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DAFs Are Growing Fast. Daffy is Growing 4.4X Faster.

Adam Nash

· 9 min read

The way people give is changing. Last year, Daffy published its very first “Year In Review” to share some of the key metrics and activity emerging on the platform. 2023 was a big year for Daffy, and many long-time industry followers were shocked to see such strong evidence that there was significant demand for a modern platform for giving. Daffy members set aside $20 million for charity in 2022, but in 2023 activity exploded as members contributed over $100 million on Daffy.

In 2024 Daffy members set aside more than $100 million in December alone. 🤯

The numbers from Daffy members in 2024 are astounding, but they are even more impressive in the context of the broader market for charitable giving.

  • Over the last decade, the number of DAF accounts has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of over 23.3%¹. In 2024, Daffy grew its member accounts by 104%, 4.4x faster.
  • Over the last decade, donor-advised funds grew their assets by about 16% per year¹. In 2024, Daffy grew its assets by 151%.
  • Over the last decade, donations from donor-advised funds grew at a 18.7% per year¹. In 2024, donations from Daffy increased by 311%.
  • Charitable foundations are held to a legal standard of donating out at least 5% of their assets in a given year. In 2024, Daffy’s donation rate was 38%.
  • Most impressively, Daffy is fulfilling its mission to help people be more generous, more often, as we saw the number of donations on Daffy increase by 164%, and the average amount donated on Daffy grew by 56% in 2024.

Daffy Charitable Fund issued over $40 million in donations in 2024, and yet the assets of the fund grew from $130 million at the end of 2023 to over $324 million by the end of 2024.

Another way to look at this? Daffy has added more donor-advised funds to its platform in 3 years than Vanguard Charitable did in its first 13².

We have a theory on what is driving this tremendous growth...

Why Are DAFs Growing So Rapidly?

Make no mistake, donor-advised funds (DAFs) are growing in popularity. The 2024 DAF Report from NPTrust indicated that the number of accounts has grown by an average of 23.3% annually over the past decade. For comparison, the number of individual retirement accounts in the US has grown by 2.8% annually over the past decade³.

In fact, some projections estimate that the total amount of assets in donor-advised funds will surge from approximately $250 billion today to over $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Why are DAFs growing so rapidly? There are likely three key factors:

  1. Charitable giving is a huge market. Approximately 60 million households donate to charity in the US every year, totaling over $374.4 billion per year⁴.
  2. Tax-advantaged accounts have been a large and growing trend in the US for the last half-century, and the market has become educated on accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs for retirement, as well as 529 plans for college. DAFs are increasingly understood as a tax-advantaged account for charity, and it frees people from being forced to make important giving decisions based on the IRS calendar.
  3. DAFs are a better solution for giving. Giving to charity is difficult for most people because it combines two very difficult questions: how much can you afford to give, and who do you want to give the money to. DAFs allow people to easily separate those issues, by putting money aside for charity when they can, and then giving whenever they are inspired.

We hear this directly from our members:

“Once I’ve put the money into my fund, it just gets to be that joyful decision of what charity I want to give it to. There’s no painful back and forth of deciding whether or not I should give. I've already done the hard work of deciding that there is money and there are resources that I want to give away freely. The more things I can automate when I'm in a good state of mind, the more I can stay committed to my giving goal,” Geoff Zoeckler.

At Daffy, we are incredibly supportive of this trend, because we see the donor-advised fund as the platform that will help us solve for the $1.6 Trillion “Generosity Gap” between what people want to give and the amount that they actually give. Academic research in behavioral economics indicates that if Americans set a goal for their giving, they could give on average 32% more to charity every year — over $100 billion in additional giving per year, or $1.6 Trillion more over the next decade.

“I knew that I wanted to open a DAF because it was something that I knew would increase my charitable giving overall. It's been important to think about those that are less fortunate than I am and realize that I can give a percentage of my income to different causes,” Amanda A.

Why Is Daffy Growing Even Faster?

With Daffy memberships up by 104% in 2024, Daffy is growing 4.4x faster than the overall DAF market. Looking over the data, there are some strong clues as to what is driving such rapid growth in both membership and activity on the Daffy platform.

These seem to be the three key drivers:

  1. Daffy built its platform for everyone who gives, not just for the wealthy. The existing donor-advised fund industry has focused primarily on people with large accounts, for the simple reason that their business model is based on charging a percentage of assets. Even Vanguard charges 0.6% per year for the first $500,000 on their platform. Daffy was designed for everyone, with a simple membership model that offers a flat monthly rate. In 2024, our largest donation was $1.5 million, but our median donation was $100. Daffy works for people who have a few hundred dollars to give we well as people who are donating millions.
  1. Daffy built its platform from the ground up to encourage long-term giving. Members join the platform, try it out, and their activity grows over time. They contribute more and donate more. Over 43% of donations are recurring donations, and more and more members are discovering the tremendous tax benefits of donating stock and crypto to charity.
  1. Daffy built a modern platform for the new economy. Donor-advised funds have famously underinvested in technology, but this story is more than just having a modern website and native applications. Trillions of dollars in wealth has been created in just the past decade in both private stock and crypto, and yet most donor-advised funds don’t support the ability to contribute these assets to charity. In 2024, Daffy saw over $42 million in crypto contributions, and with the launch of the private stock donation program, over $23 million in private stock.

2024 Was A Record Year for Giving At Daffy

2024 was an incredible year for the stock & crypto markets, with the S&P 500 up 23.3% and Bitcoin up 119%⁵. As a result, the Daffy team went to work ensuring that our platform made it as simple as possible for people to set money aside for the organizations and causes that meant the most to them. This landed with our Daffy 2.0 redesign early in the year.

Daffy also added more investment options in 2024, with the addition of the new Bitcoin & Ethereum ETFs, Custom Portfolios, and native support for Solana. The favorable markets proved to be a huge boost for generosity, as Daffy members constantly told us that their swelling accounts made them feel even more empowered to give.

"To give you context about how my fund on Daffy is growing, I set funds aside in Daffy to be invested in 2022, which was a very low time for the S&P, and even after giving $22,000 over two years, I still have $17,000 left, even though I only invested $32,000,” Pranav Garg.

These new investment options not only led to more giving, but they also led to more transfers from existing donor-advised funds. With our new partnership with Chariot’s DAFpay™️, 24% of contributions to Daffy in 2024 were funds moved from other DAF providers. While the largest transfer was over $8.3 million, the median was $12,000. In fact, our average member saved $728 in fees by moving their funds to Daffy from platforms like Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard.

Given the combination of lower fees and superior features, it’s not really surprising to see so many people choose Daffy in 2024.

Turning 2024 Stock & Crypto Gains Into More Giving

Partnerships were big in 2024 for driving adoption:

These integrations not only brought us closer to the future where every platform allows their customers to easily donate to charity, but also meaningfully moved the numbers on stock & crypto contributions.

In November 2024, Daffy decided to lean into the strength in the stock & crypto markets and these new partnerships to launch a $10 million campaign called #GainsForGood. Let’s just say, we overshot the mark. Instead of $10 million, Daffy members ended up making over $92 million in stock and crypto contributions in November & December: $32 million in public stock, $37 million in crypto, and $23 million in private stock.

Some fun facts from the campaign:

  • Apple shareholders were far more generous than Google shareholders, donating over $1.5 million in $AAPL shares vs. $524,000 for $GOOGL. In fact, Apple beat out Nvidia, Tesla, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft to dominate the “Trillion Dollar Titan” category.
  • Bitcoin trounced Ethereum, with over $24 million in Bitcoin contributions vs. $525,000 in Ethereum. Solana came from behind to nudge past Ethereum with $1.1 million in contributions.
  • The battle of the index funds was close, but Vanguard Total Market brought in $2.13 million, about $380,000 more than the $1.75 million donated by SPDR S&P 500 shareholders.
  • For the first time ever, the most contributed stock to Daffy was not from a public company at all. Figma shareholders proved to be the most generous of 2024, not surprising given the incredible culture that Dylan Field & team are building at the company. What was the top contributed public stock? Robinhood Markets.

Let’s Make 2025 Even More Generous

2024 was such an incredible year for charitable giving at Daffy, it’s hard to capture all the fun facts in just one post. Fortunately, our design team put together this great infographic of all the tidbits mentioned here (and more!).

The truth is that Daffy is riding an incredible market wave around charitable giving, and hopefully, inspiring everyone in this space to invest more in technology and features that will help people be more generous and close that $1.6 Trillion generosity gap.

If you are a Daffy member, thank you. You have taken the first step towards being more generous by putting money aside for charity, and you have also helped seed a community and platform that we believe can positively impact millions.

2025 brings a new year and new opportunities to be more generous. Tell a friend about Daffy. Start a campaign for your children’s school or at your company. Increase your giving goal. Set up a recurring donation.

If you haven’t tried Daffy yet, what are you waiting for? Make 2025 the year that you do and support the organizations and causes that mean the most to you and your family.

Of course, if you are a talented engineer, designer, or product manager, we’d love to hear from you. We are hiring.

Come join us. 🙏

Footnotes

(1) The National Philanthropy Trust. ‘The 2024 DAF Report.’ https://www.nptrust.org/reports/daf-report/

The National Philanthropy Trust. ‘The 2020 DAF Report.’ https://tinyurl.com/nptrust2020dafreport

The National Philanthropy Trust. ‘The 2015 DAF Report.’ https://tinyurl.com/nptrust2015dafreport

(2) The Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program. 2005 Annual Report.

(3) ICI Research Perspective. ‘The Role of IRAs in U.S. Households' Saving for Retirement, 2024.’ https://tinyurl.com/ICIResearch2024

ICI Research Perspective. ‘The Role of IRAs in U.S. Households' Saving for Retirement, 2015.’ https://tinyurl.com/ICIResearch2015

(4) The National Philanthropy Trust. ‘Charitable Giving Statistics.’ https://tinyurl.com/nptrustgivingstatistics

(5) CNBC, S&P 500 posts 23% gain for 2024 as stocks close slightly lower in final session of year. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/30/stock-market-today-live-updates.html