You can use ${ func() }:

use Data::Dump 'pp'; # for display purposes only
my %datfield;
my $text = "some stuff";
$datfield{"text"} = ${ gettext($text) };

pp \%datfield;

sub gettext {
    my $text = shift;
    return \$text;
}
__END__
{ text => "some stuff" }
[download]

Update: s/Date/Data/. Thanks oko1