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Donor-advised funds connected to Fidelity and Vanguard facilitated grants to Compassion & Choices, a leading assisted suicide advocacy organization seeking to expand access across the United States.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Charitable arms connected to two of Wall Street’s largest asset managers have facilitated millions of dollars in grants to Compassion & Choices, a national advocacy organization working to expand assisted suicide access across the United States.
The grants moved through donor-advised funds, which the IRS describes as charitable giving accounts that allow donors to recommend distributions to eligible nonprofit organizations. Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund and Vanguard Charitable facilitated combined grants totaling millions of dollars to Compassion & Choices, according to ProPublica’s publicly available nonprofit data and reporting by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Donor-advised funds, or DAFs, are housed by public charities and funded by individual donors who receive tax benefits while recommending where grants should go. The IRS explains the structure on its page for donor-advised funds. ProPublica’s nonprofit database shows financial information tied to Compassion & Choices, which the organization describes as America’s largest and oldest assisted suicide advocacy group.
Fidelity Investments and The Vanguard Group are among the nation’s largest asset managers. More than 100 million Americans use 401(k) plans for retirement, and those plans often rely on asset managers, according to Micruity. Fidelity managed more than $7 trillion in 2024, while Vanguard managed more than $12 trillion. Both companies established charitable arms in the 1990s.
Fidelity Charitable and Vanguard Charitable are independent, cause-neutral 501(c)(3) public charities that sponsor donor-advised funds. They reportedly facilitated about $1.4 million from 2020 to 2023 and $1.5 million from 2021 to 2024 in grants to Compassion & Choices through those accounts, according to Daily Caller News Foundation reporting and InfluenceWatch’s profile of the group.
Vanguard and Fidelity Charitable both declined to comment.
A Compassion & Choices spokesperson said the organization’s work is shaped by research and by the experiences of supporters, including older Americans and caregivers.
“Compassion & Choices monitors research around America’s aging population, conducts our own research, and listens closely to our hundreds of thousands of supporters, many of whom are part of the aging population or caring for aging loved ones and who represent a cross section of American political beliefs, faiths and demographics,” the spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Compassion & Choices and the C&C Action Network together reported spending more than $1.5 million on “Direct Lobbying,” $3.7 million on “Policy and Litigation,” $3.9 million on “Advocacy” and $8.3 million on “Public Education” in fiscal year 2024-2025.
Assisted suicide has been legal in Canada since 2016 and accounted for more than 5% of the country’s deaths in 2024, according to a Canadian government annual report. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in May that a Canadian priest said he was offered assisted suicide twice after suffering a broken hip.
In the United States, 13 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized assisted suicide, according to Compassion & Choices’ state listing. The group’s volunteer materials say it aims to expand assisted suicide access to at least half of the U.S. population by 2028.
The issue has drawn legal challenges from disability rights advocates. Lawsuits were filed last month in Illinois and New York over concerns that medical staff could use assisted suicide laws to avoid providing long-term care to disabled patients, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
Compassion & Choices has defended assisted suicide laws in several jurisdictions. The group defended California’s End of Life Option Act against disability rights challenges in April 2023 and again in March 2025. The second lawsuit remains pending, according to the organization’s accomplishments page. The group has also defended assisted suicide laws in Montana, Washington, D.C., and Vermont against repeal efforts in those jurisdictions’ legislatures.
Compassion & Choices has also published an LGBTQ+ Advance Care Planning Toolkit, which discusses “Voluntary Stop of Eating and Drinking” under certain circumstances and suggests considering end-of-life “doulas” for caregiver education, nonmedical physical care advice, life and legacy review, ritual creation, funeral guidance, estate planning, companionship, respite and emotional support.
“Our view around healthcare at the end of life is rooted in the freedoms Americans cherish: that terminally ill, mentally capable adults should not have the government impose one set of beliefs on how they must face the end of life,” the Compassion & Choices spokesperson told the DCNF. “These are private decisions that should be made by individual Americans in consultation with their doctors, families, faith leaders, and loved ones, not by politicians.”
Fidelity Charitable has also facilitated large grants to several other major organizations. According to InfluenceWatch, FC helped facilitate more than $82 million in grants to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, $834,000 to the Human Rights Campaign and $4 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2022.
Because Fidelity Charitable and Vanguard Charitable are cause-neutral donor-advised fund sponsors, grants facilitated through their accounts do not represent endorsements by those charities or by the financial firms that helped establish them. Cause-neutral status also means donor-advised fund grants may be recommended for organizations across the political spectrum if the recipients meet eligibility requirements.
Fidelity Charitable was accused in a July 2023 consumer complaint of denying grants to organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed as hate groups, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
Fidelity Charitable and Vanguard Charitable later began denying grants to the Southern Poverty Law Center after the Department of Justice indicted the left-wing legal advocacy group for allegedly funding hate groups, multiple outlets reported in April.
The grants to Compassion & Choices show how donor-advised fund sponsors can move large sums to advocacy organizations while maintaining cause-neutral policies. The arrangement has drawn scrutiny because Fidelity and Vanguard are closely associated with retirement investing for millions of Americans, even though their charitable arms operate separately and say donor recommendations drive the grantmaking process.
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