I love sitting down with people who donate to the liberty movement so I can explain that DonorsTrust is different from others in the vast landscape of donor-advised funds.
We do more than process charitable transactions; we share your deeply held values, protect your donor intent, and are actively involved with nonprofit organizations that champion limited government, personal responsibility, and free markets.
That’s something you won’t find at the big commercial DAF providers! They exist to push money around for you, but at the end of the day they don’t share your values. As we’ve seen in recent years, they sometimes don’t even respect them. DonorsTrust is different. We don’t just share your values; we’re committed to protecting them, while you’re here and after you’re gone. We work closely with liberty-loving, free-market groups and know the folks in that community well.
But sometimes people look at this unique advantage of DonorsTrust and they mistakenly imagine a limitation. Let me be clear: DonorsTrust’s giving is not only about public policy reform and civic education. Many of the grants our clients recommend look just like you would expect at any philanthropic outlet. We send checks to animal shelters, churches, hospitals, and more.
Our clients care about what happens in their local communities, not just Washington, DC! This is why “traditional” philanthropy is just as central to DonorsTrust’s limited-government mission as our grants to public policy groups.
Here in the DonorsTrust community, we don’t assume the needs of our communities should be solved by government programs. When we see a need, we meet it with our philanthropy. We give to food pantries, children’s hospitals, and disaster relief funds because we believe it’s our job—and for the most part, not the government’s—to address the concerns around us.
My family, for example, like many of our clients, uses our DAF account at DonorsTrust to donate to a variety of nonprofits, from free-market and liberty groups to local charities. The diversity of our giving reflects the multiplicity of causes DonorsTrust clients support with their philanthropy. Our church, our local animal shelter, and The Village School that our ten-year-old son attends sit right beside more ideological efforts: like Free to Choose Network, the Dissident Project of Young Voices, Demo Lab in Costa Rica, the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, and the Barney Charter School Initiative of Hillsdale College.
Each of these charities is special to us. Some advance the ideas of liberty around the world and some improve our local community. Some have an international presence and my husband, Brad, and I sit on their boards. Others we drive past nearly every day on our commute home or our way to the grocery store. We support all of them with our donor-advised fund at DonorsTrust.
