Hardly any data has been released on funds raised during last week’s first collective effort to stimulate giving by owners of Donor Advised Funds so DAF Day 2024 was probably not a big success in dollars and cents raised, but it certainly generated a lot of activity.
More more than 1,200 nonprofits signed up for the initiative which was thought up only four months ago by Chariot, an online payments company whose DAFpay app can turn the traditionally labor-intensive process of giving from a DAF into a much more spontaneous three-click process.
Of those nonprofits that went beyond pledging to take part in DAY Day, the most common form of participating was to send messages via social media, email or text to targeted groups of supporters urging them to give on October 10.
Some made giving easy by installing the DAFpay app on their websites while others hoped to move supporters to invest the time needed for the traditional way of directing donations from their DAFs: Go to the website of their DAF administrator, log in, find the nonprofit they want to support in an online database and request that the DAF send them money from their account.
The biggest success of DAF Day was the level of nonprofit engagement, said Mitch Stein, Chariot’s head of strategy who led the initiative. Some top activation’s Stein cited included:
— A print ad run in the Wall Street Journal by Doctors without Borders
— A broad SMS campaigns produced by Planned Parenthood
— A million-dollar match announced by the ACLU
— An online DAF quiz fielded by The Public Theater
DAF Day served as a catalyst for many groups to think in new ways about strategies to access billions of dollars held in DAFs, according to several nonprofit executives interviewed at a celebratory reception in Manhattan on October 10. Their goals and intitial thoughts on tactics varied.
The Public Theater, for example, sees DAFs as a way to unlock many smaller donations, according to Shayla Titley, director of patron programs and services.
The LGBT Community Center’s CEO Carla Smith said she was encouraging her staff to think of ways to integrate DAF giving into the many programs the organization relies on to raise money such as The Women’s Event 2024 on November 1.
The Central Park Conservancy is testing a number of DAF-related tactics because it has seen that the average DAF donor gift was in the $300 to $600 range compared to an average of $50 to $100 for credit card gifts, explained Director of Development Information Services Art Weinkofsky.
Organizers did not release a tally of how much was raised on DAF Day. Stein says an approximation may be available in several months after fielding a survey among nonprofit organizations.
A limited assortment of examples shows that DAF Day moved the needle for some organizations. According to a DAF Day release:
— The ACLU Foundation saw more digital DAF giving than any other nonprofit after they rolled DAFpay out to their full donor audience for the first time on October 10th, and their average DAFpay gift was $1,200.
— The number of DAF gifts received by Susan G. Komen was 2x the breast cancer charity’s previous record.
— A DAF called The Donor’s Fund saw their daily giving increase by 4x on DAF Day, resulting in a $3 million surge.
— Daffy, a mobile-first DAF provider, saw a 440% increase in their daily donations on DAF Day.
The scarcity of collective first year DAF Day data came as no surprise to Kelsey Kramer, director of partnerships at Giving Tuesday, a group that began designating the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving as a global day of giving back in 2012.
More than $3.1 billion was raised by thousands of groups worldwide on Giving Tuesday in 2023, but Giving Tuesday is only able to report out that data because it has invested in organizing an elaborate collaboration called The Data Commons, she explained. In the early years, giving was much more limited and solid data on that activity was scant.
DAF Day organizers should be proud of what they have succeeded in launching, Kramer said. “Building a movement together and generating momentum about a project is a huge feat.”