Quality DAF Data is difficult, but possible and incredibly valuable. Learn how to get, keep and utilize great DAF data in this guide.
DAF giving has become a critical revenue stream for nonprofits, while also creating significant headaches for donor database management. Karin Kirchoff from K2D Strategies and Mitch Stein recently hosted a conversation that covered the key best practices when it comes to DAF data management. This guide includes:
The case for better DAF data
Understand the challenges of DAF Data
The Ultimate DAF Data Structure
10 DAF Data steps to improve your DAF Fundraising
The Case For Better DAF Data
Mitch and Karin conducted a poll during the webinar to assess participants’ understanding of their internal data. The results were striking: over 90% of attendees didn’t know how much their organization had raised from DAF gifts this year. 95% of participants didn’t know the average percentage of nonprofit revenue that comes from DAFs (Spoiler alert–you’ll find this answer below!).
Building a strong system to collect, organize and action your DAF data is important, but it’s not easy. While your nonprofit can build a system that runs smoothly on its own, getting there takes effort. Before you get too overwhelmed, consider the key reasons for why optimizing your DAF data is worth it:
DAF giving accounts for a significant amount of nonprofit revenue
The 2024 DAF Fundraising Report found that among participants, 12% of overall giving came from DAFs. The recent National Philanthropic Trust DAF report reported that in 2023, DAF grants accounted for $55 billion of total giving – nearly double the 2019 pre-pandemic total. The total assets in DAFs exceeds $250 billion, increasing 10% from 2022.
This growth has happened with little-to-no DAF-focused marketing from nonprofits, as most nonprofits haven’t meaningfully targeted DAF donors in their fundraising strategies. It raises an exciting question: how much more could nonprofits receive if they did?
“DAF giving is increasingly a really sizable chunk of revenue across the nonprofit sector, and in a lot of cases orgs don’t even understand that.”
DAF Donors are your highest-value segment
In the 2024 DAF Fundraising Report, the average DAF gift size was $1,294 (even with gifts over $25k excluded) – 19 times larger than the average non-DAF gift in the study. The report also found that retention amongst DAF donors was 15% higher than non-DAF donors in the same study period. But, if your nonprofit doesn’t take steps to gather DAF data, you won’t be equipped to employ proactive engagement strategies to facilitate more DAF giving.
“If you don’t have good handle on data, you can’t affect performance”
Compliance compliance compliance
Many organizations are not tracking or reporting their DAF giving in a fully compliant way. These inconsistencies were a minor issue when receiving a few DAF gifts a year, but when it’s one of your largest revenue streams, it’s critical to have things buttoned up to protect the organization. If gifts aren’t attributed to the right entity (like the DAF sponsor), or the same entity has lots of different entries, or DAF gifts aren’t recorded as DAF at all, your organization could have your hands full in an audit…
Understanding the Challenges of DAF Data
Before taking steps to improve your DAF data practices, it’s important to have an appreciation for the key sources of difficulty. Every organization is different and understanding which elements are most challenging for your organization will help you tailor the best solution.
DAFs all send gifts differently
DAF gifts come from different sources. Some arrive in the form of a check, others arrive via ACH and still others via PayPal. Each provider also sends slightly different information or include it in different places - in seemingly infinite portals for your team to manage! A standardized process must account for this variability.
One DAF gift has multiple “donors”
Proper DAF data must account both for the person who directed a DAF grant and the DAF provider from which the funds will arrive. While a nonprofit should make sure to thank the person, and file them as a DAF donor, the data must reflect that a gift arrived from a DAF provider. This gets even more complex in the case of peer-to-peer campaigns, which adds a third party into the mix.
Absent donor information leads to data gaps
DAF donor data, such as names and email addresses, is often incomplete or even entirely absent from DAF gifts. Often the gift processing manager is doing their best to fill in these data gaps, but it is not straight forward. Further, individual DAF accounts have “fund names” that are often not easily connected to an individual, providing another layer of complexity.
DAF gifts have restrictions
DAF gifts cannot be used to “purchase” anything (auction items, gala tables, tickets, etc.) or provide a donor with any benefit (i.e. membership with material benefits). Properly organized data with accurate coding can help identify and flag DAF gifts that may violate regulations and be remedied. If you need a gift acceptance policy that delineates these restrictions for donors, check out this free template to get you started.
Time delay
DAF disbursements can take weeks, which complicates gift tracking for nonprofits. For example, a donor might initiate a grant on GivingTuesday, but the nonprofit will likely not receive the funds until January from most DAFs.
The Ultimate DAF Data Structure
This work all starts with reviewing the data fields available in your system and how you use them for DAFs. If you want to track your DAF gifts in a compliant way that also allows you to reliably analyze and quickly action your data, we recommend adhering to something like the below:
The “hard credit” in your system should go to the DAF provider. All money in a DAF is technically “owned” by the DAF sponsor after a DAF donor contributes to their account - that’s how they get the tax write off upfront. That means legally speaking the gift came from the DAF itself (e.g. Fidelity Charitable) and all DAF gifts from that one provider should “roll up” to the same entity.
The “soft credit” goes to the donor. Even though the DAF Sponsor legally donated the money to you, you do not need to engage them in your stewardship. They will not open, review or respond to a thank you letter. However, the account holder does want to be acknowledged and you do want to engage with them afterward. Be sure to track them as a soft credit to the best of your ability.
In the peer-to-peer setting, there may also be a soft-soft credit for an individual fundraising for your organization. If it’s possible to include a second soft credit here, be sure to associate this record with that fundraiser.
The Fund Name is still valuable to track - either in a custom field or the notes on the record. That way, if someone gets a gift with that fund name in the future and is trying to figure out if there’s an existing record with more detail, they will easily find it.
A simple but powerful flag to include - simply is this a DAF or not? It’s incredibly powerful for analysis and streamlining actions specific to DAF donors.
Enter gifts with the date that they were issued on, not when they’re being entered into the system for a more accurate representation of timing. That will help accurately associate them with a specific campaign, event or time of year and inform your planning in future years.
To improve your attribution, try to also associate DAF gifts with their relevant fundraising channel or event if you have them. Matching the gift back to a specific mailer or luncheon will empower your team to make smarter decisions going forward.
If a DAF gift is truly anonymous - as in, no fund name or donor name at all - have a simple yes or no flag for anonymous. That way you can easily exclude anonymous donor records from certain per-donor analysis that otherwise gets awfully skewed.
Include all the other details you can! Many folks aren’t tracking things like email on DAF gifts, but new tools like DAFpay actually capture email with a DAF gift immediately.
10 DAF Data Steps to Improve your DAF Fundraising
Now that you have an appreciation for the significance of improved DAF data to your organization, you’ve taken stock of the challenges that afflict your organizations DAF data efforts and you’ve reviewed the proper DAF data template, you’re ready to make some big improvements.
Implement your new DAF data template
You’ll likely need to tweak things from our template to fit your exact needs and CRM set up. Working with your team to implement a uniform template in your database for DAF gifts is the key starting point.
Codify shared business rules
Once you have the database fields set up and confirmed, you need to align on the business rules around how your organization uses them. These rules should be documented, shared across your team, and regularly evaluated to ensure they are being followed.
Download the DAF Provider Directory
Without a centralized, publicly available list of DAF providers, nonprofits often recorded incomplete or incorrect names, causing data confusion and making it difficult to track a year’s worth of gifts. To address this, Chariot has created an official list of DAF providers with their correct names. By including this list and its naming conventions in your gift processing rules, you can simplify tracking and reduce errors. Download the list here.
Integrate DAFpay, Chariot’s express-checkout for DAF gifts, on your donation form.
DAFpay provides your donor with an opportunity to donate via DAF straight from your donation form, instead of having to leave your website and visit a DAF provider. In terms of data – DAFpay alerts you immediately when a DAF grant has been initiated by a donor. It also provides you with the donor’s full name and email address. This enables you to record accurate and complete information, anticipate incoming DAF gifts, and follow up with the DAF provider if a gift doesn’t arrive as expected. There’s free and easy ways for everyone to start using DAFpay today - learn more here.
Educate staff
Your entire team should have an in-depth understanding of the DAF data process – just like they do with other types of gifts. This education should go beyond just handing someone a codified list. Make sure the broader team has a chance to ask questions and understands why DAFs are coded this way. If they want to go deeper, they can also check out Chariot’s Webinars (past and upcoming) and the dozens of other resources on Chariot’s blog.
Hold DAF Data reviews
One of the best ways to tackle DAF data gaps is to review them as a team. Often a major gift officer is actually expecting a DAF gift from a specific donor, but when it arrives without clear details a gift processor can’t code it correctly. Schedule a recurring meeting every month to go over these gaps across teams or departments - it saves everyone time in the long run.
Segment your DAF donors for dedicated communications
For any communications - mail, email, sms, etc. - once you have reliable segmentation for DAF donors, you can send them tailored messaging. With this audience you can highlight DAF giving more prominently and include links direct to a dedicated DAF page where DAFpay is featured (like this example from American Cancer Society).
You can also test specific messaging relevant to DAF donors. For example, yearend giving isn’t motivated by tax benefits for DAF donors since there is not incremental tax write off when they give out of their DAF (they got the benefit when they contributed funds into the DAF). However, sharp increases in the stock market mean their DAF accounts (which are invested in the markets) are likely appreciated in value and that triggers an interest in more giving.
Identify potential DAF donors that are currently “hiding” in your donor files
Analyzing your existing DAF donors and the ways they got into your file gives you a lot of information on what other existing supporters might have a DAF they’re not using with you yet. You can test specific communications with a “likely” DAF donor group, especially ahead of events like DAF Day, happening on October 9th 2025.
Share ownership of DAF gifts across your whole team
DAF giving cannot sit within just one silo of your giving team – it should span groups because it spans types of giving. DAF gifts can fall under events, direct response, planned giving campaigns, major gifts, mid-level giving, annual giving, etc. Making sure everyone can get credit for DAF fundraising success is a good way to share ownership across your whole team
Participate in the 2025 DAF Fundraising Report!
The 2024 DAF Fundraising report gave participating organizations unprecedented insight into their DAF giving history, areas for improvement and comparison to their closest peers. Participants were also included in media coverage by Axios, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Barrons, Nonprofit Times, Nonprofit Pro, Candid, and more.
It is a competitive process to be selected for the study, but having a quality data set is the best way to improve your chances for the 2025 report. We will be taking applications in Q1 2025 - learn more here.
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