5 (Additional) Unique Ways to Use Your Donor Advised Fund

In May, we shared "5 Unique Ways to Use Your Donor Advised Fund" to help inspire community members to consider opening a donor advised fund (DAF) with the Jewish Community Foundation, Inc. or consider new ways of using a DAF that they already have in place.

Let's look at 5 Additional Unique Ways to Use Your DAF:

1. Set up Recurring Grants: Sometimes life can be a lot easier when you "set it and forget it." If you like to support a favorite cause with a monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual gift, you can program your DAF to initiate the recurring grant on your behalf to save you time and effort. You can also set a start date and end date for when this recurring grant should be scheduled.

   
   

2. Process a Grant in the Future: Similar to the first bullet point above, maybe you want to recommend a one-time grant from your DAF to a charity at a later date, so you don't forget to do it or just to knock an item off your lengthy to-do list. A DAF with the JCF allows you to process a grant 30 or more days into the future so it's ready to go and you won't have to think about taking care of it when the time comes, the JCF will handle it for you. An example of this is if you know your synagogue membership dues are required by a certain date, you can arrange to have the grant be processed well in advance to ensure it reaches your synagogue on time.

   
   

3. Give Anonymously: While the JCF encourages donors to give publicly in order to inspire others to follow their lead as a donor, sometimes an anonymous gift is a preferred option for a donor to use. When recommending a grant through your DAF with the JCF, you can set it so that the beneficiary organization only receives a check from the JCF, while your name, your fund's name, and your contact information can be entirely left out of the details provided to the charity, in order to preserve your privacy.

   
   

4. Customize Your Acknowledgement Settings: If you make a gift to a nonprofit organization by sending a check or using your credit card, there's a good chance that you will receive follow-up mail such as newsletters, invitations, and beyond from that nonprofit and sometimes other nonprofits if they sell your contact information to third-party service. By giving from your DAF instead of on your own, you can determine the acknowledgement details that you choose to share on a grant-by-grant basis. When recommending a grant from your DAF, you may want to include your name, email, and mailing address so the beneficiary organization can be in touch with you, or maybe you only include the name of your DAF and no personal contact information, in which case you will reduce or eliminate the likelihood that the charity will contact you.

   
   

5. Track Your Giving over Time: Keeping piles of donation receipts for tax purposes, trying to remember or keep track of all your donations throughout the year, and regularly donating haphazardly without any tactful planning can be stressful and time-consuming for a donor. Instead, a DAF with the JCF keeps track of all of your charitable gifts so you don't have to. Using your online DAF platform, you can see the history of all of your contributions into the DAF, as well as grants from your DAF, including granular details such as a timeline of when a specific grant was recommended, when the grant check was processed, when it was cleared by the beneficiary organization, as well as any memo that you included with the grant check. Further, you can see a breakdown of the types of organizations you support to give you a global perspective of your giving preferences. All of this helps reduce your administrative burden while also strengthening your philanthropic strategy.

Start Your DAF Today to Be Ready for Tomorrow!

Many donors like to give charitably ahead of the High Holidays as well as near the end of the calendar year, so to prepare for that, summer can be a great time to set up your DAF or start funding your existing DAF since it's generally less busy now. By doing so, everything will be in place once the more hectic fall and winter months arrive.

To learn more or get started, contact JCF Executive Director David Snyder at 856-673-2571 or dsnyder@jfedsnj.org today.