You can read more about why raw values are sent at Integers and dates sent by ODK Collect to Google Sheets as text - #2 by LN.
Unfortunately, it looks like while arithmetic and some functions in Google Sheets work on raw values, others (most?) functions don't. The change to raw values was made with the assumption that most calculations would still work but this doesn't seem to be correct. We should look into whether this is also the case with Excel and see whether we could only send certain types of values as raw.
In the mean time, one thing I've done in a similar context is to add new columns that are typed versions of the raw ones. In your case, let's say you add a new sheet called 'Formatted'. In the second cell of the first column, you could write =ARRAYFORMULA(int('Retail Donations'!AF2:AF)). Similarly, in the second cell of the second column, =ARRAYFORMULA(datevalue('Retail Donations'!$D2:$D)) would give the typed dates. Then your formula would be
=sumifs('Formatted'!A:A,'Retail Donations'!$F:$F,"kroger-brandt-pike",'Formatted'!B:B,">=11/1/19",'Formatted'!B:B,"<=11/30/19")
Hopefully that gives you some ideas to work with.