Giving Pain Points and DAF Benefits

This month we talked with a couple of our Charity Champions (long-time active account holders) in the GiveWise community. Lately our team has been reflecting on ways we can improve our onboarding process to make it easier and more self-explanatory for newcomers. So, we looked to Clarence Chan and Ivan Chen for insights. We thought we would share some of their thoughts below:

How did you hear about GiveWise?

Clarence: “I was specially looking for a donor advised fund after attending an educational workshop/seminar on giving. This seminar was partnered with other donor-advised funds but ultimately, I went with GiveWise. People from our local church recommended GiveWise to us.” 

Ivan: “I was attending a Business as Mission conference just over a year ago where I met Dan. From that conversation, Dan shared funds with me to test the platform. I created an account from that interaction and have been using it for over a year now.”
 

What brought you to use our platform?

Clarence: “GiveWise comes across as easier to use. I was impressed by how quickly I was able to open a GiveWise fund.”

Other platforms in Clarence’s experience required more complicated onboarding processes, extra steps with charity fund disbursements, and more fees. They also “wouldn't have any control over how funds are invested.”  - Clarence Chan

Ivan: “It’s not easy to find a user-friendly platform that can continue to grow over time. I tell my clients that this platform is not like most other platforms. It’s electronically savvy. It doesn’t require a minimum amount in the account and there are no fees up to $25,000. That’s what’s more of a fit for a lot of our clientele right now. It fits for younger people starting out that still want to be generous.”
 

Can you tell me about the onboarding process?

Clarence: “Onboarding to GiveWise was very straightforward. I was slightly concerned about meeting the end-of-year deadline for transferring securities (appreciated stock) but that was due to a communication issue with my own bank. Everyone from your team was helpful throughout the onboarding process.”

Ivan: “The creating an account part was pretty straightforward. If you know how to create an account anywhere, you can figure it out here. Once you are in everything is pretty straightforward as well. Everything you need to do is on the banner.” 
 

How was your experience finding your charities to donate to?

Clarence: “My wife and I had no issues finding the charities we support. Occasionally we need to answer a couple initial questions from our charities if they haven't worked with donor advised funds or GiveWise before.”

Ivan: “It’s hard sometimes to find the organization. With charities with similar names, it can be difficult. You must confirm initially with the CRA business number.”

GiveWise Note: We have experienced this pain point ourselves. To ensure account holders are donating to the correct charity, we are preparing to release our new Charity Platform! This Charity Platform will allow charities to customize their page so that they are more identifiable for GiveWise Donors. We anticipate this to be released later this year so stay tuned!
 

How do you use your Giving Fund week-to-week, year-to-year?

Clarence: “Most of our giving is scheduled ahead of time on a monthly basis and GiveWise makes that super easy.”

Clarence contributes to his Giving Fund with “appreciated shares of stock to take advantage of the tax benefits and a donor-advised fund in general.” He found it helpful that he was able to talk through the process with Dan Kyte. “Dan was able to help me set up a GIC ladder with 25% available in my giving fund, with another 25% in GICs maturing in 1, 2, and 3 years.” -Clarence Chan

Ivan: “What’s great about your platform is once I have it set up; I can set it up to be recurring. Set it and forget it.”

Ivan has multiple accounts: personal and professional, each of which have various purposes. On top of his monthly automatic giving, Ivan also uses our platform to give anything extra from the “tug of the heart”. “I can still give it as a one-off thing and use the specific description on how it is distributed. It’s from GiveWise and not me personally so it could be anonymous instead of from me if I want that.” - Ivan Chen

Ivan also offered some insight into some other benefits he has found in our platform like “once you give to the platform, you already have the receipt. I like to have an extra month of leeway. If I am giving an extra $1,000 a month, I can add that, but the recurring still happens.” And adding funds is simple and easy. “Click on Add Funds, fill in the card information, and that’s it!” Another benefit to doing all your charitable giving in one place is that if you need to change your credit card, do it once here, and everything changes over with that. One place to edit card information, and one place to house your charitable tax receipts.

“I had the CRA audit me for charitable giving before I was with GiveWise, and it was painful, and I had to pay to find all my statements from previous years to different charities. So that’s why I recommend it to all my clients.” -Ivan Chen