How Do DAFs Operate?

by Milena McCartney

Donor Advised Fund (DAF) is an account where you can deposit assets for donation. You can have the tax benefit of depositing the assets right away, but you don’t have to make a decision on where to donate the assets right away. Having a DAF helps to eliminate the decision under pressure on where to donate at the end of the year to receive the tax deduction. You can deposit the assets and make a disbursement at a later time. 
Who manages the DAFs?
DAFs are managed either by investment organizations such as Charles Schwab and Fidelity or by community foundations such as California Community Foundation, managing more than 1700 DAFs. Each organization has their own rules on the funds and management fees.

Most common rules are:

• Minimum amount of funds to open an account (the lowest starting point is at $10,000).
• Minimum disbursement to be made per year ( some funds have a minimum of $250 per year)
• Minimum balance kept in the fund at all times
• Short term or long term donations requirements
• Various forms on requesting the donation by the donor
• Various lead time on disbursement to recipient ( minimum 3-5 days)

How to connect with DAFs?
Because the DAFs are not charitable foundations it is very difficult to find out who has such funds and where and how big donations were made. The only way to connect with these funds is through the management organization. Building a relationship with an investment organization when you are not the investor is a bit difficult. The investment organizations are not highly motivated to advertise your non profit organization to the fund owners. You can reach out to the grant management department, but these departments are usually just processing the donors’ requests for disbursements.
On other hand the community organizations as nonprofits themselves may be more proactive in making the connection between DAF owners and other charitable organizations. Contacting them and trying to establish a relationship would be a worthwhile effort.