$69 Million Worth of Bitcoin Received As Donation In 2017 – Fidelity Charitable
Fidelity Charitable has announced that the fastest method of donations they are receiving are through bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In 2017 through November, givers donated $11 million in bitcoin to Fidelity Charitable, earmarking the cash for their donor-advised funds. Those are accounts that you can fund with highly appreciated assets, and use over time for making grants to charities.
And by the end of December 2017, the global charity had accumulated approximately $69 million in digital currency donations, which was by far the fastest donation of the year. This information was included in their annual report, announced on February 15, 2018. It said most of these donations were in the form of bitcoin and ether with a total of 169 donors involved. In December 2017, Matt Nash, senior vice president of donor engagement at Fidelity Charitable said:
"People are getting smarter about donating appreciated assets, and bitcoin is the epitome of appreciated assets (in 2017)."
By the end of 2015, the charity started accepting Bitcoin as a donation method, and the 2017 figures show a tenfold increase in the popularity of this donation method. That means it has grown 140 percent faster than other types of donations such as LLC stocks, grain baskets, and real estate.
When cryptocurrencies were first introduced, the best way for utilizing it were through donations to Charities.
In 2013, a non-profit organization called BitGive helped other non-profit organizations develop a system that allowed them to accept donations of Bitcoins themselves.
Not long after, several large charities made their own attempts to accept this donation format. In 2014, Coinbase's main cryptocurrency marketplace introduced changes to its platform that allowed users to easily send donations to charitable organizations.
Fidelity doesn't hold cryptocurrency donations. Rather, it processes the gifts through Coinbase, a currency exchange company, and then deposits the cash after conversion into benefactors' donor-advised funds.
They launched a marketing campaign in early 2017 to emphasize that they were ready to accept donations in Bitcoin and other crryptocurrency. One of the great benefits of donating in digital currency is that the donor does not have to pay capital gains tax on these assets, which are part of the fund managed by the Fidelity Charitable Investor.
This means that the higher the tax code of the donor, the higher the amount that the organization receives in the form of donations. This helped the 127,000 non-profit organizations supported by Fidelity Charitable receive more money than they would otherwise have received.