Donor-Advised Funds: The Source Fundraisers Can't Afford to Ignore

The implementation
To help educate the sector and donors on DAFs, Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable and the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation invited 10 diverse nonprofit organizations — including Charity Navigator and the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC), the annual cycling fundraising event that benefits the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — to discuss a solution for better DAF awareness. From those meetings, the DAF Direct widget was created. The widget can be put on any organization’s donation page to allow donors to give through their DAFs.

The widget, which centers around education of DAFs and acknowledging them as a giving option, has done wonders for organizations such as PMC.

Last year, PMC used the widget for the first time and saw a 50 percent increase in dollars raised through DAFs, bringing in close to $2 million from that funding stream alone, says Michele Sommer, director of finance and administration at PMC.

“I don’t see any downside,” Sommer says. “I see tremendous upside. The challenge is education. There is a small number of people who understand what DAFs are. That really drove how we approached this.”

PMC put information on its website explaining DAFs, and in its rider orientation for event participants, who need to raise at least $4,300 for the event, there is training on fundraising and DAFs. Plus, in the email template PMC provides its participants for fundraising, it includes DAF information.

“There is so much money in these accounts now, all organizations should look at that — and it’s already designated as charitable,” Sommer says. “If I was a development individual, I would hope that every single person in my department was very comfortable with DAFs.

“More and more accounts are being opened. It’s not for you to decide who has a DAF,” she adds. “You never know, so in your ask, always say you can give out of your DAF if you have one.”