How to Record DAF Gifts in Your Donor Database
Donor-advised funds are one of the fastest-growing giving vehicles in philanthropy — and one of the most confusing to record correctly. Here's how to handle them in DonorPerfect without cluttering your database.
What is a DAF gift and who is the legal donor?
A donor-advised fund (DAF) is a charitable giving account held by a sponsoring organization — most commonly Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, or a community foundation. An individual donor contributes money to the DAF and receives their tax deduction at that point. Later, they can recommend grants from the DAF to nonprofits they wish to support.
From a recordkeeping standpoint, this creates a critical distinction: the DAF sponsoring organization is the legal donor of record, not the individual who recommended the grant. Your acknowledgment letter must go to the DAF organization, and the receipt for the gift must reference the DAF — not the recommending donor — as the taxpayer.
How to record a DAF gift in DonorPerfect
The correct way to record a DAF grant in DonorPerfect is to post the gift on the individual donor's constituent record, while specifying the DAF organization as the receipt entity. Here is the step-by-step process:
- Open the constituent record of the donor who recommended the grant (e.g., "Sarah Jenkins").
- Add a new gift record with the gift date, amount, campaign, fund, and solicitation codes as usual.
- In the Receipt Organization field, enter the name of the DAF sponsoring organization (e.g., "Fidelity Charitable"). If the DAF organization is not already in your DonorPerfect database as a constituent, you may need to create a simple organizational record for it.
- Set the acknowledgment type to reflect that the receipt goes to the DAF organization, not to Sarah Jenkins personally.
- Save the gift. The giving history is now attributed to the correct individual donor, while the receipt obligation is correctly assigned to the DAF.
Why batch importing DAF spreadsheets creates problems
Many DAF sponsoring organizations send periodic disbursement reports as spreadsheets. Fidelity Charitable, for instance, provides a CSV export of all grants made from donor accounts to your organization within a given period. The natural instinct is to import this CSV directly into DonorPerfect.
The problem is that DonorPerfect's batch import was not designed to handle the DAF-organization-as-receipt-entity logic. A standard import will try to create new constituent records based on the donor names in the spreadsheet — names that may already exist in your database under slightly different spellings. And it will create duplicate address records for any donors it does match, because batch import always creates a new address entry regardless of what's already on file.
Development teams that rely on batch import for DAF disbursements frequently end up with:
- Duplicate constituent records for the same individual donor
- Multiple identical address records on a single constituent
- Missing or incorrect DAF organization attribution on gift records
- Acknowledgment letters going to the wrong entity
A better way to import DAF disbursements
The cleanest approach is to match each row in the DAF spreadsheet to the correct existing constituent in your database before any record is created or modified. This is where a tool like Precheck is designed to help.
Precheck processes DAF disbursement spreadsheets by evaluating each row against your existing DonorPerfect constituents — searching by name, email, address, and other identifiers. It presents you with match candidates for review, lets you confirm or override the match, handles the DAF organization mapping automatically, and posts each gift via the DonorPerfect API rather than the batch import engine. This means no duplicate address records and no missing receipt attribution.
Automate your DAF import workflow
Precheck handles DAF spreadsheet imports with correct constituent matching and receipt organization mapping — so your database stays clean and your acknowledgments go to the right entity.
See How It Works →Frequently asked questions
How do I record a DAF gift in DonorPerfect?
Create a gift record on the individual donor's constituent record, but set the Receipt Organization to the DAF provider (such as Fidelity Charitable or Schwab Charitable). This ensures the tax receipt goes to the DAF while the gift is attributed in your database to the donor who recommended the grant.
Who gets the tax receipt for a donor-advised fund gift?
The DAF sponsoring organization is the legal donor of record. The individual who recommended the grant cannot claim a second deduction — they already received their tax benefit when they contributed to the DAF. Your acknowledgment letter should be addressed to the DAF organization, not the recommending donor.
How do I import multiple DAF grants from a spreadsheet into DonorPerfect?
Match each row in the DAF disbursement spreadsheet to the correct constituent in DonorPerfect before posting — either manually or with a tool like Precheck that automates the matching and handles DAF organization mapping. Standard batch import does not handle the receipt-entity logic and often creates duplicate address records.