DAFRC Research
Below are the reports and research papers published as part of the DAF Research Collaborative. The white paper Donor-Advised Fund Account Patterns and Trends (2017-2020) is the first report, and the 2024 National Study is the most recent report, from the DAFRC Data Initiative.
2024 National Study
on Donor Advised Funds
This project includes information about DAFs from 2014 to 2022, covering aspects such as account size, age, type, succession plan, donor demographics, contributions, grants, payout rates, and grantmaking speed. The report represents the most extensive independent study on DAFs to date.
Thanks to the collective efforts of 111 DAF programs that voluntarily provided anonymized data to the research team, the data set covers nine years of activity from more than 50,000 accounts, with over 600,000 inbound contributions to DAFS and more than 2.25 million outbound grants from DAFs.
Read more:
Executive Summary and Key Findings (extract)
Technical Appendix [forthcoming]
The DAFRC research team hopes this data will be used to improve best practices, inform relevant regulation, or enhance the field’s use of DAFs as a philanthropic tool for donors, DAF sponsoring organizations, and other sector partners.
Self-Regulating Donor Advised Funds:
An Analysis of Inactive Account Policies and Endowed DAFs
Many are concerned about the flow of money through donor advised funds (DAFs) to other charities. Two issues that affect the flow of money from DAFs are when DAF accounts are inactive and the existence of endowed DAFs. This report analyzes internal policies from the largest DAF sponsoring organizations. We find that the vast majority of sponsors, at least 83%, have written policies about regulating inactive accounts. We find that almost half (47%) of DAF sponsoring organizations offer an endowed DAF. Like endowments, endowed DAFs limit their annual spending to preserve the principal, and like DAFs, they allow donors privileges to advise grantmaking on the spendable funds. The internal policies on these two issues generally follow industry standard but vary somewhat in the details of how they are administered.
Read Self-Regulating Donor Advised Funds: An Analysis of Inactive Account Policies and Endowed DAFs
This report analyzes donor advised funds in the state of Michigan by leveraging the Johnson Center’s comprehensive database of IRS Form 990 filings for summary statistics. The team supplemented that dataset by partnering with CMF to obtain account-level information about the more than 2,600 DAFs housed at Michigan’s community foundations. That account-level detail was used to calculate individual DAF investment returns, contribution and distribution flows, and payout rates for the years 2017–2020.
Read Analysis of Donor Advised Funds from a Community Foundation Perspective
Analysis of Donor Advised Funds from a Community Foundation Perspective
Donor-Advised Fund Account Patterns and Trends (2017-2020)
This DAFRC publication provides unique analyses made possible by the DAFRC dataset, which includes account-level data from 13,000 DAF accounts collected from DAF sponsor organizations across the United States. The report focuses on:
Differences among DAF accounts, including asset levels, accounts structure (endowed vs. non-endowed), and donor demographics;
Account-level patterns of money coming in (contributions) and money going out (grants), including payout rates and shelf-life;
Differences in giving through small, medium, and large DAFs; and,
Changes in DAF giving over time, especially during the pandemic and economic recession of 2020.
Tubs, Tanks, and Towers: Donor Strategies for DAF Giving
The increasing use of DAFs creates challenges for nonprofit managers and fundamentally changes the way that many donors give to charity. We conducted 48 in-depth interviews with DAF donors to understand their strategies of how they give through a DAF. Through the interviews, found three distinct models of DAF giving strategies: tubs, tanks, and towers. Tub donors give quickly through a DAF, moving money in and out annually. Tank donors contribute large lump sums and grant the money away in the relatively near future. Tower donors take a calculated approach with the DAF to sustain their philanthropic activity for the long term.
Read Tubs, Tanks, and Towers: Donor Strategies for DAF Giving
Understanding the Donor-Advised Fund Giving Process: Insights from Current DAF Users
The growing use of donor-advised funds (DAFs) is changing the way many donors give to charity. Despite the increasing influence and importance of DAFs in the nonprofit sector, very little is known about how people actually use them. We conducted 48 in-depth interviews with DAF users, collecting rich qualitative data about why and how donors use donor-advised funds. We use this data to sketch a DAF giving process with four phases and multiple decision points. We highlight some of the common donor strategies that are used with DAFs. Overall, we present evidence of abundant diversity in individual adaptation for giving through donor-advised funds.
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Understanding Donor-Advised Funds: How Grants Flow During Recessions
Donor-advised funds (DAFs) are becoming increasingly popular in the United States. DAFs receive a growing share of all charitable donations and control a sizable proportion of grants made to other nonprofits. The growth of DAFs has generated controversy over their function as intermediary philanthropic vehicles. Using a panel data set of 996 DAF organizations from 2007 to 2016, this article provides an empirical analysis of DAF activity. We conduct longitudinal analyses of key DAF metrics, such as grants and payout rates. We find that a few large organizations heavily skew the aggregated data for a rather heterogeneous group of nonprofits. These panel data are then analyzed with macroeconomic indicators to analyze changes in DAF metrics during economic recessions. We find that, in general, DAF grantmaking is relatively resilient to recessions. We find payout rates increased during times of recession, as did a new variable we call the flow rate.
Read Understanding Donor-Advised Funds: How Grants Flow During Recessions