Making a donation to charity with money that you took out of your IRA is no different from making a donation with any other money that you have. You can claim the donation as an itemized deduction, but if your total itemized deductions are less than your standard deduction you take the standard deduction and the donation does not make any difference in your tax.
If you "set up a charity fund" with Schwab, that would be a donor advised fund. As far as your taxes are concerned, contributing to a donor advised fund would be the same as making a donation directly to a charity. It would still be an itemized deduction.
The advice that you got might not have been clear, or you might have misunderstood it. What you can do with your IRA in the future to reduce your tax is make Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs). Instead of having the money that you take out of the IRA paid to you, you have the IRA custodian (Schwab) pay money from your IRA directly to a charity. On your tax return, when your report the amount that you took out of your IRA, you can subtract the QCDs from the total amount. That way your taxable income is reduced by the amount of the QCDs, so you pay no tax on the amount that was sent to the charities. You can do this even if you take the standard deduction. Look on the Schwab web site for information about how to make a QCD from your IRA.
Go to the following links for more information about QCDs.
What is a Qualified Charitable Distribution?
Seniors can reduce their tax burden by donating to charity through their IRA
