Hello!
I am having trouble figuring out the best way to book multi-year pledges that will be paid by a donor's Donor Advised Fund. I want to put the pledge in the donors record since they are the one who will be/wants to receive the invoice, however when the money comes in it will be booked to the Donor Advised Fund account and soft credited to the donors account for proper booking.
Does anyone have a best practice for scenarios like this? or do I simply need to put in the pledge in the donor account and then zero it out when the payment comes in from the DAF and soft credit it appropriately?
Thank you!
It is a balancing act between Donor-centered practices and adjusting the tool (Tessitura) to accommodate the donor’s gift intention.
Last year, I decided to put the DAF gifts / commitments in the record for the Donor Advised Fund Mothership: i.e. Fidelity Charitable; Vanguard; etc….. But since these records are typed as Foundations, when I ran reports on individual giving it was a mess – i.e. I had to hand calculate all of the Foundation gifts that were really ‘individual’ gifts to report on constituency giving.
I decided to put the gift on DAF record, as the gift is really from the Foundation and auditors consider the gift from the Foundation, but by doing this, it also removed the individuals who requested this DAF gift from the individuals’ appropriate total giving levels.
So, this year, I have returned to soft crediting the DAF; with a note on the gift note in the individual’s record. This way individuals are get the credit for their total fiscal year giving and I can do the accounting for DAF for auditing purposes.
I do not care for the practice of adjusting down pledges, it does not look good on a donor’s history when the donor wants a gift history report – and in truth, the donor thinks their DAF contributions are their personal contribution.
A lot of grey area indeed.
I wonder what happens to DAFs when the donor is deceased? Who will ask on our behalf then? So this brings up developing a relationship with the DAF administrators and I don’t think that is what the DAF administrators want nor look forward to being personally solicited when the donor is no longer making the request.
Laura Chaney
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Echert Sent: Friday, September 11, 2015 6:52 PM To: Laura Chaney Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Booking Multi year pledges to be paid by Donor Advised Funds
We have gone the way of adjusting down a pledge in the past.
However. We have been advised that it is not permissible under IRS rules for a donor to use a DAF to pay a personal pledge, or for them to receive benefits, (other than "incidental benefits,") for gifts made on their behalf via DAF. I don't know enough about it to offer specific advice, but you may want to look into it to make sure your bases are covered. It sounds to me like there's some gray area.
From: Daniela DiBenedetto <bounce-danieladibenedetto7105@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 9/11/2015 5:45:57 PM
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