Where Planned Giving Belongs in DAF Strategy
- Mitch Stein
- 18 hours ago
- 4 min read
As donor-advised funds (DAFs) become a dominant philanthropic vehicle, many nonprofits are asking the same question: how do we integrate DAFs into our broader fundraising strategy, without sidelining Planned Giving?
To explore this, Chariot recently hosted a conversation with Kate Rhodes, Senior Officer of Strategic Philanthropy at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Drawing on her experience with both Planned Giving and DAF strategies, Kate offered an in-depth look at how organizations can build cross-functional approaches to DAF fundraising—with Planned Giving leading the way.
What Is Planned Giving?
“Planned Giving”, or legacy giving, enables donors to make long-term gifts through wills, retirement accounts, beneficiary designations — including from DAFs. While these gifts are only granted after a donor’s passing, their intent signals deep, lifetime engagement with a nonprofit cause.
“Planned gifts are often the largest gifts someone makes—and when people notify us of one, their giving during their lifetime typically increases substantially too,” Kate noted.
Contrary to its name, planned giving isn’t about simply waiting to receive an end-of-life gift––it’s about stewarding donors over their lifetimes once they’ve signaled their intent to make a planned gift. DAF fundraising is a powerful tool to help do that, as many of these donors tend to also have DAFs.
How Planned Giving Fits with DAFs
DAFs are sometimes misunderstood strictly as a Planned Giving tool—but most DAF gifts are not delayed or contingent.“I don’t consider a typical DAF grant a planned gift,” Kate explained. “They’re often immediate, sometimes even triggered by direct response campaigns.”
This misunderstanding has led to many organizations restricting DAF strategy and knowledge to their Planned Giving and/or Major Gifts team members. However, this “siloing” of DAF strategy is much too limiting as all kinds of donors are adopting DAF giving for all types of donations.
At the IRC, DAFs now represent more than 26% of individual giving, and revenue from DAFs grew 39% year-over-year in FY2025.
“We realized we could no longer afford to be reactive. DAFs had to be part of a proactive, organization-wide strategy,” said Kate.
Building a Collaborative DAF Strategy
In her role, Kate gets to “quarterback” many of the initiatives to incorporate DAF giving across all different fundraising channels and efforts at IRC. By having designated “DAF Champions,” it allows an organization to keep aligned internally, maintain momentum and bring in new ideas across the organization. Even if it’s not a full time role, like Kate’s, designating teammates to bring more focus to these efforts can have tremendous payoff.
A few ways to better collaborate on DAFs include:
Choose an internal DAF Champion
Bring key leaders together to build buy-in & alignment
Audit fundraising tools, website & communications for DAF giving
Set a quarterly meeting for a task-force representing all stakeholders
Some results that IRC has seen from this closer collaboration:
Clean & clear data that lets them track collective performance
Implemented DAFpay for easier DAF giving and instant stewardship of DAF donors
Added DAF checkboxes to all reply devices for direct mail
Modeled likely DAF donors for more quarterly DAF post card
Built out content related to DAFs: blog posts, webpage, webinar, podcast feature
The Role of Planned Giving in a DAF Strategy
A large contributor to IRC’s success is that Planned Giving priorities and expertise are integral to that collaborative DAF strategy. Many organizations get excited about DAFs and start pursuing a new strategy in digital or direct response, but don’t keep their Planned Giving colleagues involved.
Kate pointed out several benefits that her Planned Giving background have lent her in driving more DAF focus across the organization:
Beneficiary Designation: Donors can name nonprofits as beneficiaries to their DAF account, but many either don’t know that or haven’t thought about it. It’s an excellent campaign to run for DAF donors that likely educates them and keeps your organization top of mind.
Educational Collateral: Because gift planners are often leading the conversation on more complex giving vehicles, they prioritize effective handouts and materials to leave behind with donors. IRC developed a DAF brochure that is now used across the organization for better donor engagement.
“It filled a gap we didn’t even realize existed,” Kate said. “Now, it’s a go-to tool across departments.”
Long term stewardship: When a donor names an organization as a beneficiary in their will, it will likely be many years until that gift comes to fruition. It’s critical to continue high-touch relationship building in the meantime and Planned Giving teams are typically real experts on stewardship and giving psychology. Given DAF donors’ high capacity and loyalty, one of the biggest unlocks to increase DAF support is more intentional and curated engagement of these supporters.
“We’re used to stewarding donors through long-term conversations. That’s exactly what DAFs necessitate, too.”
Partner Collaboration: Planned Giving folks often build relationships with financial institutions and community foundations given they often provide some of the more complex giving vehicles that donors might be evaluating. IRC also prioritizes those relationships in DAF strategy, which has led to a feature on DAFgiving360’s podcast.
Lessons From DAF Day at IRC
A key pillar of IRC’s collaborative DAF strategy in 2025 was going all-in on DAF Day in October. They were even recognized in the DAF Day Awards - Here’s what they did:
Launched multi-channel donor outreach: (e.g., emails, SMS, paid ads, SEO articles)
Segmented DAF audiences with custom messaging
Hosted an educational DAF 101 webinar for donors pre-DAF Day, featuring a financial advisor and DAF provider
Integrated a seamless DAF giving option in DAFpay across all forms & appeals
While they are still awaiting the finalized data on offline DAF gifts, they saw that their SMS communication for DAF Day had promising real time DAFpay results:
“Four existing donors gave via DAF for the first time—and each was their largest gift ever,” Kate shared.
Where to Start, or Advance, Your DAF Strategy
Audit your public listings on Charity Navigator, Candid, and BBB (DAFs often source information from these sites)
Prioritize relationships with DAFs most relevant to your organization (e.g. Community Foundations)
Establish data and stewardship rules for DAF gifts (keep Planned Giving in the loop!)
Ensure DAFpay is enabled in your donation forms (see partners here)
Create educational materials on DAFs - for your team and donors
Set a recurring DAF Strategy meeting for key teammates
“DAFs are the future of giving. To succeed, we need to stop seeing them as the responsibility of just one team.”