The best way to get more DAF gifts is integrating DAF giving in all parts of your fundraising campaigns at year end.
As we head into the giving season of a challenging year for nonprofit fundraising, everyone is fine-tuning their year end campaigns to meet their goals for the year. With 30% of annual donations occurring in December alone, it’s the time of year when every effort counts — both to boost year end giving and to build momentum for the year ahead.
This week, Chariot’s Head of Strategy, Mitch Stein, sat down with Tracy Malloy-Curtis, VP at Mal Warwick Donordigital (MWD), a leading marketing agency for nonprofits, to discuss the opportunity DAF giving brings to year end campaigns. Their conversation emphasized the importance of integrating DAFs into organization-wide fundraising strategies and explored actionable tactics to make this happen.
Better understanding the DAF market
To set a DAF strategy, the first step is making sure everyone is on the same page about what DAF giving is and is not. There are several misconceptions, myths and misunderstandings about DAFs that continue to persist at nonprofits. Most importantly:
Myth 1: DAFs are a bespoke, niche or small part of fundraising
DAFs have become an essential part of nonprofit fundraising. DAF giving made up an average of 12% of revenue among nonprofits that participated in the 2024 DAF Fundraising Report, which doubled between 2019 and 2023.
Myth 2: DAFs are bad for fundraising and should be avoided
While many organizations are seeing declines in cash contributions, (overall giving declined by 2.4% in 2024) DAF giving has actually trended upward for the last decade, helping to offset these losses for many organizations. With over $250 billion in DAFs that’s already committed to charitable giving, the opportunity is immense.
Myth 3: DAFs are only used for major gifts
Donors of all types use DAFs. Annual donors, mid-level donors, peer-to-peer supporters – DAF donors are everywhere. Among MWD clients, they see that the average DAF gift is around $1,000. Through Chariot’s DAFpay, an express payment option for DAF Donors, the average is also around $1,000 and the median gift is $200. Especially in established mid-level programs, we see 40-80% of donors using DAFs. In peer-to-peer fundraising, we see major events like the Pan-Mass Challenge have over 5,000 donors supporting via digital DAF gifts through DAFpay.
Myth 4: DAFs are a type of “Planned Gift”
Contrary to what the structure of many nonprofits would suggest, DAFs are not primarily used in Planned Giving. Tracy stressed the importance of breaking DAF strategy out of the planned giving silo and integrating it into a broader fundraising approach. Donors don’t reserve DAFs solely for planned gifts; they also utilize them for annual donations, recurring gifts, and even in response to urgent needs—such as natural disasters or other time-sensitive causes.
Myth 5: DAF giving will just increase on its own
Unlocking the potential of DAFs requires a real strategy in place – nonprofits can’t just sit back and expect more DAF gifts to roll in. Organizations need to take steps that make giving via DAF as simple and straightforward as possible. As Tracy put it: “The reality is organizations don’t have a choice. This is how donors are giving, and we have to meet donors where they are if we want to benefit from their generosity.”
“The reality is organizations don’t have a choice. This is how donors are giving, and we have to meet donors where they are if we want to benefit from their generosity.”
Crafting a winning DAF strategy
Once your organization has an appreciation for the opportunity with DAF fundraising, there are [3] key tenants to setting a powerful DAF strategy.
DAF giving belongs everywhere
Other than fundraising that’s not permissible for DAF usage (like tickets, tables & auctions), DAF giving belongs anywhere that your supporters can give. The concerns that highlighting DAFs is distracting or confusing have been unfounded by countless experiments done by MWD clients, Chariot and other partners.
DAF giving is a shared responsibility and opportunity
Every person or team within an organization needs to take ownership of the ways they can boost DAF giving within their responsibility area, and collectively share in the upside of increased DAF support across an organization. Too often, gift crediting systems internally keep organizations from adopting this mindset, but as Tracy shared, “Gift crediting is ruining our industry. Don’t ever let crediting get in the way of good strategy.” In other words, nonprofits should prioritize maximizing giving and donor engagement over worrying about who gets credit for the donation.
“Don’t ever let crediting get in the way of good strategy.”
Make the donor’s preferred way of giving as easy as possible
With DAF giving, donors have already taken a step toward donating money by putting it in a DAF where it has to be used as a donation. With the mental hurdle for giving already lower, it’s important to also lower the physical hurdles to completing a DAF gift. This approach means a practice of always mentioning the ability to give with DAFs and adding DAFpay for the easiest way to give.
It’s important to also remember that your appeals to DAF donors should still highlight mission first, and payment method second. They don’t support you because they have a DAF. Once they’ve been inspired to give, they be looking to donate in their preferred way - as long as it’s easy!
Action Items for Nonprofits
As you are putting the finishing touches on your yearend campaign, and preparing for 2025, here is the checklist of top suggestions that your organization can implement for maximum DAF support.
Equip Your Website with Information and Options for DAF Giving
Part of integrating DAFs into your general fundraising strategy is including DAF giving in your online presence. Make sure that you have a DAF section on your website with key information that DAF donors seek when researching their gifts. That includes your EIN, your legal name, your address and a point of contact for any questions. Many organizations also include general overview information on what DAFs are and how they work in case donors have questions.
The best way to make sure donors use their DAF if they have one is to include a DAF payment option in all your donation forms. Chariot’s DAFpay is the only toll that enables 3-click express checkout with a DAF without ever leaving your website. A long time supporter of DAFpay, Tracy highlighted an important point from her research on the DAF-donor experience: “One of the primary pain points that [she] saw is that people could not make a donor-advised fund gift as a payment in response to either a direct mail or an online appeal.” Without DAFpay, Donors have to navigate the tedious and often confusing process through their DAF account portal. By integrating DAF payments directly into your donation process, you streamline giving and ensure that donors can contribute quickly and easily.
Appoint a DAF Champion
Elect someone within your organization to champion DAF giving. This person can come from just about any department internally and there have been examples of successful cross-department DAF programs led by all types of staff. - The key is ensuring that the cause of DAF giving is shared internally, endorsed by leadership and keeps momentum forward with an internal captain.
Properly attribute DAF gifts
It’s impossible to test what is working with your DAF strategy if you’re not ensuring that every DAF gift is properly attributed to specific campaigns or channels wherever possible. DAFpay helps with this given it ties a gift to a specific form, but even for gifts that arrive outside DAFpay, Tracy’s team works hard to tie back to the campaigns that donor was enrolled in.
Experiment with Different Forms of Outreach
Experiment with different outreach methods to engage different segments of your DAF donors. For example, try sending direct-mail responses without a remit, but instead, include a QR code that links directly to your DAF payment page. This approach can help better segment your audience and offer a frictionless way for donors to contribute via their DAF.
Customize language for DAF donors
There are some important differences for DAF giving that should be taken into account, particularly for more segmented communication and outreach. Grants out of donors advised funds are not motivated by the year-end tax planning that other gifts are – remember that DAF grants are not tax-deductible since the donor already got the tax write off from their contribution to the DAF. DAF giving is still highly elevated in December, given how many solicitations they get in that time period, but language the highlights the urgency of the cause vs. the urgency of the calendar is more relevant for them. It also means that there are other important times in the calendar to reach out to DAF donors specifically, like in January after they’ve likely made additional contributions to their DAF in the prior month, or October for DAF Day.
Another important thing to keep in mind this year is that DAFs are restricted from supporting political campaigns. That means that you don’t need to worry about a DAF donor’s giving budget being depleted from the election!
Thank your DAF Donors
Showing gratitude to your DAF donors is essential, but it can be tricky when gifts take time to arrive or when you don’t have a donor’s contact information. DAFpay helps streamline this by providing key donor details like names and email addresses. Even if you don’t have this data, prioritizing better data entry and tracking standards in your CRM can improve your ability to acknowledge DAF gifts efficiently. Remember: thanking donors is an important step in building long-term relationships and encouraging future giving.
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