# Curing Your DAF Data > Most nonprofit teams cannot quickly answer basic questions about their DAF giving today: how many donors use a DAF, how much DAF revenue grew, which campaigns activated it, which channels drive the most. This session breaks down what excellent DAF data looks like, the five most common errors holding teams back, and simple diagnostic tests every nonprofit can run on their own database this week. - Canonical: https://givechariot.com/resources/webinars/curing-your-daf-data - Published: 2026-06-09 --- DAF giving is one of the fastest\-growing pieces of nonprofit fundraising, but the data behind it is notoriously messy: mismatched fund names, missing donor histories, and inconsistent hard and soft credit. Fixing your DAF data enables organizations to confidently rely on DAFs as part of their fundraising strategy. For the latest installment of Chariot's [DAF Day Series](https://www.givechariot.com/resources/webinars), **Adam Rosenscruggs**, Chief Data Officer at [AKwire](https://akwiregroup.com/), a strategic analytics consultancy focused on the nonprofit sector, and **Stuart Allan**, Director of CRM for [Salvation Army](https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/) Eastern Territory, discuss why DAF data is so hard to track, what that costs an organization, and the specific practices to fix it. ## In this recap, you'll learn: 1. Why DAFs Are in Focus 2. What Makes DAF Data So Hard to Get Right 3. Why DAF Data Is Strategically Important 4. Best Practices for DAF Data 5. Quality Tests You Can Run Today 6. Next Steps 7. Webinar Q&A ## 1. Why DAFs Are in Focus In the past, DAFs have been treated as a high\-net\-worth planning tool. However, the past few years have seen major changes in the dynamics of DAF fundraising. As trends shift, DAFs have gone from a wealth management tool for the elites to more of a mainstream giving channel for middle\-class individuals. > Right now, roughly two-thirds of the donations we receive in 2025 from DAF donors were under $1,000, and we have continued to see that building year over year. Part of this can be traced back to changes in tax policy: between 2020 and 2025, the standard deduction rose about 29%. As a result, donors are increasingly using DAFs to "bunch" several years of giving into one contribution to clear the itemization threshold. This hits middle\-income donors more than the ultra\-wealthy, whose deductions are usually large enough to clear the standard deduction regardless. DAF giving is also getting easier to give and to receive. Salvation Army added Chariot's [DAFpay](https://www.givechariot.com/dafpay) button to its online giving platform this year, letting donors direct a DAF gift at checkout the same way they'd use a digital wallet. Allan pointed to DAF sponsors moving in the same direction: Fidelity Charitable launched its own DAF app in 2020, and grants that used to require a phone call are now approved and sent electronically, much faster than before. That growth has led some in the sector to project DAFs eventually accounting for the majority of nonprofit fundraising. > For some organizations it will actually be the case that 50 percent or more of [their] revenue will come from DAFs [by 2036], and a big factor in whether that's true for any given organization is how well [they] promote, manage, and acknowledge DAF giving. What gets measured gets managed, and organizations that can measure and analyze their DAF giving are going to have a head start. ## 2. What Makes DAF Data So Hard to Get Right A normal gift has one donor and one amount, credited directly to them. A DAF gift splits that in two. The DAF sponsor gets the hard credit: the actual transaction on the books, since it's legally their funds being transferred. The donor who recommended the gift gets a soft credit instead: a record that recognizes them for it without counting it as separate revenue. This individual donor is the one your organization should engage with and steward, instead of the DAF sponsor. The fund name adds a third layer of complication. It's the name of the specific DAF account that the money came from, and it's neither the sponsor nor necessarily a clear stand\-in for the donor. Sometimes the fund name reveals exactly who's behind it, and the soft credit can go straight to that donor's record. Other times it doesn’t, so the organization creates an account for the fund itself to hold the soft credit until the donor's identity becomes clear. Only then can the organization merge this record to the donor. Multiply that by thousands of DAF sponsors, none of whom send data the same way. Some transfer funds electronically, some still mail checks, some batch gifts together, and some send one check per donor. Some anonymize by default; others ask the donor to opt in or out. Oftentimes an organization's CRM is part of the problem. DAF giving, and the technology behind it, is moving faster than most CRMs can keep up. As a result, organizations often end up adding DAF tracking onto whatever system they already use for other soft\-credit gifts, like matching gifts or family foundations, instead of building out proper DAF tracking. That shortcut creates technical debt that gets harder to unwind the longer it sits. Technology equipped to handle DAF giving, such as Chariot’s [Gift Processing](https://www.givechariot.com/gift-processing) platform, can help formalize an organization's policies and ensure higher data quality. Chariot’s gift processing reconciles gifts across payment sources so organizations can see all incoming gifts in one place instead of piecing them together from separate portals. Proper documentation about coding DAF gifts is also important in order to standardize processes. It's not enough to tell staff to code DAF gifts differently. The documentation needs to explain why they're different, so the reasoning doesn't get lost every time someone new takes over the role. ## 3. Why DAF Data Is Strategically Important The main purpose of fixing DAF data is providing donors with the best experience possible. Clean DAF data tells the broader story of a donor and ensures that organizations have context behind each gift. > We cringe at the experiences we occasionally have where a donor gives at the end of year and looks like a first-time donor. We send them a thank you and put them on a new donor journey, only to get feedback that they've actually been giving for the last 10 years faithfully through some other vehicle. We looked like fools because we didn't see or acknowledge their history of giving with us. Donors of every size, from someone giving $100 to someone giving $10 million, are already choosing to give through DAFs, so the practical move is to make that experience work well rather than fight the trend. DAF giving isn't fundamentally harder than other gift types nonprofits already manage, like employee matching gifts or a recurring sustainer program; it just needs its own setup. > Normally, getting people to donate is a two-step process: first you convince them to donate, then you convince them to donate to your organization. [With DAF giving], half this battle is already won. ## 4. Best Practices for DAF Data Each organization will have different strategies for curing DAF data based on what works for their reporting. **Some strategies your organization can consider implementing:** - **Centralize DAF coding work rather than spreading it thin.** Large organizations can route DAF gifts through one team rather than letting divisional teams handle it independently. Trained staff can follow the same standardized processes every time DAF gifts arrive, so the data stays consistent across all gifts. - **Quiz your organization against a foundational test.** Can your organization look at any transaction in your database and immediately tell whether it's a DAF gift or not? Can your organization tell whether any given donor has previously given through a DAF, even once? If the answer to both is yes, the foundation is solid enough to build on from there. - **Develop hard and soft credit logic and apply it consistently.** The best practice is to hard credit the DAF sponsor and soft credit the donor, but whichever way an organization sets it up, consistency matters more than which convention it picks. - **Give every DAF sponsor a single record.** The same sponsor shows up under multiple names, like Fidelity, Fidelity Giving, and Fidelity Charitable, so periodic account cleanup and merging keeps reporting accurate and audits clean. - **Separate individual DAF giving from workplace giving and crowdfunding.** Platforms like Benevity or Network for Good are technically structured as DAFs under IRS rules, but the donor behavior behind them looks nothing like an individual managing their own fund, so they're worth flagging separately. - **Set up standing time to review hard\-to\-identify gifts.** A recurring check\-in, whether that's a DAF task force or just a monthly review, catches anonymous or ambiguous gifts before they pile up. - **Only put truly anonymous gifts in anonymous accounts.** If only the DAF fund name is known, create an account for the fund and attach whatever information exists. It can always be merged into the donor's record later if the identity becomes clear. ## 5. Quality Tests You Can Run Today The 2026 [DAF Fundraising Report](https://www.givechariot.com/resources/toolkits/daf-fundraising-report) outlines these checks, used by the report's participating organizations to benchmark their own DAF data. - **How many gifts in your system valued at less than $18 claim to be DAF gifts?** Most DAF providers don't allow distributions below $18, so gifts less than this are likely miscoded and are not DAF gifts. - **How many unique DAF sponsor records do you have?** There are only around 1,500 DAF sponsors nationwide, and even the largest organizations realistically receive gifts from a few hundred of them at most. A count in the thousands usually means hard credit is landing on the donor's fund instead of the sponsor. - **Do any donors show 12 or more DAF gifts in a year?** Most DAF donors distribute a handful of times annually, so a high count is often a sign that hard and soft credit have gotten crossed. - **What share of your DAF gifts are marked anonymous?** The [2024 DAF Research Collaborative Report](https://johnsoncenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DAFRC_Report.pdf) found that less than 4% of DAF gifts are fully anonymous. A high number of anonymous gifts can indicate a DAF fund is being entered as the account name, or research steps to identify the actual donor are being skipped. ## 6. Next Steps - Download the [2026 DAF Fundraising Report](https://www.givechariot.com/resources/toolkits/daf-fundraising-report#register) for a full workbook and write up of DAF data recommendations. - Sign up for [DAF Day III,](https://www.dafday.com/) taking place on October 8, 2026. Set your preferred DAF giving URL and logo in your Chariot account so donors landing on your DAF Day giving page see the right information. Read our help article [here](https://help.givechariot.com/daf-day/daf-day?__hstc=125968786.0abc4443a43b77c5cea18fee8a9a4266.1785950363811.1787750217779.1787772370638.11&__hssc=125968786.1.1787772370638&__hsfp=ab71b3ad896ccf3857008f29318a39e0#daf-day-giving-page) for more details. - Fill out [the interest form](https://www.givechariot.com/daf-fundraising-report-interest-form) to participate in the 2027 DAF Fundraising Report. Recruitment starts in Q4, and participants get free visibility on their standing relative to sector benchmarks. ## 7. Webinar Q&A **Who is the DAF sponsor, and do we need to acknowledge them too?** The DAF sponsor is the organization that legally holds and distributes the funds, like Fidelity Charitable or Vanguard Charitable. There's no need to acknowledge or communicate with the sponsor directly, since every gift is donor\-directed; the individual behind the DAF is who to thank and build a relationship with. It's actually illegal to send that donor a tax receipt for the gift, since they already claimed the deduction when they funded the DAF in the first place. Sending one would let them double\-dip on the same contribution. **Is it best practice to hard credit the DAF sponsor and soft credit the donor, or the other way around?** The general best practice is to hard credit the sponsor and soft credit the individual donor. Some organizations do it the other way around, often because a marketing or communications vendor's tools can't handle soft\-credited donors correctly and end up flagging them as lapsed, which is a real constraint. What matters more than which convention an organization picks is choosing one, training the team on it, and processing every gift the same way. **What's the actual difference between a DAF gift and a QCD \(qualified charitable distribution\)?** They work in opposite directions on taxes. With a DAF, the donor already claimed their deduction when they originally contributed the money into the fund, so the later grant to a nonprofit isn't deductible again, which is why a DAF gift shouldn't get a tax receipt. A QCD is a direct transfer from someone's IRA, available to donors 70½ and older, and it still needs the standard tax letter, since that donor hasn't claimed a deduction on that money yet. Tracking the two separately matters mainly for that reason: sending the wrong kind of tax documentation to the wrong donor is an easy, avoidable mistake. **How can you tell whether a gift came from a DAF or a QCD?** Fidelity Charitable is a legally separate entity from Fidelity Investments, so a DAF gift's payment source will include "Charitable" in the name. A QCD, sent directly from an IRA by a donor over 70½, will show the underlying financial institution instead, like Fidelity Investments or T. Rowe Price, with no "Charitable" entity involved. **What are the best practices for acknowledging DAF gifts, since nonprofits can't legally send DAF donors a tax receipt?** Salvation Army uses standard acknowledgement templates for DAF donors, distinct from a tax receipt, reviewed by its marketing team so the language fits the situation and acknowledges where the gift went. **What specific fields should be in our database, and where do they go?** A DAF Gift Yes/No flag and the DAF Fund Name belong on the gift record itself, on both the hard and soft credit sides. The DAF Sponsor, like Fidelity, is an account\-level field, the same as the donor's name if it's known. If the donor isn't known yet, create an account for the fund itself \(something like "My Anonymous DAF"\) and hold the soft credit there until the donor's identity turns up, then merge it into their record. **What is the process for merging DAF accounts?** There are two kinds. The first merges multiple name variants of the same sponsor, like Fidelity, Fidelity Giving, and Fidelity Charitable, into a single account that holds all hard credits from that sponsor. The second applies when a fund's owner is unknown at first: create an account for the fund itself to hold the soft credit, and once research identifies the donor behind it, merge that fund account into the donor's own record. **We use a portal that enables us to accept DAF donations, but each DAF organization is different and requires manual connection. Is there a way to simplify this?** Chariot’s gift processing platform is a great solution to this\! Instead of managing the process with each DAF sponsor separately, Chariot brings in gifts, donor data, and sponsor data automatically, already reconciled, so you're not manually tying out deposits or logging into separate portals for each DAF sponsor. If you are interested in learning more, you can [contact our team](https://www.givechariot.com/gift-processing-demo) directly or visit our [events page](https://www.givechariot.com/events) to find upcoming Group Q&As with the Chariot Team. **Is DAF Day really on October 8?** Yes. It also doubles as a useful internal deadline: a good six\-week runway to run these data quality tests before the day itself.