Donor-Advised Funds in 2026: How Damon & Ashley Boswell Build the DAF Strategy That Captures the $10 Billion Stream Nonprofits Miss

Damon Boswell opens every donor-advised fund engagement at ASAP Grants with a number that reframes how executive directors think about a giving channel most have never seriously pursued. He asks the team to name the largest source of charitable dollars they are not currently asking for. The answer, for the overwhelming majority of nonprofits we work with, is the donor-advised fund — and the scale of what they are leaving unasked is staggering. In fiscal year 2026, donors at DAFgiving360 alone granted more than $10 billion to charities for the first time in the organization's history, a 22% increase in dollars granted compared to the prior fiscal year. Across the full sector, the Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative's 2025 report — updated spring 2026 — found that DAFs held $327.87 billion in total assets across 3.59 million accounts, with grantmaking rising 17.9% to $64.60 billion. Damon's framing is unsentimental: there is a $64 billion river of DAF grants flowing to nonprofits every year, and an organization that does not have a DAF strategy is an organization that has chosen to stand outside the river.

In this article, Damon and Ashley Boswell walk through the donor-advised fund strategy we build for ASAP Grants clients — the DAF-readiness infrastructure, the donor identification and qualification, the ease-of-giving mechanics, the recurring-grant cultivation, and the measurement dashboard that turns a passive waiting game into an active revenue channel. This sits inside our Fundraising For Nonprofits service, and it is the discipline that separates an organization that receives DAF gifts by accident from one that receives them by design.

Why 2026 Made DAFs a Core Fundraising Channel

The case for a structured DAF strategy is no longer aspirational; it is arithmetic. The DAF Research Collaborative's annual report, which National Philanthropic Trust produced for nineteen years before the collaborative took it over, documents a sector that has grown from $27.4 billion in grants and 874,000 accounts in 2019 to $64.60 billion in grants and 3.59 million accounts in FY 2024 — with contributions rebounding 38.6% to $90.57 billion after a decline the prior year. The DAFgiving360 fiscal year 2026 results make the velocity explicit: donors granted an average of nearly $30 million per day, recommended more than 1.6 million grants at a pace of over 4,300 grants per day, and supported more than 170,000 charities across all fifty states — a 12% increase year-over-year, including more than 30,000 charities supported for the first time. When Damon puts these numbers in front of a board, his point is not that the organization should chase the aggregate. His point is that the aggregate reveals a channel that is larger, faster-growing, and more accessible than most organizations realize, and an organization that ignores it is an organization that has decided not to compete for dollars its peers are actively winning.

Ashley adds the dimension the aggregate conceals: the DAF donor is not a hypothetical or a future prospect. The CCS Fundraising guidance is direct — donors who shift to DAF giving often increase their overall generosity, sometimes doubling their annual giving, and 74% of DAFgiving360 donors reported that having a DAF account increases their charitable giving. The donor who gives $2,500 a year by check and also holds a DAF with $50,000 in appreciated assets is a donor whose total capacity the organization has never seen, because the organization never asked. Damon's rule is that a donor-advised fund is not a separate donor; it is a separate giving vehicle for a donor the organization already has, and the organization that does not build the infrastructure to receive DAF gifts is an organization that has capped its largest donors at their checkbook capacity when their DAF capacity may be multiples of that.

The DAF Readiness Problem

The reason most nonprofits do not have a DAF strategy is not indifference; it is infrastructure. Damon diagnoses the readiness gap in every engagement, and it almost always comes down to the same set of missing pieces. The organization is not a recognized charity at the major DAF sponsors, so a donor who tries to recommend a grant cannot find it in the sponsor's database. The organization does not have a 'Give via DAF' button or link on its website or donation page, so a donor with a DAF never learns the organization is eligible. The organization's tax identification and legal name are inconsistent across its Form 990, its state charity registration, and its website, so grants that would have arrived instead get returned or delayed. The organization does not track which of its current donors also hold DAFs, so it cannot identify, qualify, and cultivate the DAF-capable relationships it already has. Ashley's framing is that DAF readiness is not a marketing question; it is an operational one, and the organization that is not DAF-ready is an organization whose donors are trying to give and cannot.

The ASAP Grants DAF Architecture

Damon builds every DAF program around a five-layer architecture that moves an organization from passive recipient to active DAF fundraiser. Each layer has a purpose and a metric, because a DAF strategy without measurement is a DAF strategy that cannot be improved.

1. The DAF-Readiness Infrastructure

The first layer is the one most organizations skip, and Ashley treats it as the prerequisite that makes every subsequent layer possible. The CCS Fundraising guidance is explicit that many organizations feature a 'Give via DAF' button on their websites through third-party integrations by 2025, and that nonprofits that openly market their readiness to accept DAF gifts will have an edge. The readiness layer covers four components: confirming the organization's legal name and EIN are consistent and searchable across the major DAF sponsors — including DAFgiving360, Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, and Vanguard Charitable — so a donor's grant recommendation resolves without manual lookup; adding a visible 'Give via DAF' pathway on the donation page and in every appeal; ensuring the organization is registered and in good standing with its state charity regulator, because DAF sponsors verify charitable status before disbursing; and maintaining current GuideStar/Candid and IRS Business Master File records, because many donors search for charities through those databases. Damon's rule is that readiness is the layer where DAF dollars are won or lost before the ask is ever made, and an organization a donor cannot find in a DAF sponsor's search is an organization that donor cannot give to through a DAF.

2. The Donor Identification and Qualification

Once the infrastructure is in place, Damon builds the donor identification and qualification process that turns a passive DAF recipient into an active DAF fundraiser. The logic is straightforward but rarely executed: the donors most likely to recommend a DAF grant are the donors already giving at capacity through other vehicles — the major-gift donors, the planned-giving prospects, the appreciated-asset holders, the donors who ask about stock transfers or who give at year-end for tax reasons. The DAFgiving360 data makes the asset profile explicit: nearly three-quarters — 73% — of dollars contributed to DAFs in fiscal year 2026 were non-cash assets, including individual stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and private business interests, and 82% of donors gave assets other than cash. Eight out of ten DAF donors are giving appreciated assets, not writing checks. Ashley's qualification framework identifies the donors whose giving pattern signals DAF capacity — concentrated year-end gifts, appreciated-stock transfers, references to a financial advisor, giving through a family foundation — and flags them for a DAF-specific cultivation track rather than leaving them in the generic major-gift pipeline where their DAF capacity is invisible.

3. The Ease-of-Giving Mechanics

This is the layer where the highest-capacity DAF donors fall away, and Damon treats it as the friction-removal discipline that determines whether a qualified donor actually recommends the grant. The CCS Fundraising guidance recommends normalizing DAFs in donor conversations — many supporters do not realize their retirement assets, appreciated stock, or even cryptocurrency can be donated through a DAF — and the DAFgiving360 data reinforces why: the median grant size in fiscal year 2026 was $500, meaning the vast majority of DAF grants are modest, recurring, and driven by ease rather than spectacle. The ease layer covers the DAF-specific ask language in appeals ('recommend a grant from your donor-advised fund'), the stock-transfer and DAF-sponsor instructions published on the website, the staff training to receive and acknowledge a DAF grant promptly, and the integration with third-party DAF platforms that let donors recommend a grant in minutes. Damon's rule is that a DAF grant is a donor's easiest gift to recommend or their easiest gift to skip, and the difference is the friction the organization either removes or imposes.

4. The Recurring-Grant Cultivation

The fourth layer is the one that determines whether DAF revenue is a one-time windfall or a recurring stream, and Ashley treats it as the long-term value engine. The DAFgiving360 fiscal year 2026 results are emphatic on this point: nearly half — 40% — of all grants were set up as recurring grants, reflecting donors' strong connections and ongoing commitment to the causes they care about, and 74% of grants were not designated for a specific purpose, giving charities the flexibility to deploy funds when and where they are needed most. The recurring layer cultivates the DAF donor toward a recurring-grant recommendation — the monthly or quarterly grant that mirrors a sustainer gift — and steward the unrestricted grant as the trust signal it is. A DAF donor who recommends an unrestricted recurring grant is a donor who has handed the organization both money and discretion, and that donor is cultivated differently than one whose grant is restricted to a specific program. Damon's rule is that the recurring DAF grant is the donor-advised fund equivalent of a sustainer gift, and the organization that does not cultivate it is an organization treating a recurring stream as a one-time gift.

5. The DAF Measurement Dashboard

The final layer is the one that turns DAF fundraising from a hope into a managed channel, and Damon insists on it for every engagement. We track five core indicators: the number and dollar value of DAF grants received, the median grant size benchmarked against the $500 sector median, the recurring-grant rate benchmarked against the 40% DAFgiving360 figure, the unrestricted-grant share benchmarked against the 74% figure, and the DAF-donor retention rate — the share of DAF grantors who recommend a grant in a second consecutive year. The DAF-donor retention rate is the leading indicator the others lag, because a DAF donor who grants twice is a donor whose recurring-grant cultivation is working, and an organization whose DAF revenue is growing is an organization whose DAF-donor retention is compounding. Damon's rule is that a DAF channel that is not measured is a DAF channel that cannot be managed, and the $64.60 billion in annual DAF grantmaking is distributed to the organizations that measure it.

A donor-advised fund is not a separate donor. It is a separate giving vehicle for a donor you already have. The organization that learns to see it builds a channel the organization that does not will never know exists. — Damon Boswell

The Transparency Conversation DAF Critics Miss

Damon addresses the DAF debate head-on in every board conversation, because a board that has read the criticism will raise it. The 2025 IPS Independent Report on DAFs found that median DAF payout rates remain around 9–10% — well above the 5% required of private foundations — but because there is no mandated minimum payout for DAFs, critics warn of 'warehoused' charitable dollars. The CCS Fundraising guidance notes that foundation-to-DAF transfers, estimated at more than $3 billion annually, add to the transparency concern. Ashley's framing is direct: the debate is real, but it is a debate about the donor side of the equation, not the charity side. From the nonprofit's perspective, the DAF is a growing, efficient, low-friction channel whose grants arrive unrestricted and whose donors give more when they use it. The nonprofit's job is not to resolve the policy debate; it is to ensure that when a donor recommends a grant, the organization is ready to receive it, acknowledge it, and steward it into a recurring relationship. The organization that waits for the policy debate to resolve before building its DAF strategy is an organization that forfeits years of DAF revenue to resolve a question that does not affect its end of the transaction.

The Three DAF Failures

Damon closes every DAF engagement by naming the three failures that sink DAF programs even when the intent is genuine.

• The invisibility failure: the organization is not findable in the DAF sponsor's database, so a donor who tries to recommend a grant gives up or gives elsewhere. The $500 median grant means the friction of a manual lookup is often larger than the donor's patience, and the organization that is invisible to the DAF search is an organization that has already lost the grant before the donor decided not to give.
• The capacity-cap failure: the organization treats its DAF-capable donors as checkbook donors, never identifies the appreciated-asset holders and advisor-mediated givers, and caps its largest relationships at a capacity the donor has already outgrown. An organization whose major-gift ask is $5,000 from a donor holding a $200,000 DAF is an organization leaving $195,000 of capacity unasked, and the failure is not the donor's generosity — it is the organization's vision.
• The one-time failure: the organization celebrates a DAF grant as a windfall and never cultivates the recurring grant that the 40% recurring figure proves is available. A DAF grant that arrives once and is not stewarded into a recurring recommendation is a DAF channel that produces revenue once and resets to zero, and the organization that does not build the recurring layer is an organization that treats a stream as a drop.

Build the DAF Channel

The most common DAF failure Ashley sees is not a lack of DAF donors — the donors exist, in the millions. The failure is the absence of a DAF strategy that makes the organization findable, identifies the DAF-capable donor, removes the giving friction, cultivates the recurring grant, and measures the channel as a managed revenue stream. An organization that receives one DAF grant a year and concludes DAFs do not work for its cause is an organization that has not built the channel — when the truth is that the same organization with readiness infrastructure, donor qualification, ease mechanics, recurring cultivation, and a measurement dashboard would receive DAF grants every month. Damon's rule is that the $64.60 billion in annual DAF grantmaking goes to the organizations that build for it, and the organization that does not build for it is an organization that has chosen to compete for fewer dollars.

This is also why Damon treats the DAF strategy as a governance discipline, not just a fundraising activity. The board that understands the $327.87 billion in DAF assets, the $500 median grant, the 40% recurring rate, and the 73% non-cash contribution share plans differently — it invests in DAF readiness before it asks, it identifies DAF capacity before it caps a major gift, and it measures the DAF channel before it celebrates a windfall. An organization that builds that understanding into its leadership builds its own DAF revenue engine, and an organization that does not is one DAF grant away from discovering that the channel it ignored was the channel its peers were winning. Damon and Ashley Boswell build complete DAF strategies — readiness infrastructure, donor identification and qualification, ease-of-giving mechanics, recurring-grant cultivation, and DAF measurement dashboard — as part of ASAP Grants' Fundraising For Nonprofits service. Schedule a free consultation, and let us build the DAF channel that captures the stream your mission is missing.