Gifts from donor-advised funds are reaching new heights, even as overall charitable giving is down. Donors gave a total of almost $52.2 billion from their DAFs in 2022, more than double 2018’s total.
I recently interviewed several DAF insiders — fundraisers at two nonprofits, a community-foundation leader, and a philanthropic adviser — to find out how charities can target DAFs in their fundraising and land more of these gifts.
Year Up, a work-force development nonprofit, has adopted a few new tactics that have helped the organization quadruple DAF gifts since 2020, says Susan Murray, national director of corporate engagement, development, and revenue operations. For example, whenever the group gets an anonymous DAF gift, the employee who processes it calls the sponsoring organization to say thanks and see if there is any information about the donor that Year Up can use to connect with them. This extra step has paid off, Murray says. “It’s really not rocket science, but we’ve put that in our processes because we often did get more information, which is kind of surprising.”
Stephanie Buckley, head of trust philanthropic services for wealth and investment management at Wells Fargo, suggests promoting DAFs as a way to make a planned gift. Some DAFs become “orphans” when the person who owns the fund dies with no plan for a successor adviser or clear direction on how the money should be spent, she says. That means fundraisers would be smart to talk with donors about leaving their DAFs to the charity in their wills or including the organization as a beneficiary. Says Buckley: “To me, it’s an easy ask because there’s nobody already in that legacy plan for the DAF.”
Read my article, 9 Ways to Raise More From Donor-Advised Funds, to get more takeaways from these conversations.
For more detailed guidance, sign up and watch our recent webinar on demand, How DAF Donors Are Giving Away Their Money.
Have a great week,
Lisa Schohl
Senior Editor, Advice