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More on Donor Advised Funds and tracking total giving

Julie Davis

There is a wealth of info around regarding how each organization is tracking funds, but is anyone willing to share how they handle these specific issues? The BWF article doesn't specifically address the following scenarios"

1. How do you enter gifts from DAFs, family foundations and family businesses - in the individual donor's record or do each of the entities have their own record?
2. If it is one record- how do they handle annual tax receipts?
3. If it is separate records- how do they track total giving for a donor/family through all their records?

Any thoughts/suggestions are much appreciated. We have differing opinions in my office and I would like to bring forth some continuity, along with facts to support it.

Thanks,
Julie

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Comments

Chris Nungesser

Hi @Julie Davis!

My team enters these types of gifts on separate records. Our thinking is that the donor advised fund or the family foundation is actually the source of the funds. So the gift is entered on that record.

We track back to the individual (if appropriate) using soft credits. So that if I pull that person's total giving I can see the total amount of support they have provided.

I think you're using Raiser's Edge, so I believe you have to then be deliberate about how you use soft credits. Does the spouse also get soft credit? Would that throw anything off?

I hope that helps

Chris ?

Julie Davis

Hi!

This is very helpful, thank you. You are correct, we are using Raiser's Edge. The challenges we are experiencing are we feel like we are creating duplicate donor records (one for the individual and one for the DAF) and inflating donor counts. Any thoughts on how to communicate with leadership so they understand?

The other challenge is when we track total giving on our donor walls, the natural inclination is to include DAF giving as well since the donor did give, just through a different mechanism. Do you recognize total giving including DAF giving via soft credits? Is that correct?

Oh the spouse credit convo, that could be a long one ?

Best,

Julie

Chris Nungesser

I definitely see what you are saying. I think you just have to weigh out what matters most to your organization. For myself, I felt that it was worth having the DAF be a separate donor. You could create a record for each DAF fund if you wanted (e.g. - The Smith Family Fund as a record, the Jones Giving Fund as a separate record, etc.). But I just have one record for Fidelity Charitable Giving. All the Fidelity DAF gifts go on that record. Soft credit is then assigned to the donor that directed the gift as is appropriate.

I do not include the DAF record in the donor roll. It's been a minute since I have used Raiser's Edge (I'm using Blackbaud's Altru now). I can't remember if you could take away the automatic soft credit that RE would give to the DAF record. Perhaps that would help your issue. Another thing you could do is create a constituency code for DAFs and then exclude them from your end of year giving donor roll queries/exports. Or maybe it's an attribute that you use to exclude particular records. But, thinking about donor rolls, perhaps that would be a question as to whether you base your donor roll reports on soft credit or not.