• You can still donate your RMD to Vanguard Charitable. You will have to pay income taxes on the distribution, but the subsequent charitable contribution tax deduction may help offset these costs.
• You can donate your RMD to Vanguard Charitable's Sustainable Disaster-Relief Fund (SDRF), which supports communities recovering from natural disasters. The SDRF is a field-of-interest fund (targeted for a specific need), not a donor-advised fund. As a result, it is eligible to receive QCDs. But because the SDRF is not a donor-advised fund, you will not have discretion over grants from this fund.
• You can donate your RMD directly to a qualified 501(c)(3) public charity. As long as the charity qualifies, this distribution can be made tax-free.

Do I qualify for a QCD if I give Roth IRA distributions to Vanguard Charitable since I've already paid taxes on that money?

Technically yes, but you also likely may not want to. Because the Roth IRA contributions have already been taxed, qualified earnings are tax-free, and RMDs do not apply to these accounts (original account holders aren’t required to take an RMD but their non-spouse beneficiaries are when they inherit the account).

You may instead want to consider donating appreciated securities rather than donating from your Roth IRAs due to the double tax benefit of avoiding the tax on the capital gains and appreciation, in addition to receiving the charitable tax deduction.

Resources for more information on RMDs and QCDs:

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/retirement-plans-faqs-regarding-required-minimum-distributions

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/retirement-plans-faqs-regarding-iras-distributions-withdrawals

• Pay no capital gains on the donated asset.
• Receive a tax deduction for the asset's fair market value (FMV).
• Recommend how to invest the proceeds to grow tax-free over time.
• Leverage a single contribution into multiple grants to multiple charities.

Our experienced complex assets team guided Gary through the entire process. He transferred the asset to us, and we liquidated it.¹ The result was a contribution to his DAF that was twenty percent higher than it would have been if Gary had sold the asset himself and then donated the proceeds. This meant fewer taxes for Gary, and more dollars destined for charity.

By donating the complex asset to a DAF, instead of a single charity, Gary widened the scope of his impact. Over time his single contribution came to provide consistent, long-term support to many charities. These charities represented the full spectrum of Gary’s philanthropic interests. In the meantime, the proceeds in his charitable account held at Vanguard Charitable experienced tax-free, compound growth.

Having simply written checks to his philanthropic account in the past, Gary began keeping track of how much money his new giving strategy had saved him—and how much more went to charity as a result. He tabulated the following figures at the 20-year mark,² all due to his single contribution:

Gary's Giving³

Initial contribution:	Valued at $1,000,000
Annual grant:	10% of account balance
Asset allocation:	80% stock  20% bond
Average return:*	6.01%
Dollars granted over 20 years:	$1,189,096.30
Balance remaining:	$349,536.14
Total charitable impact: $1,538,632.44