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The Denver Foundation is partnering with Merrill Lynch on a groundbreaking program aimed at uniting Merrills investment know-how with the grant-making expertise of local community foundations.
The program is designed to offer more guidance to donors, both from Merrill's financial experts and from community foundations - and thus more control over how their contributions are spent.
The Merrill Lynch Community Charitable Fund, which launched April 1, is a donor-advised fund service that, for the first time, links a major financial-services firm with a nationwide network of leading community foundations, according to David Ratcliffe, director of Merrill's Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Management. A donor-advised fund is an investment portfolio of finances earmarked for philanthropy.
Merrill clients with a minimum investment requirement of $25,000 can participate. Merrill has $1.3 trillion in client assets, representing hundreds of thousands of clients. More than 500,000 of those clients have more than $500,000 in assets in their accounts.
The Community Charitable Fund illustrates the next step...