Donor advised funds are the fastest growing vehicle in fundraising - accounting for nearly $48 billion (10% of all giving) in one recent year. In the CFR universe, these intermediary funds and the ease with which we manage them can make an incredible difference in the bottom line of nonprofit support for faculty work. And yet, donor advised funds challenge all of us in fundraising - it can be difficult to understand how DAF entities interact with their donors, and how those donors interact with us via their DAFs. But in the Foundation Relations space, they are particularly challenging. Sometimes it is even hard to figure out how to manage them in the right place - are they unrestricted gifts? or are they sponsored projects? What happens when our internal systems and the donor desires don't match? The conversations across divisions within a university can be interesting and challenging. At Michigan, we worked through a challenging internal MOU process between Development and Research to describe the reasons for accepting as gift and managing as sponsored on a recent DAF award. But DAFs will also complicate our reporting out on numbers: the VSE survey tool may recommend that development shops report DAFs as separate entities from either Corp, Foundation or Other Org revenue. And current standards for reporting call a private company's DAF (ie, Schwab) an other org (nonprofit), but a Community Foundation's DAFs are professional foundations. It's confusing!! This panel will engage both a nonprofit and a commercial DAF manager, and two university CFR leaders, to talk about why the donors are using the DAFs and what their rules are about gifts and sponsored projects -And what our role is as CFR officers to prepare our campus for this complex funding mechanism.

How can we help faculty grant writers in an increasingly competitive landscape? Faculty report that they find the process of grant applications intimidating and desire more robust support. To address this need at the University of Rhode Island (URI), the associate director of Corporate and Foundation Relations and the director of Writing Across URI collaborated on the design of an online grant writing course which provides step-by-step guidance. In this session they share their process in creating this on-demand tool, and discuss how cross-campus innovations can build an institutional culture of grant writing and streamline resources available to faculty.

Some philanthropic foundations can require a lot of time and attention from CFR officers, faculty, and institutional leaders. Foundations with high expectations and detailed requirements can be challenging—and they can also be our greatest allies! This session, facilitated by two foundation relations officers with decades of experience managing successful relationships with high-touch foundations, will discuss approaches to building and maintaining positive, fruitful partnerships with important, yet demanding, funders. No names of foundations or recognizable attributes will be revealed during this lively, interactive skills-building session.