DAFs vs. Workplace Giving: Gift Coding Rules to Live By

Why lumping these two distinct giving channels together muddies your data—and how to clean it up for better insights and decision-making.

DAF gifts are a constant challenge for Nonprofit gift processors. One increasingly common area of confusion—and a frequent source of inaccurate reporting—is how workplace giving donations are classified in relation to donor-advised fund (DAF) gifts.

While it’s true that many workplace giving platforms use DAFs to process donations, this does not mean that those contributions should be classified or analyzed as traditional DAF gifts. Failing to distinguish between the two leads to significant challenges in donor segmentation, performance tracking, and strategic decision-making.

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Same Processing Vehicle, Very Different Donor

A growing number of workplace giving platforms—including Benevity (processed through the America Online Giving Foundation), CyberGrants, YourCause, BrightFunds, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), and United Way—use a DAF structure on the backend to facilitate gift distribution centrally. However, the donors using these platforms do not hold “accounts” at the DAF in the traditional sense.

In contrast, true DAF donors establish individual accounts, contribute funds, make investment decisions, and recommend grants to their chosen nonprofits. These donors are often more deeply engaged and have different motivations, behaviors, and giving patterns compared to those participating in employer-sponsored giving programs.

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The Risk of Misclassification

Misclassifying workplace giving contributions as DAF gifts has several implications:

• Skewed Gift Size Analysis

  Workplace giving is often characterized by a high volume of small-dollar gifts. If these are included in DAF reporting, it will distort average gift size metrics, potentially masking actual growth in high-capacity DAF giving.

  
  

• Inaccurate Donor Behavior Insights

  Organizations tracking giving trends may erroneously conclude that DAF donors are reducing their contributions, when in reality, workplace giving data is introducing noise into the dataset. In most cases, donors increase their giving once they use their own DAF account.

  
  

• Misleading Campaign Performance Data

  Consider an organization that launches a dedicated DAF landing page, a direct mail campaign, or a donor-advised fund activation event like “DAF Day” (October 9th). If workplace giving data is included in the results, it becomes virtually impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of those DAF-focused efforts.

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Practical Guidance for Data Classification

To ensure accurate reporting and meaningful analysis, organizations should classify gifts as DAF gifts and donors as DAF donors separately from workplace giving. Apart from referring to this list of verified DAF providers that donors use for DAF giving and the list of Workplace Giving platforms above, you can also use the following rules of thumb if there’s some gray area:

• Classify as DAF Giving if the donor:

  
  

  • Holds an account at a DAF sponsor

  • Has contributed assets to the fund

  • Can recommend grants from the fund

  • Can make investment decisions within the fund

    
    

• Do not classify as DAF Giving if the donor:

  
  

  • Donated through an employer giving platform using a DAF as a backend processor

  • Does not have individual access to the DAF account

  • Cannot recommend grants independently

    
    

This framework provides a more accurate reflection of donor behavior and improves the reliability of both fundraising analytics and strategic planning.

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A Note on Acknowledgement and Receipting

Although workplace giving and DAF gifts should be tracked separately, the receipting and acknowledgment processes should be consistent. Because both are facilitated through DAFs, tax receipts should not be issued to individual donors. Instead, organizations should provide acknowledgment communications to the donor who initiated or recommended the gift, ensuring they are recognized and thanked appropriately through a “soft credit” process.

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The Strategic Value of Clean Data

Inaccurate classification of DAF and workplace giving can hinder campaign measurement, impair donor segmentation, and lead to misguided conclusions about donor trends. Separating these categories ensures:

• Clearer insights into the effectiveness of DAF-specific initiatives

• More accurate donor retention and growth analysis

• Better targeting for stewardship and engagement strategies

  
  

In an increasingly complex philanthropic landscape, clean data is not simply a reporting advantage—it is a strategic necessity. Organizations that take the time to differentiate between DAF and workplace giving contributions position themselves to make smarter decisions, develop more tailored donor strategies, and ultimately raise more funds.

If you’re interested in this topic, check out our DAF Data Guide for additional guidance on the topic.