How does a donor-advised fund work, anyway?
That’s the question we explore in the latest episode of Giving Ventures. We cover the waterfront on the value of donor-advised funds (DAFs) to donors but also to the non-profit organizations that benefit from grants received from DAF providers.
This episode is a little different in that our usual host, Peter Lipsett, is one of the guests, along with DonorsTrust President and CEO Lawson Bader. Philanthropic Advisor Stephanie Lips moderates the discussion, which was recorded during our April “Lunchtime Lessons” webinar.
The audience for these webinars typically draws from nonprofit CEOs, executives, and fundraisers, and many of the topics touch on fundraising but also on technology, events, and other relevant items.
During the webinar, we touched on a variety of topics related to donor-advised funds and DonorsTrust in particular. During Q&A, our audience was especially interested to know how to better work with DonorsTrust and to get the attention of our clients. We discussed how vital it is to keep our team updated on the organization’s work.
Specifically, we go through:
- why donors turn to DAFs instead of just writing checks on their own
- why a DAF provider does more than simply “process checks”
- The common mistakes or misunderstandings by non-profits (and donors as well) about DAFs, such as not being able to sponsor events or anything that gets a benefit, and what being “anonymous” from a DAF really means
- Ways non-profit organizations can collaborate with DonorsTrust and other DAF providers
- How we communicate things we learn back to donors
While the audience for this conversation was primarily those working at nonprofits, there was so much shared that is directly applicable to donors considering or using funds that we wanted to share the talk here in the podcast feed.
You can find the full episode in the player at the top of the page or wherever you get podcasts.
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