Donor-Advised Funds: What to Know About the Donor, Dollars, and Details

Donor-advised funds (DAFs) play an increasingly important role in charitable giving, yet many nonprofit leaders still have practical questions:

• What actually happens before a DAF grant reaches our organization?
• Who is the donor?
• How should the gift be processed and acknowledged?
• And what can our organization do to make DAF giving easier and more likely?

CLA nonprofit finance professionals and leaders from The Minneapolis Foundation joined together for an interactive discussion designed specifically to demystify what happens on both sides of a DAF grant:

• How donors use DAFs
• What nonprofit finance and development teams need to know when a grant arrives
• How organizations can better identify, engage, and steward donors who give through DAFs

The session used real-world scenarios to address common questions involving acknowledgements, pledges, restrictions, donor benefits, anonymous grants, accounting, and compliance.

This session was developed in direct response to questions submitted during CLA's July 2026 DAF webinar, when many nonprofit leaders asked for a more practical explanation of how DAFs work and how nonprofits can effectively engage donors who use them.

At the end of this session, you’ll be able to:

• Explain what happens from the time a donor contributes to a DAF through the time a nonprofit receives a DAF grant, including the distinct roles of the donor, sponsoring organization, and recipient charity
• Recognize practical ways nonprofits can identify, engage, solicit, and steward donors who use DAFs — without treating DAF sponsors as a traditional grantmaking pool
• Discuss ways to apply leading practices for receiving, acknowledging, tracking, restricting, and stewarding DAF grants, including coordination between finance and development teams
• Identify key accounting, reporting, and compliance considerations related to DAF grants, including common issues involving pledges, donor benefits, anonymous grants, and restricted purposes

Who should watch

This session is designed for nonprofit executives, board members, development professionals, finance leaders, and organizations seeking better coordination between finance and development around DAF grants and donor relationships. 

To learn more about the role of DAFs and other aspects of the modern nonprofit landscape, read our article, A Strategic Playbook for Nonprofits in 2026.