The San Francisco philanthropists Jennifer and David Risher believe so strongly that rich donors should give more of the money in their donor-advised funds to charities, and more quickly, that they’re using their own wealth to persuade them to do it.
In May 2020, moved by the suffering caused by the pandemic, the Rishers publicly offered to give $1 million to other donors’ favorite charities if those donors promised to give at least half of the money sitting in their donor-advised funds to charity by September 30 of that year. They called it the the #HalfMyDAF challenge.
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The San Francisco philanthropists Jennifer and David Risher believe so strongly that rich donors should give more of the money in their donor-advised funds to charities, and more quickly, that they’re using their own wealth to persuade them to do it.
In May 2020, moved by the suffering caused by the pandemic, the Rishers publicly offered to give $1 million to other donors’ favorite charities if those donors promised to give at least half of the money sitting in their donor-advised funds to charity by September 30 of that year. They called it the #HalfMyDAF challenge.
The response was swift. By October 2020, about 50 donors had given a total of $8.6 million to 753 nonprofits with the Rishers kicking in $1 million of that in matching gifts through their own DAF, and tracking the grants online so the public could see where the money went. That success prompted the couple to issue another challenge to donors with DAF accounts this year.
In two decades of giving, the Rishers have contributed about $14 million to charity, primarily to support education in underserved places, racial-justice groups, climate and environmental efforts, and reproductive health care. Along the way, David co-founded Worldreader, a nonprofit that gives young people in underserved places free access to a library of digital books they can download onto e-readers and mobile phones. As the couple grew more confident in their giving, they developed the philanthropic philosophy that the best time for wealthy people to give is as soon as possible.
“A lot of people think that philanthropy is something they are going to do later,” Jennifer says. “They’re in their 30s or 40s and they think philanthropy is for old people, but as we’ve experienced, you learn by giving. So our message to people who say they’re too busy is it doesn’t take that much. Give $5,000 to an organization you care about — and do it now.”
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Getting Un-Stuck
The Rishers met in Seattle in 1991 as 20-something, newly minted Microsoft employees. They fell in love, got married, and by their early 30s, the couple’s Microsoft stock options had helped them amass a fortune worth tens of millions of dollars. Neither had grown up with wealth, and their knowledge of philanthropy was limited.
“Basically we had no money,” David says of his childhood growing up in a single-parent household. “But my mother was a big volunteer. She volunteered with Planned Parenthood throughout her life and right up towards the end. And so this idea that giving was important, that was always part of my upbringing. But we just didn’t have very much money to give.”
Jennifer grew up in a middle-class household with thrifty parents who watched every penny and took a dim view of people who spent frivolously or conspicuously. She absorbed an unspoken outlook that frugality is akin to goodness. Her family always donated items to food and clothing drives, but giving cash to charity was not a family habit.
“I really didn’t learn about giving when I was growing up,” she says. “It wasn’t part of the muscle I was building. So it took some time to kind of get used to that.”
Much later, Jennifer wrote We Need to Talk: A Memoir About Wealth, a revealing account of how the couple grappled with unexpected wealth and the uncomfortable complications it can cause within families and friendships.
The Rishers’ wealth soared to new heights after David took a job as vice president for product development and international at Amazon in 1997. They felt an increasing internal tug to devote more of their wealth to charity. At first they gave a lot of four- and five-figure donations to many local charities and to the nonprofits that had touched their lives. They gave $5,000 to the Program for Early Parent Support, a Seattle group that helps new parents connect with one another, which Jennifer joined after having the first of their two children. The couple also gave $10,000 to National Public Radio and $20,000 to their children’s school, University Child Development School, for financial aid, and later $80,000 to endow scholarships there.
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Their comfort in giving increasingly larger gifts blossomed. In 2002 they started a donor-advised fund and poured $600,000 into it. Jennifer wanted to start supporting more nonprofits that help women and girls. David wanted to do more to support education and get more children reading, something he believes is foundational to a child’s success. But they didn’t know which nonprofits were best in those fields. They felt unsure how to proceed. Over time, they also started to feel guilty that it was taking them so long to figure it all out.
One of their problems, Jennifer says, was they thought they had to “do philanthropy right,” which to them meant spending long periods of time doing detailed research on nonprofits and then developing an ironclad strategy for how and where they were going to give.
“For so long, I thought there was a right way, and now I know it’s just to do it,” Jennifer says. “I’ve always been a follow-your-passion kind of person. Yes, you can do some due diligence, but it’s not all about data. It’s about helping people and trusting those doing the work.”
‘You Have to Start’
While they continued to give to charity here and there, parenting two daughters became the Rishers’ focus, and philanthropy took a back seat for a while. Seeking more family time, David left Amazon in 2002 and taught at the University of Washington’s business school. In 2004 the family moved to Barcelona to experience a slower lifestyle and a different culture, and by 2008 they decided to travel. They “road-schooled” their daughters and volunteered in various countries, including at a kindergarten in China.
One day, when the family was volunteering at an orphanage for girls in Guayaquil, Ecuador, David saw a building with a big padlock on it. When he asked what was behind the door, the director told him it was the orphanage’s library. The books were so out of date that the girls weren’t interested in reading them. Besides, she said, she had lost the key.
“It was like, wow, that is super bad,” David says. He thought about the Kindle reading devices that Amazon created and how easy it should be to get books. “Why can’t we use digital technology,” he wondered, “to get books and other learning materials to kids all over the world?”
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That experience opened the Rishers’ next phase of life, one that led them deeper into philanthropy. In 2010, David co-founded Worldreader with a friend, Colin McElwee. The Rishers have given and pledged about $10 million to the charity so far, but they waited until 2015 to give it their first $1-million donation.
“We wanted to make sure that it was having an impact,” Jennifer says. “David worked without getting a salary or anything for several years and then, finally, we’re like, ‘OK, this is something we really want to put our money behind.’ And that’s what really started our giving in a bigger way.”
Worldreader has served more than 13 million people in 62 countries, working with device manufacturers, education officials, government agencies, and publishers. In recent years, it has started efforts in parts of the United States where schools in marginalized places struggle to get enough reading materials into students’ hands.
Running Worldreader day-to-day led David to see the powerful impact philanthropists can have. “It took us 20 years,” he says of that realization. “It doesn’t need to take that long. It could take five years, maybe it could take two years, but you have to start.”
No Incentive to Change
The Rishers know that their other main philanthropic endeavor — to get more money flowing from donor-advised funds — is an uphill battle.
They don’t think that all DAF account holders are purposely using them to hoard wealth. The couple say they’ve seen people park large sums of money in the accounts and then forget it’s there, and donors who are unsure where and how they want to give, just as they once were. What’s more, the couple say the accounts have real benefits, making it easy for donors to give and keep track of their gifts.
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The Rishers blame the entities that operate DAFs — especially commercial financial-services companies — for the low rates of giving. They say that because the companies that manage the accounts are so highly compensated for increasing those assets, there is no incentive for them to push donors to give more money from the accounts.
“No matter how good your intentions, if that’s the way you’re getting compensated and rewarded, you’re probably not going to spend your time trying to figure out how to get the money out of your system,” David says.
Alan Cantor, a consultant to nonprofits who has written extensively about donor-advised funds, shares the couple’s skepticism. He says the #HalfMyDAF campaign is a good way to raise awareness about the need to get people to give away more of the money sitting in their DAFs — to a point.
“They’re doing remarkable stuff, and I applaud them for it,” Cantor says. “It’s a very good effort, so long as it’s not seen as a substitute for legislative or regulatory action.”
The only way to make lasting change, Cantor says, is through legislation like the Accelerate Charitable Efforts Act, a Senate bill aimed at speeding the flow of money from foundations and donor-advised funds to charities, or some other regulatory measures.
“What it boils down to is that a lot of the entities are making money from the current system,” Cantor says. “Those are really strong incentives, so a social-good campaign like #HalfMyDAF is going to have a very hard time gaining traction.”
But the Rishers aren’t giving up just yet. Since they began #HalfMyDAF last year, the campaign has moved a total of $19.2 million from donor-advised funds to nonprofits — $2 million came from the Rishers and $1.5 million from several friends who have joined them in matching donations. Their two daughters, who are now in their early 20s, also each kicked in $500,000 of their own money.
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The Rishers say they are likely to continue the #HalfMyDAF campaign in 2022, but beyond that they are not sure.
“We’d love to figure out a way for more people to join us on the matching side,” David says. “At some point, our money will run out, so we’re sort of thinking about what’s a sustainable model here. I’m not sure we know it yet.”
Whether or not they continue the campaign in its current form next year or beyond, it’s likely the Rishers will keep finding ways to push other wealthy donors to give more and give faster well into the future.
The problems that nonprofits tackle are complicated, and they’re not getting any smaller, David says. “We feel a lot of urgency — and maybe even a little frustration — that some of the smartest people in the world, some of the folks who pride themselves on making bold moves, get a little too tentative when it comes to their giving. So a lot of our focus is to say, ‘Why not just get to it?’”
Maria directs the annual Philanthropy 50, a comprehensive report on America’s most generous donors. She writes about wealthy philanthropists, arts organizations, key trends and insights related to high-net-worth donors, and other topics.