My University recently received a DAF grant that I had thought was for the Annual Fund. When I received notification from my Business Office asking what fund to place the grant into there was a email conversation forwarded along with the EFT confirmation. That conversation indicated that the donor advisor was paying a fee for another organization for a fellowship. After finding more information about the fellowship program, I discovered that the University partners with host organizations; local businesses, non-profits, and municipalities; to host fellows (sounds similar to interns) that are paid a stipend by the University for summer work at the host organization. Part of the partnership contract is that the host organization pays half the stipend amount to the University. One of the host organizations, a local non-profit didn't have the funds to pay the University half the stipend amount, so a donor made that payment for them from his DAF. My take is that there is an exchange of services here for the payment. My understanding is that this is not allowed. Am I correct in my assessment? I also think alternatively, the donor could have made an unrestricted DAF grant to the local non-profit and they could have then used that to make the payment to the University?
Thanks for any advice!
Michael
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Michael Manning
University of New England
Mmanning6@une.edu------------------------------