How to Record a Donation from a Donor Advised Fund

Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are an increasingly popular giving vehicle, and recording them correctly in your MonkeyPod is straightforward once you understand how they work.

A quick primer on DAFs

A Donor Advised Fund is a charitable giving account managed by a sponsoring institution — such as Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, or a community foundation. A donor (the "advisor") contributes money to the fund and receives a tax deduction at that point. Later, they can recommend grants from the fund to nonprofits they want to support.

The key thing to understand for recording purposes: when a DAF grant arrives at your organization, the legal donor is the institution, not the individual donor advisor who recommended the gift. The advisor has already become eligible for their tax deduction when they contributed to the fund — they don't receive another receipt for recommending a grant from it.

How to record a DAF gift in your MonkeyPod

Recording a DAF gift is just a standard donation entry with one addition — a soft credit. Here's how:

Record the donation from the institution. The hard credit goes to the sponsoring institution (Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, your local community foundation, etc.) since that is the donor of record. If you don't already have a relationship record for the institution in your MonkeyPod, create one.
Assign a soft credit to the advisor. When recording the donation, look for the Soft Credit field under the Optional section and enter the name of the individual who recommended the grant. This connects the gift to the advisor in your records and gives them appropriate recognition for directing the funds to your organization — without incorrectly crediting them as the donor of record. For more on how soft credits work, see Learn About Soft Credits.

Receipts and acknowledgments

You should not issue a tax receipt for a DAF gift — not to the sponsoring institution, and not to the donor advisor (the person you likely think of as your supporter in this transaction). The gift is a transfer from one charity to another, and the donor advisor would have already received their receipt when they originally contributed to the fund.

To block receipts from being sent to a DAF, go to its relationship record and select Edit details from the action menu in the upper left.

Near the bottom of the details page, look for the Donor Preferences section and select No receipts.

As for the advisor who received the soft credit for the donation, MonkeyPod won't automatically send them a receipt since receipts only go to the donor of record (not soft credits). However, you should definitely thank them for their gift! See How to Manage Thank You Letters for tips.

Tip! When you thank the advisor, avoid offering benefits tied to the grant (such as event tickets or membership perks) — IRS rules don't allow DAF grants to provide more than incidental benefits to the advisor. Be sure to check with your accountant about rules related to DAF gifts.

How the gift appears in your MonkeyPod

Once recorded, here's what you'll see:

The donation appears on the institution's relationship page as a standard gift.
The soft credit appears in the Contributions total on the advisor's relationship page. It's also listed under their Soft Credits tab and in their interaction history.
The institution is the donor of record in all reports. The advisor will not appear as a donor in standard financial reports, but their soft credit activity is incorporated in the totals for the Top Donors report. It's also visible in the Contribution Details report if you choose to display the Soft Credit column.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if a DAF grant arrives without an advisor's name?

Some advisors ask the sponsoring institution to keep their grant anonymous. If no advisor is named, record the donation from the institution as usual and skip the soft credit. If the advisor later tells you who they are, you can edit the donation and add the soft credit then.