Picture a donor sitting down to give to your organization. She has a donor-advised fund (DAF) at Fidelity Charitable with a comfortable balance in it. She lands on your donation page, sees a button asking for a monthly or one-off through a credit card number, and does what most people do when the path in front of them is the wrong one. She gives $100 from her credit card.
She was prepared to grant $2,500. But your Donate page didn’t ask for a DAF Gift on the front.
That’s the entire DAF pain point in one scene, and the good news is that it’s a plumbing problem rather than a strategy problem. Plumbing can be fixed in an afternoon.
Marin French Cheese in Sonoma, California © Hennessey
Why the Gift Size Gap Is So Dramatic
Money inside a DAF has already been given away. The donor took the tax deduction when they funded the account, so from their perspective those dollars are no longer household money. They are charity money, sitting in a bucket with one job.
The numbers reflect that psychology. Chariot, whose DAFpay tool was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025, reports that DAFpay gifts average roughly $1,000 with a median of $250, and cites more than $326 billion already committed inside donor-advised funds. Givebutter doesn’t bury the lede: “The average DAF gift is $4K!” They offer a free DAF donate button.
Compare that to your average online credit card gift. I’ll wait.
The Three-Step Afternoon
Step one: Turn on a DAF payment option. This is the whole ballgame. Tools like DAFpay now sit inside most major giving platforms alongside credit card, ACH, and digital wallets. The donor selects DAF, authenticates with their provider, and submits a grant request without leaving your page.
Chariot describes the mechanism this way: “DAFpay displays donors’ balances to encourage larger donations.” Seeing $18,000 sitting in the account changes what a person types into the amount field.
If you use Givebutter, the DAF button is free and activates from your dashboard. Check Chariot’s integration list as well.
Step two: Say the words “donor-advised fund” where a human will see them. Add a button to your Donate page, a paragraph to your Ways to Give page, and a line to the footer of your appeal emails. Something as plain as “Have a donor-advised fund? You can grant to us directly from your DAF here” does the trick. Many donors don’t realize their fund can support an organization your size, and a surprising number of them have never once been invited to give via their DAF.
Step three: Publish your legal name and EIN somewhere obvious. When a donor recommends a grant through their provider’s portal, they search for you by name. If your legal name differs from your brand name, and it can do, you’re asking someone to guess. Put both, plus the EIN and mailing address, on one page. The data shows this prevents the most lost gifts.
Two Things To Fix While You’re In There
Your gift acknowledgment language. A DAF grant isn’t tax-deductible to the donor, because they already took the deduction. Sending a standard tax receipt signals you don’t handle DAF gifts often. Thank the individual warmly, note that no goods or services were provided, and skip the deductibility line.
Your soft credit setup. The check arrives from Fidelity Charitable, but the donor is Maria. If your database records the gift to Fidelity, Maria disappears from your stewardship entirely. Soft credit the individual, who’s often identified in the letter attached the gift, and send her the thank-you.
Set the Expectation Right
DAF gifts aren’t instant. A grant recommendation within a DAF system typically takes days to weeks to arrive, so build that lag into your year-end planning and don’t panic on December 29th when the funds haven’t arrived yet.
Look at the trade. You wait a little longer for money already committed to charity, from a donor whose capacity you can now see clearly, at an average gift several times your online norm. This is a good trade, and the entry fee is an afternoon of website changes.
Heads up: The 3rd annual DAF Day is on October 8. We’re covering it in Premium on Thursday.
Have you turned on a DAF option yet? Reply and tell me what happened to your average gift. I’d love to compare notes.