DAF, Custodian Statements and Unidentified Gifts
Review donor-advised fund grant recommendations, import a quarterly custodian statement, and when a deposit comes in and you cannot tell who gave it, assign it to the right donor later.
Money does not always arrive with a name on it. These three screens cover the gifts that come in through a fund advisor, through an investment custodian’s quarterly statement, or through a bank row nobody can trace.
When you’d use this
- A fund advisor has recommended a grant and you need to approve or decline it.
- Your custodian’s quarterly statement arrived and the endowment balances need updating.
- Reconciliation left a deposit on your books that you could not attribute to anyone.
- A donor called in January about a gift you recorded as unidentified in November.
DAF grant recommendations
Where it lives: there is no sidebar row. Open Sidebar → Nonprofit → Reporting & Analytics, go to the Foundation tab, and use the Donor-Advised Funds card in the related-links footer. You need permission to view funds.
Donor-advised funds are a US tax instrument. Outside the US the screen reads “Donor-Advised Funds (DAF) are a US tax instrument and are not applicable in your region.” The screen also needs the advanced giving capability to be on.
A recommendation starts with a fund advisor, not with your staff. The advisor submits it against their donor-advised fund using their own secure link. Muin accepts it only when the fund is of type donor-advised, the amount is positive and no larger than the fund’s balance, and the proposed grantee is an organization you already have on file.
If the amount is at or below the fund’s auto-approve threshold, Muin approves it immediately. Anything larger arrives in Pending Review.
To work the queue:
- Open DAF Recommendations. Each card shows the amount, the purpose, the status and the date.
- Narrow the list with Filter by status (All statuses, Pending Review, Approved, Declined, Disbursed), the search box (it matches purpose and status), or the sort control (Newest first, Amount high to low, Amount low to high, Status).
- On a pending card, press Approve, or Reject to open Decline Recommendation, add an optional reason, and confirm.
- Press Export CSV in the header for a file of amount, purpose, status and created date.
Approving creates a grant disbursement for the same fund, grantee, amount and purpose, in recommended status, with a grant period of one year. From there it follows the normal grantmaking flow. Declining records the status, the reviewer and your note, and creates nothing.
Approving and declining need permission to manage funds.
Importing a custodian statement
Where it lives: Sidebar → Nonprofit → Foundation → Custodian Import. The screen is titled Custodian Statement Import. Viewing needs permission to view funds; uploading and confirming need permission to manage them.
To import a quarter:
- On the Upload tab, pick a Custodian: Schwab, Fidelity or Generic.
- Pick the Quarter (the last eight quarters are offered, as
YYYY-Qn). - Choose the file. CSV only, up to 10 MB.
- Press Preview Import.
- Read the preview table: row number, custodian fund, beginning, contributions, withdrawals, fees, returns, ending, and the Muin Fund each row matched. Counters above it show total rows, matched and unmatched.
- Map every Unmatched row using its Select fund… dropdown. Confirm Import stays disabled until none are left.
- Press Confirm Import.
The columns Muin expects:
| Custodian | Columns |
|---|---|
| Schwab | Account Name, Beginning Value, Additions, Withdrawals, Fees, Investment Return, Ending Value |
| Fidelity | Fund Name, Start Balance, Contributions, Distributions, Expenses, Net Returns, End Balance |
| Generic | fund_name, beginning_balance, ending_balance required; contributions, withdrawals, fees, investment_returns optional |
Amounts may carry a dollar sign and commas, and (1000) is read as a negative. A blank cell or a dash counts as zero.
Rows match on the exact custodian fund-name text, per custodian. Once an import succeeds, Muin remembers each mapping, so the next quarter matches without you.
Imports are all or nothing. If any row cannot be posted, nothing is posted and the import stays in preview.
The Import History tab lists each attempt with its date, file, custodian, quarter, status, row count and transactions created.
Clearing unidentified gifts
Where it lives: Sidebar → Nonprofit → Giving → Unidentified Gifts. You need permission to view donors to see the list, and permission to edit donors to act on it.
A gift becomes unidentified during reconciliation: a bank row cannot be traced to anyone, and you record it as a gift from an unidentified donor rather than leaving the money unexplained. The money posts straight away against a placeholder record, so your books are right even though the name is not known yet. Repeat gifts under the same name consolidate onto one placeholder; a nameless row always gets its own.
The table is one row per giver, not per gift: Giver, Gifts, Total, First gift, Last gift.
To attribute gifts to a donor:
- Press Attribute to a donor on the row. The Who gave this? modal opens.
- Search for the donor in the Donor field. The donor must already exist; this screen does not create one.
- Press Attribute gifts, then confirm in Attribute these gifts to this donor?
Every gift the placeholder held moves to that donor, including any already marked anonymous, and the gifts join their giving history. A guess here becomes a wrong receipt, so attribute only when you know.
To close out a gift that will stay anonymous:
- Press Will remain anonymous.
- Confirm in Record these gifts as anonymous? with Mark as anonymous.
The gifts stay on your books and stop waiting for attribution. They leave this queue, so decide deliberately.
What it affects
- An approved DAF recommendation appears as a grant disbursement under Grantmaking.
- A confirmed custodian import posts endowment events dated the last day of the quarter, memoed
Custodian import: {fund name}. Contributions, investment returns, investment losses, distributions and fees each post as their own event, and fund balances move with them. The beginning and ending balances are shown for your review but are not posted. - Attributing gifts moves them into the donor’s giving history, their lifetime total and their receipts. Muin warns you when any gift is $250 or more, because that changes what the donor can substantiate, and when an annual statement for that year has already gone out, because their copy is now out of date.
When it goes wrong
“Cannot approve recommendation in ‘…’ status.” The recommendation has already been decided. Reload the list; someone else acted on it.
“File too large (max 10MB).” Split the statement, or export a narrower date range from the custodian.
“This statement contains no data rows.” The file has a header but no rows, or the column headers do not match the custodian you selected. Check the column table above; Muin does not rename columns for you, and a missing column reads as a blank name or a zero.
“Quarter … has already been imported for …” That custodian and quarter are already posted. Pick a different quarter, or review the existing import in Import History.
“{n} of {m} statement rows have no fund mapping. Nothing was imported.” Go back to the preview and map the remaining rows. If the Muin fund does not exist yet, create it on the Funds screen first.
“No funds exist for this tenant.” Create at least one fund before importing a statement.
“That gift is attributed to a real donor record.” Someone already attributed it. Reload the queue.
“Couldn’t attribute these gifts.” The merge did not complete and nothing moved. Retry; if it persists, the donor record may have been removed.
Next step
Once endowment events are posted, review the fund and its spending policy in Endowments and Planned Giving. For the reconciliation step that produces unidentified gifts in the first place, see Donation Reconciliation.