At Engage for Good 2026, leaders from Hasbro, Perlman + Perlman, and Change explained how a donor-advised fund can simplify multi-charity cause marketing. A DAF can centralize charitable funds, nonprofit vetting, grant distribution, and reporting, which reduces repeated operational work as campaigns grow.
The structure is not a universal substitute for direct nonprofit partnerships or legal review. The panel’s central point was that the operating model should match the campaign strategy.
The session, How Hasbro and Other Leading Brands Unlock the Power of Donor-Advised Funds for Their Nonprofit Partnerships, brought together three perspectives:
The conversation combined legal structure, in-house program operations, and giving infrastructure. That mix matters because complex cause marketing campaigns rarely belong to one department. Legal, finance, marketing, product, and social impact teams all influence how the program is presented and how funds move.
Engage for Good created a useful setting for a practical conversation about what happens behind the campaign creative.
The IRS defines a donor-advised fund as a separately identified fund or account maintained by a section 501(c)(3) sponsoring organization. Once a donor contributes, the sponsoring organization has legal control of the assets, while the donor retains advisory privileges over distributions and investments.
For a corporate cause marketing program, a DAF can create one charitable intake and grantmaking layer between the company’s campaigns and multiple nonprofit beneficiaries. Depending on the program, that layer can support:
This can be especially useful when a company runs programs across several brands, products, timelines, and nonprofit relationships. Instead of rebuilding the entire payment and reporting workflow for each campaign, the team can reuse a common operating structure.
Hasbro’s examples made the operational benefit concrete. The panel discussed campaigns involving multiple platforms and parties, as well as programs running across different brands and timelines. Each added participant creates another set of payment, beneficiary, documentation, and reporting decisions.
The speakers also discussed Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast programs, including philanthropic campaigns connected to Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. As those initiatives expand, the social impact team needs a structure that can support different campaign terms and nonprofit partners without creating a separate back office for every launch.
After the conference, Hasbro and Change announced their partnership to support this work. Change’s donor-advised fund infrastructure helps centralize charitable operations behind Wizards of the Coast campaigns while Hasbro’s team stays focused on the participant experience and nonprofit impact.
A DAF is not automatically the best structure for every campaign. A direct agreement may be more appropriate when the company and nonprofit are negotiating detailed mutual obligations, intellectual-property rights, licensing terms, custom content, or a long-term strategic partnership.
A direct relationship may also give the nonprofit more control over campaign language and timing. By contrast, an intermediary model can be more flexible when beneficiaries rotate, consumers choose from many charities, or the company wants a repeatable grantmaking workflow.
The decision should follow four questions:
A DAF can simplify the operating model, but it does not make every regulatory question disappear. The company still needs to review the public promotion, the parties’ roles, and the states where the campaign runs.
A percentage-of-purchase campaign may require commercial co-venture analysis. An online giving experience may trigger charitable fundraising platform rules. A paid campaign operator may need professional fundraiser review. The sponsoring charity must also follow the federal rules that govern donor-advised funds and eligible grants.
Good infrastructure makes those responsibilities easier to execute. Change supports nonprofit onboarding and disbursements, donation ledgering, and status checks, with the option to route funds through Our Change Foundation. The legal analysis should still be matched to the campaign.
The panel offered five practical lessons for companies building cause marketing at scale:
The broader lesson is simple: campaign scale depends on operational design. A DAF can be a powerful part of that design when the company needs one repeatable structure for many nonprofit relationships, but the best model is the one that fits the program’s actual strategy and legal requirements.
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