Listed wealth manager Perpetual has launched a fund designed to give charities and other foundations income support to foster their development.
The Perpetual Foundation Gift Fund (PFGF) is a pooled fund which uses a multi-manager strategy to give charities a long term sustainable income.
The fund takes donations of $20,000 or more and is exempt from income tax and gets GST discounts.
Perpetual handles the administration work and donors get tax deductions spread over five years.
PFGF uses a gift fund structure which allows individuals, groups or companies to choose directly which charity their money goes to.
Philanthropy is growing among sophisticated financial advice clients, Perpetual Foundation head Catherine Baldwin told InvestorDaily.
"There is a lot of giving in Australia, something like 87 per cent of individuals make donations every year [and] it averages at about $425 a head for those that give," she said.
"With the growing affluence and the already generous culture, people think about their financial future and they are going to consider philanthropy as a part of the suite of products they would be expecting in their financial plan."
The fund's structure also caters for estate planning.
"Increasingly it has been taken up as a part of estate planning, people are thinking about where their assets will go when they pass away," Baldwin said.
Perpetual uses vigorous research to assess the credibility of charities, medical research organisations and other foundations, Baldwin said.
