The Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative

The mission of the Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative is to expand giving and advance the philanthropic sector through:

Capacity-building grants that improve the effectiveness of nonprofits that support underserved communities to help them better meet their mission; and
Underwriting research, tools, guidance, and forums that increase the knowledge and information for the sector as a whole or to aid donors in making smarter decisions

Fidelity Charitable sponsors the largest donor-advised fund program in the country, and the Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative is a grantmaking program of Fidelity Charitable separate from its donor-advised fund program. The Trustees’ Initiative does not accept unsolicited grants.

Since its inception through 2016 fiscal year-end, the Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative has granted over $20M, and in this last fiscal year, $2.3M of capacity-building grants were made in the areas shown below.

How our Trustees gave in 2016

Making a difference

Because the Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative focuses on capacity-building grants, it invests in internal functions that are otherwise difficult for nonprofits to fund—but that can make a substantive difference in their effective operations.

Examples of some recent successes include:

A better inventory management system for Feeding America

As the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, Feeding America works to solve food insecurity through a network of 200 food banks across the country. A Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative grant is helping Feeding America to improve the inventory management system for 20 of its member food banks. Ultimately, this will result in more efficient distribution of food and less waste.

A human resources consultant to help manage growth for Playworks Education Energized

Playworks, which offers programs designed to improve children’s social and emotional health, currently serves more than 1,200 schools across the United States and reaches more than 700,000 students directly and through professional training services—and is expanding rapidly. A Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative grant for human resource consulting services helped Playworks assess and improve its human resource practices and strategies to hire and maintain excellent staff to deliver their program.

An improved nonprofit resource from Foundation Center

Foundation Center is a leading source of information about philanthropy worldwide, while GrantSpace provides self-service tools and resources to help nonprofits worldwide become more viable grant applicants and build strong, sustainable organizations. The Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative provided a grant that is being used to redesign and redevelop GrantSpace.org, Foundation Center’s learning community for the social sector, to make it more useful and easy to navigate for nonprofits.