The answers, dear Fool, await. Some companies actually encourage individual investors to own shares by selling them to you directly. Called Direct Investment Plans, more and more companies are using these as a way to sidestep what they perceive as the high fees charged by transfer agents to run a Dividend Reinvestment Plan externally. These companies simply run the Direct Purchase Plan from within, selling shares to the investor without ever needing to deal with another party. Pros Investors like DIPs because they do not need to already own one share.
DIPs tend to be low fee and offer more extra services like IRAs.
Very few companies have DIPs, although they are increasing in number. DIPs normally require a high initial investment or a fixed monthly investment for a fixed period of time to participate. Not all DIPs are immune to the high-fee disease spreading through the industry. Thankfully, there is a whole range of possibilities for a Fool to explore. We will first lay out all of the basic elements that you need to get done and then throw up a list of some of the possibilities.