Altruist adds donor-advised funds to custody at 50 basis points

Altruist has added donor-advised funds to its custody platform, letting an advisor open, fund, invest and manage a client's charitable account inside the same system that holds the rest of a household's assets. The pitch rests on two claims — a fee starting at 50 basis points and an investment menu that can hold any model on the platform, including custom portfolios and personalized indexing strategies — and there are no account-opening, balance or grant minimums; after a two-step transfer of cash or appreciated securities the fund simply appears alongside the rest of a household's holdings.

That starting fee sits below the 60 to 65 basis points Altruist says is typical among other donor-advised fund sponsors, and the open investment menu is the company's contrast with what it describes as a fixed menu at most DAF platforms. Both comparisons come from Altruist itself, and the coverage carries no independent survey of sponsor pricing or investment menus.

Clients can recommend grants from the Altruist account or mobile app, choosing among more than 1.8 million eligible charities without waiting for the advisor to initiate the transaction. That puts the client first at the moment of giving and leaves the advisor working from a record that already exists.

The funds themselves are sponsored by Endaoment, a 501(c)(3) public charity that is the legal owner of the DAF assets and the customer of record on the account, according to Altruist. The coverage does not say whether Endaoment's charges sit inside or on top of that fee, or what a client's all-in cost comes to.

“Giving is one of the most personal things a client does with their advisor,” Jason Wenk, Altruist's founder and CEO, said in a prepared statement. “We want to support advisors and their clients through that process by making donor-advised funds easy to navigate and access.”

The launch arrives as the company is being reshaped: in late August, Vanguard agreed to acquire Altruist for $4.6 billion, and a financial planning agent for the Hazel AI platform was announced days later, following a tax planning agent in February. This publication has argued that the Vanguard deal is a negotiation window rather than a transfer call, and that advisors should pin pricing and product independence before the standalone promise expires. A charitable vehicle whose assets are supposed to run across the whole model marketplace is the kind of product commitment that reads differently inside a $4.6 billion owner.

The launch does not come with a number: no count of advisors on the platform or of DAF accounts opened, and no indication of whether that price is permanent or promotional. For a practice weighing where a client's charitable giving should live, the fee and the investment menu are the two things to check, and both currently rest on the company's own description.