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Yes, you can contribute assets held at your Vanguard accounts to Vanguard Charitable. Learn more about donating assets held at Vanguard to your Vanguard Charitable account.

Our investments selection is thoughtful, intentional, and specifically chosen to provide our donors with the best chance of success to support strategic philanthropy, both now and in the future. These decisions are based on Vanguard’s best-in-class investments. We have chosen to work with Vanguard because we strongly believe in their investment options. 

Our investment options perform above average in generating charitable returns. 100% of the rated funds were given a gold, silver, or bronze rating by Morningstar¹, with an impressive 72% rated gold2. 82% of the funds underlying VC investment pools have outperformed their Lipper peer averages over the past 5 years.¹  

Vanguard Charitable has worked with world class investment advisors to create a menu of options that provide our donors with the best chance for success, while maintaining our low-cost commitment. Plus, guidelines from independent charity regulators have identified a menu of investment options as a best practice among DAF providers. This encourages the prudent management of resources and can help keep investment costs low. 

We review our investments offering often to ensure it meets our donors’ needs. Your feedback is important, and we are always interested in learning how we can grow and provide more for our donors. Please let us know you if are looking for a certain type of investment and why it’s appealing to you. 

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¹Morningstar is a leading independent investment authority. It uses at least three key “pillars” or indicators (process, people, and parent) to rate every fund. Funds that Morningstar expects will outperform peer group averages are classified as either bronze, silver, or gold, depending on Morningstar’s confidence in its projections.

²All data as of June 30, 2020. Results will vary for other time periods. Only funds with a minimum five-year history were included in the comparison, and for this reason the funds underlying our Values-driven Investments are not reflected in the data. Past performance does not guarantee future returns. Lipper is a financial service firm and leading independent authority on investment performance.

Vanguard Charitable does not charge exchange fees for most internal pool-to-pool exchanges. 

All exchange recommendations are subject to approval, and Vanguard Charitable reserves the right to decline recommendations if they become excessively frequent, if they cause unnecessary expenses, or for any reason. 

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The potential for risk in Vanguard Charitable investment options can be categorized in levels from 1 to 5. 

Knowing the level of risk you are comfortable with and the length of time you expect the assets in the philanthropic account to be invested can help you select an appropriate investment recommendation. This is consistent with Vanguard's approach:

• Risk level 1 Vanguard funds are classified as conservative if their share prices are expected to remain stable or to fluctuate only slightly. Such funds may be appropriate for the short-term reserves portion of a long-term investment portfolio, or for investors with short-term investment horizons (three years or less).
• Risk level 2 Vanguard funds classified as conservative to moderate are subject to low-to-moderate fluctuations in share prices. In general, such funds may be appropriate for investors with medium-term investment horizons (four to ten years).
• Risk level 3 Vanguard funds classified as moderate are subject to a moderate degree of fluctuation in share prices. In general, such funds may be appropriate for investors who have a relatively long investment horizon (more than five years).
• Risk level 4 Vanguard funds of this type are broadly diversified but are subject to wide fluctuations in share price because they hold virtually all of their assets in common stocks. These funds may be appropriate for investors who have a long-term investment horizon (ten years or longer).
• Risk level 5  Vanguard funds classified as aggressive are subject to extremely wide fluctuations in share price. These funds may be appropriate for investors who have a long-term investment horizon (ten years or longer). The unusually high volatility associated with these funds may stem from a number of strategies.

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A share class is a security designation that indicates the rights, privileges, fees, and expenses associated with the shares. Share classes are a common way of offering the same mutual fund investment at different costs. The investment objective and strategy, portfolio manager, and underlying investments are identical across share classes. 

What varies is the cost structure. Typically, the higher the minimum initial investment, the lower the expense ratio. This allows you to get the same high quality regardless of which share class you choose. A share classes that Vanguard Charitable donors typically have access to are: Vanguard Admiral, Institutional, and Institutional Plus share classes.

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The net asset value, also known as share price, is the value of a mutual fund. The net asset value (NAV) is calculated each business day as of the close of regular trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), generally at 4 pm, ET. 

The NAV per share is computed by dividing the total assets, minus liabilities, of the fund by the number of fund shares outstanding. 

On U.S. holidays or other days when the NYSE is closed, the NAV is not calculated, and the fund does not sell or redeem shares. However, on those days the value of the fund’s assets may be affected to the extent that the fund holds securities that change in value, such as foreign securities that trade on foreign markets that are open.

Indexing is an investment strategy for tracking the performance of a specified market benchmark, or index. 

An index is a group of securities whose overall performance is used as a standard to measure the investment performance of a particular market. There are many types of indexes. Some represent entire markets, such as the U.S. stock market or the U.S. bond market. Other indexes cover market segments, such as small-capitalization stocks or short-term bonds. The index sponsor determines the securities to include in the index, the weighting of each security in the index, and the appropriate time to make changes to the composition of the index. One cannot invest directly in an index.   

Index funds typically have the following characteristics: 

• Variety of investments: Index funds generally invest in the securities of a variety of companies and industries.
• Relative performance consistency: Because they seek to track market benchmarks, index funds usually do not perform dramatically better or worse than their benchmarks.
• Low cost: Index funds are generally inexpensive to run compared with actively managed funds. They have low or no research costs and typically keep trading activity, as well as brokerage commissions and other transaction costs, to a minimum compared with actively managed funds. 

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An expense ratio is a fund’s total annual operating expenses expressed as a percentage of the fund’s average net assets. 

The expense ratio includes management and administrative expenses, but it does not include the transaction costs of buying and selling portfolio securities. Vanguard Charitable is able to offer a direct pass-through of Vanguard expense ratios and does not add additional fees for investing. 

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An exchange-traded fund, or ETF, is a security that tracks the value of an index, commodity, or basket of assets in the same way as a mutual fund does, except it trades like stock on stock exchanges