Nonprofit Leadership Podcast · Dr. Rob Harter

This is the Fastest Growing Trend in Fundraising Today

·37 min·2 clips

Mitch Stein says the first test of a DAF strategy is whether your team can state last year's DAF giving total.

1. The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast with Dr. Rob Harder examines donor advised funds (DAFs), which Harder says account for about 20% of gifts to nonprofits. 2. Mitch Stein, head of strategy at Chariot, a fintech company focused on DAF payments, is the guest, and Harder says his consulting work with two organizations in Q4 2025 showed neither had an intentional DAF strategy. 3. Stein's thesis is that DAFs are a donor choice rather than a nonprofit's, so "it's not up to you," and organizations that lack a plan will receive fewer gifts and steward those donors less well. 4. He cites the 2025 DAF report, now run by the DAF Research Collaborative: $326 billion in assets at the end of 2024, $65 billion in grants, and growth above 20% a year. 5. On the hoarding criticism, he says no national payout mandate exists, but large sponsors like Fidelity Charitable push 5% distributions after two years without a grant, and the measured payout rate has exceeded 20% for 15-plus years, around 25% in the latest report. 6. He says donors like DAFs for organization (he compares it to "a 401k or an HSA, but for giving"), for tax benefits, and for the psychological effect of irrevocable funds, and that Chariot and K2D Strategies data show an average 10x increase in giving when donors switch from a credit card to a DAF. 7. His checklist for nonprofits is to know last year's DAF giving total, code DAF gifts in the CRM, mention DAFs on forms, mailers, and websites, make your EIN easy to find, enable DAF Pay beside Apple Pay and Google Pay, and open a personal DAF. 8. He describes a small Wisconsin school that emailed about DAF Day and got seven first-time DAF gifts totaling $12,000, while Susan G. Komen raised over 300 DAF gifts in one day. 9. He says the Public Theater in New York added DAF options and a QR code to a $5,000-minimum capital campaign mailer, which produced about 90 gifts, 25% from DAFs, half of them from first-time DAF donors. 10. He predicts DAF assets could reach $1 trillion within five to 10 years and pass private foundations, which hold about five times the assets today but give only about 2x the grant volume.

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