American College launches donor-advised fund certification

The American College of Financial Services will launch a 30-hour online Donor-Advised Fund Certified Professional program on Sept. 1. The King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit designed the course for financial advisers and nonprofit staff who work with donor-advised funds. The program is self-paced and may be completed in eight to 20 weeks.

The curriculum is organized into six modules: donor-advised fund fundamentals, tax fundamentals, gift acceptance, investing and grantmaking, estate and planned giving, and ethics, compliance and technology. The college lists no prerequisites for enrollment and also offers more than 150 state-approved continuing education courses.

Tuition is set at $1,495 for most financial professionals and $1,195 for nonprofit professionals. The college describes the program as a focused technical course intended to give advisers grounding in the mechanics and tax rules that apply to donor-advised funds.

Paul M. Caspersen, program director, said the designation aims to provide advisers and DAF-sponsoring organizations with a recognizable mark of ongoing professionalism. Chris Nason, head of private wealth at Wealth.com and a lecturer at Stanford Law School, observed that additional education can be useful but called DAFs a small share of overall charitable giving.

Andrew Slade, vice president and endowment and foundation advisory team lead at Glenmede, noted that advisers should start charitable planning by clarifying a client’s goals. “DAFs are the ‘how,'” he said, adding that nonprofit staff have expressed interest in learning how to access, cultivate and steward gifts that arrive through DAFs.

Donor-advised funds let donors move assets to a sponsoring organization, claim an immediate tax deduction, and recommend grants to charities over time. The structure is commonly used to bunch multiple years of charitable gifts into a single tax year to maximize itemized deductions after increases in the standard deduction under tax law changes in 2017 and 2025.

A recent survey found younger donors report higher DAF usage: 42% of millennials who donated in the past year reported using a DAF, compared with lower shares among older cohorts. At the same time, several large DAF sponsors recently restricted grants to certain organizations, a development that has prompted advisors to reassess expectations about whether sponsors will always follow donor recommendations. Chris Nason recalled that DAF sponsors historically almost always honored donor recommendations and said recent policy shifts have introduced more uncertainty.

There is a legal distinction between DAFs and private foundations: when donors give to a DAF they legally surrender control of the funds, whereas private foundations allow donors to retain legal control. Advisors cited in the field say DAFs are most useful for taxpayers who want to bunch deductions or donate large, highly appreciated assets; for routine, smaller donations they may offer limited tax advantage beyond convenience.

The American College frames the program’s price and self-paced format as a way to make concentrated technical training accessible to practitioners seeking specific expertise in DAF mechanics, tax treatment and stewardship practices.