olivia Fraser BBC News, Guernsey Share Save Kowald family Dr Albert Kowald, who is known as the "good doctor", with his daughters Helga and Irmtraud The family of a doctor who risked his life to supply medicine to islanders during the Occupation of Guernsey has had an encounter with a relative of one of the people he helped. Luftwaffe officer Dr Albert Kowald was stationed in Guernsey during World War Two. However, the former SS officer was imprisoned by the Germans after he was discovered to be helping islanders and was not released until Liberation Day. At a book launch on Monday, there were a number of surprises in store for the family, including a meeting with Margaret Richardson, whose father and grandfather were treated by Dr Kowald. Dr Kowald's family and researchers who worked on the book attended the launch The book about Dr Kowald's life, called The Good Doctor, was published with the help of his daughters, sons in laws and researchers. Enlisting historian Richard Heaume, researcher Olivier Bailey started to piece together the story using letters and artefacts back in 2018 for the family. It was launched at the Occupation Museum, where Dr Kowald's son-in-law Horst Schmidt-Bischoffshausen and daughter Irmtraud Zotti signed copies. Mrs Zotti said: "It means quite a lot and I am so happy that now this book has been finished. I nearly didn't believe that it would be." Mr Schmidt-Bischoffshausen expressed how proud he was of his father-in-law. "It was very risky for him, fortunately he survived," he said. Margaret Richardson's father penned a letter of support for Dr Kowald Mrs Richardson, whose father William Carre suffered with asthma, said she had "such a debt of gratitude for this family". Without Dr Kowald's medication, she said she did not know if her father would have survived. "If this hadn't happened and hadn't got through this, I wouldn't be here," she said. Mr Carre wrote a letter of gratitude in support of Dr Kowald in the hope he could use it as evidence of his good actions. The letter was signed by 16 islanders, but it did not help, and just days after being freed by the British, Dr Kowald was taken away from the island and moved through a number of prisoner of war camps. It was not until 1947 until he was fully free and allowed to continue to practise as a doctor. The family of Dr Kowald were keen to hear from any others whose relatives may have been helped by him. Dr Albert Kowald kept his daughter's birth announcement with him Researcher Oliver Bailey presented Mrs Zotti with a second surprise at the evening. During his research, Mr Bailey said he had found her birth announcement, which her father had kept with him during his imprisonment. He said there had been "ups and downs" to the research but he was proud to have helped uncovered so much. "There are more leads now, so we might have to do a second edition," he said. Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to
