How to Use Donor Advised Funds to Make Impact Investments

Donor advised funds (DAFs)—a philanthropic vehicle managed by a wide variety of public charity sponsors that allows donors to retain advisory rights—have skyrocketed in popularity and currently hold over $85 billion in charitable assets waiting to be deployed. 

In this article published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the authors make the case for using DAFs to make impact investments in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They draw from their own experiences in corporate venture investing at the Autodesk Foundation and facilitating investments as a philanthropic investment intermediary at PRIME Coalition, as well as from the experiences of peers and partners in the field to explain DAFs, and how foundations and other philanthropically motivated organizations can use them. See below for a link to the full article.