In recent years, donor-advised funds (DAFs) have skyrocketed as a giving method.

“It’s a really smart tax planning strategy for people, and I think that’s where it initially gained popularity,” said Mitch Stein, head of strategy at Chariot. “In the past five years, we’ve seen the number of people with donor-advised funds more than double. We now have 3 million people nationally using them. There’s $230 billion in donor-advised funds. Just last year, there was over $52 billion granted to nonprofits like The Michael J. Fox Foundation out of these vehicles.”

That equates to more than 20% in growth in nonprofit funding per year, Stein said.

For nonprofits, however, there are several challenges that DAF giving presents, one of which is a lack of data on who donors are.

“We were really eager to make connections with those donors,” Sarah Traisman, director of development operations at The Michael J. Fox Foundation, said. “They have a vested interest, they’re giving to the foundation … but we just didn’t have the data to steward the donors.”

In this episode of The NonProfit Voice Tech Series, Traisman, Stein, and Shirley Nagar, planned giving director at The Michael J. Fox Foundation, join Mark Becker, editorial advisory board member for NonProfit PRO, to discuss the rise of DAF giving, the challenges it poses for nonprofits, and what technology is out there to help.