Fidelity Charitable Supports Bitcoin Donations

The bitcoin community just got the opportunity to get a bit more charitable.

Fidelity Charitable, the charitable savings arm of Fidelity Investments, announced yesterday (Nov. 18) that it would enable its donors to support its charities using bitcoin. The majority of donations that come through this mode come via capital assets, like publicly traded securities, private business shares and real estate.

But bitcoin could open its donation pool wide open.

“Enabling donors to contribute bitcoin to their donor-advised funds is the latest example of Fidelity Charitable’s commitment to making it as easy as possible for donors to support the charities they care about with the assets at their disposal,” said Matt Nash, SVP of donor engagement for Fidelity Charitable. “There are many tax advantages to donating long-term appreciated assets, and that ultimately means more money to charity.”

Fidelity Charitable, the second-largest nonprofit fundraiser in the country, is working with Coinbase to ensure the donations are converted properly; Coinbase is offering its services free for the charitable donations. In fact, according to the company, the proceeds of the conversion are allocated to the individual’s donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable.

As more companies pay attention to bitcoin and blockchain, donations via bitcoin are also becoming more popular.

In September, Barclays announced that it plans to enable consumers to make charitable donations using bitcoin. With the help of private partnerships, Barclays announced that it plans to use this as a testing ground to see bitcoin’s potential in the payments industry.

While the U.K. and London specifically may be viewed as the hub for bitcoin innovation, that doesn’t mean that banks in the U.S. aren’t also warming up to the idea of talking about how bitcoin’s technology could innovate the financial industry.