DAF versus the administrator of the DAF

Jody Cross

I know DAFs are a hot topic but I can't seem to find a thread about my specific question. Regardless of whether you hard credit or soft credit the individual versus the DAF, I am wondering if there is a best practices policy about crediting the DAF versus crediting the administrator of the DAF? In other words, do you credit Fidelity or Benevity or Schwab or do you credit the name of the donor advised fund itself, provided you know it?

Dariel Dixon

@Jody Cross I think this depends on your record structure. I've been at organizations that have done it both ways. There's pros and cons to each method. If you just credit the administrator (ie. Benevity, Fidelity Charitable, etc.) you don't have so many records to manage. You might have several different funds administered by the same entity, and having them separated may mean more records to maintain. Creating records for the fund allows you to have relationships between the fund record and the individuals that controlling/advising the fund.

Personally, I prefer just crediting the administrator. We note the name of the fund as an attribute, and soft credit the individuals. But either way is fine, as long as the process is documented so it can be consistent.

Carrie Powell

@Jody Cross, we add the gift to the main (administrator) account and soft credit the individuals who directed the gift to be made. In cases where there is a fund within a fund (such as a family fund that's managed by a larger community foundation), we create relationships for those individual funds.