David Rosenstein, Tori Nourafchan, and their children Izzy, Gabe, and Theo Rosenstein have held a donor advised fund as a family since 2020. RSF’s head of communications Will McAneny recently sat down with the Rosensteins to chat about their unique and inspiring approach to giving as a family. This interview was originally published in RSF’s 2024 annual report.

WILL: How did you first start giving together?

DAVID: When the kids were old enough to start getting an allowance, we set up a rule: that a third of the money is to spend on whatever you want, a third is to save, and a third is to donate. That was the culture we tried to develop with the kids from their earliest years: a culture of gratitude, where we acknowledge the abundance that we have.

WILL: Why did you decide to set up a DAF with RSF?

DAVID: As any of my children or my wife will tell you, I hate administrative burden. Before we had a DAF, I just had a box full of receipts for donations to different organizations. It was a nightmare! Our financial advisor had spoken to us for a long time about opening a donor-advised fund, and we wanted something that aligned with our values.

GABE: I knew about RSF through someone I had met at Resource Generation, and we felt that RSF had a really high bar for how they administered their money. With many DAFs, the money is supposed to be bettering society, and it’s just sitting there in ways that aren’t. With RSF, I feel good about where our DAF is invested and what our administrative fees are supporting.

WILL: Can you share a few examples of the organizations you’ve supported through your DAF at RSF?

TORI: For me, it usually has something to do with animals. But the biggest donation I ever made was to Brady United, with gun violence. When I thought of people losing their loved ones to gun violence, it became very personal.

IZZY: I’m in the urban agriculture food justice world, and I’ve been able to go and see some different projects here in the Bay Area. Gill Tract Farm started as an Occupy movement with Berkeley students who broke into this empty lot and started planting trees. At first, they kept getting kicked off, but eventually UC Berkeley kind of adopted the project. Now, it’s this completely volunteer-run oasis in the middle of the city, with all these birds and butterflies and flowers and food.

GABE: My longest recurring donation is to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. They have this very smart campaign where they suggest that non-Native people living in their ancestral lands pay a land tax. There was a big campaign in my Resource Generation chapter to make long term pledges to pay the land tax. It’s so nice to be able to just set that up for years through our DAF portal.

THEO: I’ve really enjoyed giving to environmental issues, a cause that a lot of the family shares. But I’ve also been able to find organizations here in Los Angeles to support, one of which was 826 LA. I was able to volunteer at their Echo Park center doing some tutoring of middle and high school students.

IZZY: I also give to The Giving Spirit, which is one in LA that we used to volunteer with when we were kids. We would help pack duffel bags with essential items for distribution to the houseless community. It was cool to remember having that really impactful experience as a kid, look them up and see that they’re still active, and then be able to give to them.

WILL: What is your giving process like?

DAVID: Everybody has equal access to the DAF. That involves a certain amount of trust. But the kids have had to stay organized with each other and track internally what they’ve given.

THEO: We have a shared spreadsheet where we track some of our donations. Also, as a family, we talk together and have a dialogue about causes or issues that we care about.

GABE: Some families have more formal family foundations and a lot more process. But I’m a believer that sometimes the process and all the vetting can slow things down. It takes trust in us to give us this kind of access, but it’s brought us all more into the fold and gotten us more excited.

WILL: What does it feel like to give together, as a family?

IZZY: I feel a sense of pride that this is something that my family has set up. A lot of families that have the kind of resources that we do, I think, tend towards hoarding them or using them for more self-fulfilling purposes. It feels really good to know that the five of us all care about giving back, being involved in our communities, and wanting to use the resources we have to better the world.

DAVID: It’s been really gratifying to see how Gabe and Theo and Izzy have all made donations on their own to the DAF. It’s sort of a dream come true to be on this call with my kids, with the lives that they lead and the values that they have, and to see how well this has worked and how they’ve embraced this and collaborated together.

Want to learn more about giving with RSF? Visit the donor advised fund page on our website!