Missed Connections

On September 9th, WellFunded held a short community meeting with charities on "what actually happens after a donor-advised fund gift lands." 60 charities signed up to the "charity only" session dedicated to speaking freely on their challenges, joys and opportunities when it comes to stewarding DAF donors.

The spirit of the conversation was this: DAF sponsors want their fund holders to feel great about their gifts. They want their clients to feel like they are changing the world through them. Charities want the same thing. They want to invite that donor into a relationship on their terms, and to relay the impact of their gift.

But there is friction.

And until we can speak honestly, without blame, about the nature of the problem, we won't be able to design a better way forward.

Nobody in this chain is failing on purpose.

What is failing is the structure sitting between them. 205 DAF sponsors. 205 different ways of sharing donor information. All of it feeding into 85,000 Canadian charities, each left to make sense of whatever arrives. Some charities are still printing letters, buying stamps, and walking to a mailbox in 2026, because a mailing address is the only contact information a DAF passed along. The system connecting a donor's generosity to a charity's ability to say thank you for it is, in a lot of cases, running on 1998 infrastructure.

This is what they told us, anonymized so that we could create a productive environment.

205 sponsors, 205 systems

We had the room make a word cloud to describe what it is like to steward DAF gifts today. Every DAF sponsor handles disbursement differently. There is no shared standard for how gift and donor information shows up, or what something as basic as the term "anonymous" means. A charity working across even a handful of sponsors is not running one process. It is running a different process, with a different set of rules, for every single relationship it has.

• 205 DAF sponsors in Canada, each with its own process
• 85,000 Canadian charities receiving whatever each one sends
• $2 billion granted out of DAFs in the past year alone
• $17.3 billion currently held across those 205 sponsors

What actually arrives

Just 14% of charities received an email address for the donor. Another 14% received a mailing address. Even without any overlap between those two groups, at most 27% of charities have any way to reach the donor directly. That means at least three in four charities are working with no path to the donor at all.

What they do get is a fund name. Half the room, 50%, received that much. But only 18% received any instruction on how the donor actually wanted the gift applied. Knowing which fund a gift landed in is not the same as knowing what the donor wanted done with it.

None, not one, of the charities received this information as a CSV, or any format that could sync into a CRM.

Imagine being a CFO at a corporation, unable to sync bank transactions into your accounting software, or receiving payee information with half the fields missing.

Asked to describe stewarding a DAF donor in a single word, the room's most common answer, by a margin, was inconsistent. Other answers volunteered were: cumbersome, delayed, one-sided, impersonal, broken, variable. There were of course positive words: grateful, amazing and generous. Charities are grateful - that came through loud and clear. The system however was one that no professional should have to work with.

A case study: anonymous

We asked the room what "anonymous" meant in the context of a DAF gift. The reason for this was to test the theory as to whether or not there was a shared understanding of terms. There is not.

Of those asked: 36% thought anonymous meant that the donor didn't want public recognition, but that they were OK to write to the donor. 27% believed they weren't supposed to know the name at all, and 36% were never sure what it meant.

"We assume it is fine to mail a thank you, even when a gift says anonymous. But it is an assumption. There is no sort of, here is what the definition means. We are just guessing every time."

Charity director, Toronto

The question was meant as an illustrative example. It is not a donor preference problem. It is a standards problem, and every charity is left to guess the standard on its own.

No donor intent, no real relationship

Even when a name does arrive, a charity often has no idea why someone gave or where they want their money used. For an organization running more than one program, that is the difference between a gift that lands and a gift that just gets banked.

"We run over a hundred programs, a food bank, a health centre, mental health care, employment services. I get the gift, but no nuance on why someone gave. If you do not know why someone gave, you cannot give them the joy they deserve for having given it."

Program director

Fragmented systems, duplicated work

205 sponsors means 205 workflows. Charities are re-keying data by hand, tracking the same donor differently depending on who on staff happens to answer, and in some cases doing the stewardship work twice over.

"We didn't have anyone designated to track these gifts, so they just went wherever, finance, whoever happened to pick up the file. I work from home, so my co-worker in BC handles all our printing and mailing. That's still what DAF stewardship runs on."

Foundations team lead

"A disbursement letter often only gives us a mailing address. That can mean printing, stuffing, stamping, and mailing twenty-one separate letters. It is not sustainable as more giving moves through DAFs."

Donor relations lead

"We do not consistently identify DAF gifts across our team. It is not labelled as a DAF, so tracking it is not consistent. I do not want to say I feel like a nuisance when I ask a sponsor for an update, but that is the tone I get back."

Corporate giving officer

It's not about the money. It's about relationship.

Underneath it all: the missing contact info, the guessing games on anonymous, the duplicate letters, all of it traces back to the same root. Charities cannot build a relationship with someone they cannot reach, and a donor cannot feel the impact of a gift nobody got the chance to properly thank them for.

"DAF holders are impossible to meet. We would love to offer a tour, or coffee, or say thank you in person. All we can do is send a letter through the DAF and hope it gets forwarded. You never hear back. If someone wants to support your work and be part of what you are doing, why is it so hard to connect with them?"

Development lead, national charity

"We are incredibly grateful, and we do not want to create more work for the donor or for us. The current system squashes any real personal connection with the donor. It takes a lot of the joy out of giving. It becomes just writing a cheque."

Food bank director

"It is not just about the money. It is about relationship."

Development lead, national charity

What's working looks like a switchboard

A few charities named a DAF sponsor whose staff pick up the phone, answer questions, and stay in the loop.

"I really enjoy working with one sponsor foundation in particular, because they talk to me. There is someone I can phone and ask a question, and they are responsive. I have worked at other charities and found the same thing there too."

Community services director

But a good outcome that depends on who happens to answer your email that week is not a system. It is an operator willing to make the connection. We know of DAF CEOs personally routing annual reports to donors. This does not scale. Before direct dial, every phone call went through a switchboard operator. Getting through depended entirely on who was on shift and whether they felt like patching you through. Some operators were excellent. Most callers did not get the excellent one, and a relationship that only works because of one person's goodwill does not scale past the number of relationships that person can personally hold in their head.

"We have three people on our foundations team, which is more than most charities have, and it still takes real time to build a relationship with each sponsor individually. They all have their own policies for what they'll pass along. Most charities do not have three people to spare on this."

Foundations team lead

Imagine we get this right

We closed by asking the room for one word to describe what stewarding a DAF gift would feel like if this actually worked.

Words that described it: consistent, by a margin, followed by meaningful, relational, smooth, donor-centred, streamlined, and clear and accessible.

Where this goes next

Every person on this call wants the same outcome: a donor who feels genuinely amazing about the impact they're having because of their philanthropy.

But right now, this is not happening effectively, efficiently or equitably.

The good news is that we're engaging many of Canada's leading DAFs on a shared solution for data sharing, disbursements - ultimately to enable stewardship. We know there is a better way forward and are working alongside other DAFs who believe the same thing.

If you run a DAF and want to be a part of this solution, there's still time to be on the lead team that shapes it. Contact us today.

Sources: WellFunded DAF data, live poll results from the September 9 charity listening session, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Watermark Philanthropic Counsel. All charity quotes are anonymized by role.