For Our Charity Partners

Benefaction Donor Advised Fundholders are required to recommend grants totaling a minimum of 5% of the average assets held in their Fund on an annual basis. These grants can be made to registered Canadian charities or other qualified donees. Benefaction as an organization also gives back through our Philanthropy Fund, Directors Fund, and Reciprocity Fund. The organizations supported are selected by our esteemed Board of Directors and we currently do not accept applications for these grants.

Benefaction strives to do everything we can to support charities and other qualified donees with our granting. We recommend reviewing the Influence, Affluence & Opportunity: Donor Advised Funds in Canada research report, and specifically Appendix 2: Strategies for Connecting with DAF Donors, for ideas on how to engage with Donor Advised Fundholders as part of your overall fundraising strategy.

Below are the most frequently asked questions we receive from grantees. We encourage you to contact our team directly at donor_services@benefaction.ca with any further specific questions.

FAQs

  • Benefaction typically mails cheques with a letter detailing the related grant. If the donor has requested that we share their personal details, that information is included in the letter. It’s worth noting that fewer than 6% of our donors ask to remain anonymous with their grants.

    If the grant is over $50,000, if the donor has requested it, or if we grant to you regularly and have your electronic funds transfer (EFT) information on file, we will send the grant by EFT instead. In this case, the grant letter is emailed to your organization. We follow the EFT processing instructions provided, although if we have out-of-date contact information, please let us know and we will happily update our system. We require confirmation from charities that EFTs have been received for our records.

    Finally, we can make grants by credit card for online pages of support, although we try to avoid this method of processing wherever possible since many online credit card donation pages are not set up to accept grants from donor advised funds, and there are often fees associated, which reduce the proceeds of the grant.

    It is essential to match our letter with the related cheque or EFT to ensure smooth processing and donor recognition. If you have questions about a specific grant, don’t hesitate to ask our team!

  • No! Tax receipts are issued from Benefaction, as a registered Canadian charity, to our donors when they make a donation into our Foundation to establish their Fund. Grants you receive from other charities (like Benefaction) should not be tax receipted.

  • As mentioned above, a letter will be provided to the organization receiving a grant from Benefaction. If the donor chooses to share personal details with you, they will be included in that letter for you to thank them personally. For all other donors, we accept PDF thank you letters to donor_services@benefaction.ca on their behalf. These should be addressed to the donors of Fund X or the anonymous Benefaction donor and should not be addressed to Benefaction directly. Monthly, we forward those documents on to the relevant donors, who can choose to contact you directly if they so desire. This service is an “opt-out” service provided by Benefaction, meaning most donors who do not share personal details with the charity upfront will receive your communications. We will let you know if the donor in question does not want to receive these kinds of communications.

  • In our monthly emails to donors who have sent grants to your organization, we are happy to include impact reports, calls for support, event invitations, and any other relevant PDF documents. For event invitations please keep in mind the timing as we only send these emails monthly. We do not guarantee a response from the donor directly but are happy to facilitate conversation if they have any questions for you.