Good Financial Plans Should Make Room for Giving

In a recent conversation, an advisor walked us through what it took to help a client use their donor-advised fund with another provider. Imagine: a separate form for access, another needed for money movement, and then a new signature request when the client wanted to give. Even seeing where previous grants had gone could require the client's help to log in.

The account kept sending the work back to the client, despite them paying their established advisor to handle their giving on their behalf.

That's a hard service experience to offer with any confidence. You can bring up charitable planning in a meeting, but if every next step means another form for the client, you're also assigning them more homework. Many don't have to imagine such a scenario.

Let the advisor do the work

We've been building Endaoment around a different expectation: a client should be able to ask their advisor to handle their DAF and have that mean more than just managing the investments.

That starts with our new, more inclusive, DAF agreement. An advisor needs permission to work on the client's behalf, with access to the account history and the ability to help process contributions and provide recommendations. Otherwise, a nicer website just gives the client a nicer place to do the same work.

Our collaboration experience enables an advisor to prepare a contribution for the client to confirm or to take permitted actions on the client's behalf. Endaoment handles grant review and payment to the nonprofit. When a grant requires cash from an advisor-managed portfolio, we coordinate with the advisor to raise it. The client can stay involved in decisions without having to relay instructions between everyone handling the account.

Some people will always want to log in and recommend their own grants. Others have an advisor precisely because they'd rather have someone they trust handle it. A DAF experience should support both.

Make giving something you offer

Once an advisor can manage the process, giving becomes easier to include in the ordinary work of wealth management. Advisors can bring it up before a client asks and follow through after the meeting.

Consider a client who's held a stock for ten years and gives to the same organizations every year. Before the next review, their advisor can look at a potential contribution alongside the rest of the portfolio. They can come prepared with a suggestion and, if the client agrees, help arrange the gifts. When it's time for the annual grants, the advisor already has the history.

That help can extend to cash, stock, private business interests, real estate, collectibles, and digital assets. For a complex gift, the advisor can work with our team on acceptance and any agreed sell-over-time schedule. The client has someone who knows their finances coordinating the details.

There's demand for that relationship, too. In T. Rowe Price's February 2026 research, 76% of investor respondents wanted philanthropic guidance from their advisor, while only 36% received it. The study surveyed more than 500 high-net-worth and high-income investors.

For advisors who manage the charitable portfolio under an investment management agreement, the conversation can go further. They can discuss how the money is invested in light of what the client cares about, as well as the grants they want to make. Giving becomes another part of the relationship where the advisor knows the client well enough to offer useful advice.

An advisor should be able to say, “We can take care of your giving, too,” and explain exactly what they'll handle. That's the service we're working toward with advisors: one they can offer routinely, with a process behind it that lets them keep that promise.

To talk through how this would work in your practice, write to hello@endaoment.org or try the demo. You can also open a DAF with no minimum contribution and explore our services at endaoment.org.

For clients who are new to DAFs, our DAFSquatch video covers the basics. Our article about Endaoment's role as a sponsor explains the responsibilities we take on.