Q: My husband and I have a donor-advised fund. I’d like to get my children and grandchildren involved in giving to charity. Is there a way I can give them access to some of the money so they can help decide which charities to support?

A: There are several ways you can give family members the ability to make grants to charities from the donor-advised fund, depending on how much control you’d like them to have.

With a donor-advised fund, you can contribute cash, stock or other investments and get an immediate charitable tax deduction on the donation. After that, you’ll have an unlimited amount of time to decide which charities will receive grants from the fund. Most donor-advised funds have great resources for researching charities, such as access to the GuideStar database, which includes charities’ detailed financial records.

Some families work together to decide which charities to support, but the parents or grandparents still maintain control of the fund and make the grants themselves. With Vanguard’s donor-advised funds, for instance, the account owner can make the grant on behalf of children or grandchildren, and the charity will send an acknowledgement to them for the gift.

Fidelity Charitable offers a Gift4Giving, which is like a gift certificate that lets you designate anyone to make grants of $50 to $5,000 from your donor-advised fund to a charity he or she chooses. The person receives a link in an e-mail that provides access to that amount of money in your account. The individual also will be able to use the fund’s research resources.

Other families add children or grandchildren as account administrators as they get older, so they can access all of the resources and make grants on their own. Many donor-advised funds have online access, making it easy for family members across the country to participate.

Elaine Martyn, vice president and managing director of the Private Donor Group for Fidelity Charitable, says she recently attended a meeting with three generations of one family, including the grandmother, her three children and seven grandchildren.

“They all did some research about an organization they were proud of and felt a commitment to, and the grandchildren all had to present what they found out about the charities,” she says. The grandmother added her children to the account so they could make their own gifts.

Some people keep control of the fund while they’re alive, but designate someone they start to work with who will eventually take over the fund.

Kimberly Lankford is a contributing

editor to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. Send questions and comments to moneypower@kiplinger.com.