The Jewish Community Foundation Of Greater MetroWest NJ (JCFNJ)

A donor-advised fund (or DAF) functions like a dedicated account for your charitable giving. When you open your account, JCF creates a fund bearing your name – or any name you specify – and you will receive an immediate income tax deduction for your contribution. While all assets you contribute must be reserved for charitable purposes, you can choose to grant to any qualified charities when and how you prefer. 

You can create your JCF donor-advised fund by completing a simple application and making an initial contribution. In the application, you may name your fund, designate the individuals responsible for recommending grant distributions, select successor recommenders or a successor charity, authorize interested parties such as accountants and lawyers to obtain information about your fund and choose the investment allocation. Once you complete the application and make a donation to fund your account, JCF opens your account and you may begin recommending grants at any time.

You can create a DAF at JCF with a minimum contribution of $5,000. No minimum balance is required. Typically, donors contribute cash or marketable securities or donate by credit card. Other assets, including privately held stock, restricted stock, artwork, insurance policies and real estate may be donated, though typically these types of assets will be reviewed by JCF’s legal counsel and will require approval by its Board of Trustees before acceptance. Generally, your DAF will be credited with the net proceeds from the sale of the asset, after taking into account transaction costs such as credit card fees and commissions.

Once you open a fund, the JCF team is here to help make grants to qualified charities whenever you’d like! As a donor, you become an advisor – or recommender – to the fund. Your recommendations may be made online, mailed, faxed, or emailed to JCF. To initiate a distribution recommendation, a recommender submits a simple recommendation form on JCF’s password-protected website, DonorSphere. For your convenience, you may recommend recurring grants.

You can and should use your fund to recommend gifts to UJA and other qualified charities. However, because your fund’s assets already belong to JCF, a recommender may not use distributions from the fund to fulfill a personal, legally binding pledge. Doing so would result in an impermissible benefit to the donor, and could potentially subject the donor to penalties.

To that end, if you intend to support an organization and are approached about making a commitment, you should not sign a pledge card. Rather, you should tell the solicitor that, rather than make a pledge, you intend to recommend a distribution from your DAF. You should then make a recommendation on JCF’s password-protected website, DonorSphere or via paper form.

Absolutely! Grants from DAFs may be made to nearly all 501(c)(3) public charities as recognized by the IRS – secular, Jewish, local and otherwise – as well as to certain supporting foundations. Distributions may also be made to JCF and to any other DAFs held at JCF.

JCF is unable to make grants for non-charitable purposes. For example, to private foundations (operating or non-operating), individuals, or overseas organizations, although grants may be made to U.S. public charities that support overseas charitable activities. Also grants to charities that do not fit within JCF’s mission or are made in exchange for more than an incidental benefit are not permitted.

Read more about prohibited uses of a DAF in our guidelines.

No. You can take an immediate deduction for the year you contribute to your JCF DAF and at a later time decide which charities you wish to support.

$100 per grant.

In order to cover the costs involved in administering and investing the assets, servicing fund holders and promoting the benefits of DAFs to other potential donors, JCF charges a reasonable and competitive administrative fee. This fee is subject to change from time to time, pursuant to decisions made by the JCF Board of Trustees.

JCF's current fee structure is as follows:

Please note that the administrative fee is progressive. For example, the fee for a $2 million fund will be as follows: