# 2026 DAF Fundraising Report Release - Canonical: https://givechariot.com/resources/webinars/2026-daf-fundraising-report-release - Published: 2026-04-20 --- On May 20, the research team behind the third edition of the DAF Fundraising Report released the results live in a webinar with nearly 1,200 nonprofit professionals registered. The report draws on something that has been difficult to find in the DAF space: not what DAF sponsors are reporting about giving activity, but what nonprofits' own records actually show about how DAF fundraising is evolving. The findings from past editions of the report have been presented in dozens of webinars and conferences, featured in Axios, Barron's, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Nonprofit Times, and Forbes, and cited in studies including the DAF Research Collaborative's Fundraising Study. What began in 2024 with 20 organizations and limited data standardization has grown into the most expansive study of its kind. **Karin Kirchoff** \(Founder & President, K2D Strategies\), **Mitch Stein** \(Head of Strategy, Chariot\), **Kate Hollandsworth** \(Senior Vice President of Strategy, AKwire\), and **Adam Rosenscruggs** \(Founder & Principal, Gambit Analytics\) presented the 2026 edition, which analyzed **$26.1 billion in total giving** across **54 participating nonprofits** and represented **$3.3 billion in DAF revenue** across **907,000 DAF gifts.** Although DAF gifts make up less than 1% of total gift volume in the dataset, they account for nearly 13% of total revenue, a ratio that captures the singular value of the average DAF donor. Here are the five key findings from this year's report. ## 1. DAFs are growing 8x faster than other giving The headline finding from the 2026 edition: median DAF revenue growth from 2021 to 2025 was \+75% among participating organizations. Median non\-DAF revenue growth over the same period was \+9%. This gap has been consistent across all three editions of the report. DAF giving is not a trend that peaked; it's an accelerating shift in how donors at every level are structuring their philanthropy. > "Even if they are facing difficulty as an organization in their fundraising picture at large, DAF still tend to most often be a bright spot for those organizations. It's just how important it is to view this as a core method of giving, not some niche one-off area of giving. It really deserves its own strategy and focus." If your organization's DAF revenue isn't keeping pace, it's not because DAF giving is slowing down. It's a signal to look carefully at how visible and accessible DAF giving is across your channels. ## 2. When donors switch to DAF giving, they give dramatically more Between 2021 and 2025, 50,000 existing donors across the study's participating organizations switched to giving through a DAF. The average increase in giving was more than 10x their prior level. Nearly half of those who made the switch more than doubled their annual giving. This finding speaks directly to one of the most persistent concerns in the sector: that DAF giving might cannibalize direct donations. The data says otherwise. Your existing donors who hold DAFs but haven't used them with your organization aren't at risk of giving less — they're your highest\-upside opportunity. > "This data shows that by and large DAF giving increases total dollars contributed to your organization from a given donor. It doesn't crowd out or merely replace giving from other methods. It is additive. And that's a significant and consistent finding that we see across all five years in this study." Making DAF giving visible and frictionless across your donation forms, direct mail, and major gift proposals is one of the highest\-ROI moves available to most development teams right now. ## 3. DAFs are a mass\-market phenomenon, not just a major gift play Two\-thirds of DAF gifts in the study are under $1,000. Major gifts make up just 2% of all DAF gifts yet DAFs account for more than 22% of major gift revenue. Both facts are true simultaneously, and they point to the same conclusion: the DAF donor population is much broader than most organizations are treating it. > "That median gift size — at $300 — that donor is likely not considered a major donor or even a mid-level donor in most programs. DAF donors and DAF giving should not be exclusively managed by one department." The ACLU has operationalized this more deliberately than almost any organization in the study. When they analyzed traffic on their Ways to Give page, they found that the section featuring DAFpay was drawing substantially more clicks than anything else — so they moved it to the second option listed. As Meghan Lee put it: "It was funny, because when I reached out to the web team and asked, can we move this link up? They said, oh yeah, this is actually the most clicked link on that page." DAF language now appears across appeals to broad audiences, not just to known DAF holders. A DAF "P.S." on direct mail lifted response rates. Telemarketing scripts include DAF language. QR codes drive to DAFpay on every direct mail reply device. The results: \+153% DAF revenue year over year in 2025, roughly 3x the growth rate of their non\-DAF revenue. 40% of ACLU's midlevel donors now give through DAFs. > "Launching an education campaign with our internal and external partners has been really helpful in creating shared goals, directing investments, and making DAF giving easy for our donors. Once you start looking at the data, you find high-value DAF giving in audiences and channels you would not have expected." Acknowledgement is where many organizations have historically fallen short. Karin Kirchhoff ran a secret shopper project early in her DAF research — making DAF gifts to roughly 20 organizations and tracking what happened over the next 12 months. The findings were sobering: > "I'll tell you that it wasn't really great, to be honest. There were instances where we didn't get acknowledged. There were instances where we used to receive mail and communication, and then after making the DAF gift, we stopped receiving mail and communication." No Kid Hungry took a similar surround\-sound approach. Charity Haines, Director of Annual Giving and Stewardship, used DAF Day as a forcing function to integrate DAF messaging across every channel: DAFpay as the primary option on donation forms, revamped acknowledgement letters for all DAF gifts including those under $250, and a dedicated DAF insert mailed inside 75,000 acknowledgement kits. Her guiding principle: "Don't stop talking about them. Keep talking about them. I think studies have said a human needs to hear something seven times to kind of register it." The result was a 100% increase in DAF revenue year over year. ## 4. DAF donors are your most loyal supporters — by a significant margin DAF donor retention is, on average, 13 percentage points higher than that of non\-DAF donors. DAF donors also made 23x larger gifts than non\-DAF donors on average in 2025. The compounding effect of higher retention and larger gift size, sustained year over year, makes this segment unlike almost any other in a development portfolio. > "DAF donors are retaining 13 percentage points — not percent, 13 percentage points — higher than a non-DAF donor. And that is not just last year's stat, that has been consistent each of the last five years." The International Rescue Committee's approach illustrates what it looks like to build genuine organizational infrastructure around DAF fundraising. IRC has a dedicated full\-time role for DAF strategy and a quarterly cross\-departmental meeting that brings together prospect research, gift processing, data, and every philanthropy segment. DAFpay is rolling out to 100% of IRC's donation entry points. Donor stories from DAF givers are produced and distributed across mass markets, planned giving, and individual philanthropy. In 2025, donors who switched to DAF giving generated more than $11 million in net\-new support to IRC. DAFs' share of IRC's total revenue increased 42% between 2021 and 2025. A single DAF Day SMS blast produced three new DAF gifts via DAFpay in under 20 minutes — all from existing donors upgrading into the mid\-level tier. > "DAFs are not sitting in one team at IRC. The cross-departmental partnership, paired with educating donors across every channel, is what is unlocking the gifts we are seeing." ## 5. For the first time: benchmarks by sector One of the most practically useful additions in the 2026 edition is sector\-by\-sector analysis. As the participant pool has grown and data quality has improved, the research can now tell you not just how DAF giving is performing across the field, but how it's performing in organizations most like yours. International Relief organizations demonstrated the highest rate of DAF giving relative to other revenue sources at 23.7% of total revenue. Health\-related organizations are seeing this figure grow the fastest, up 99.4% during the study period. Across the full dataset, DAF giving as a percentage of individual revenue ranges from 4% to 24% depending on sector — which means the field\-wide averages that have circulated for years have been obscuring significant variation. > "I am particularly excited this year that we had enough participants that we could start doing sector-level analysis. That was on my wish list from the first year." For any organization that has wondered how their DAF program stacks up, this edition of the report finally offers a meaningful answer. --- ## Put the research to work on October 8 DAF Day — the only giving day dedicated entirely to donor\-advised fund philanthropy — takes place on **October 8, 2026**. In 2025, more than 4,400 nonprofits and 30 DAF sponsors participated, making it the largest coordinated DAF fundraising event of its kind. Whether you're building your DAF strategy from scratch or running a cross\-functional program like IRC and ACLU, DAF Day gives your organization a dedicated moment, a national movement, and a proven playbook to campaign around. [Claim your free Chariot account](https://dashboard.givechariot.com/signup) to join the DAF Day Giving page — where donors are actively searching for verified organizations to support. Verified nonprofits receive fast, secure electronic grant payments from Chariot's network of partner DAF providers and can access [DAFpay](https://www.givechariot.com/dafpay) for their donation forms. --- ## Interested in participating in next year's report? The DAF Fundraising Report grows stronger with every organization that contributes data. If you'd like to be considered for the 2027 edition, register your interest below.