Is This The Boost That Donor Advised Funds Need To Hit Their Stride?
Big news in DAF-land was this week's launch of GoFundMe Giving Funds, a virtual space that enables consumers to easily create their own DAFs.
'This new giving tool brings the power of donor-advised funds (DAFs) to a broader audience, eliminating traditional barriers like high minimums and fees,' explained Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe's chief marketing and corporate affairs officer.
Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe's chief marketing and corporate affairs officer.
More than 200 million people have made $40 billion+ in contributions via the GoFundMe giving platform during the last 15 years. The skills GoFundMe has amassed at moving donors to donate excites Mitch Stein, head of strategy at Chariot, a fintech company focused on DAFs.
Awareness of DAFs is the greatest limiting factor in the field's growth, explained Stein who has co-authored two annual studies of the DAF field.
'So now we have a company with a business model solely driven by giving, with phenomenal reach and a consumer marketing engine that's pushing a DAF product,' Stein wrote on Linkedin. 'It's brilliant! And it's helpful for every player in the DAF industry.'
Chariot Head of Strategy Mitch Stein
Those players include major financial firms like Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity who each manage billions of dollars in DAF assets. 'My biggest gripe with the DAF market and major providers is that they don't market DAFs to their full client base, and so the utilization is typically below 1%,' wrote Stein. 'The vast majority of people with a brokerage account at these places don't even know what a DAF is! Trust me I ask just about everyone I meet.'
Richardson said that initially GoFundMe's major marketing push for Giving Funds will be to its community of 200 million giving platform users via email, www.gofundme.com and social channels. While it will be free to set up a DAF and give from a DAF, donors can choose to leave an optional tip to help sustain the GoFundMe Giving Fund, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that powers Giving Funds, she explained.
If GoFundMe's Giving Funds initiative is successful it should significantly move the needle when it comes to establishing more DAFs. In addition, the company hopes that online tools it is releasing will move more people than the national DAF averages to actively find and support nonprofits with contributions.
Making it easier for DAF holders to donate has been the bread and butter of Chariot since 2023. Traditionally if a consumer was inspired to give from their DAF, they could not simply go to the website of the nonprofit they wanted to support. They had to visit online the financial services company that manages their DAF and fill out forms to make the contribution. This form of 'contribution interruptus' derailed many a gift.
To counter this, Chariot markets a DAFpay widget to nonprofits which can integrate it directly into their donations forms thus making it easier for donors to give spontaneously.
Making such transactions easier is particularly important because – unlike conventional wisdom that assumed DAFs were only used by the ultrawealthy for major gifts -- 69% of all DAF gifts are less than $1,000, according to the recently released DAF Fundraising Report 2025.
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