Finding the Needle in the Haystack: How to Identify and Cultivate DAF Donors
Ask any development director what keeps them up at night, and DAF donors will come up quickly. Not because those donors are difficult to work with, but because they are so difficult to find. You likely have dozens of DAF holders in your database right now, but without the right tools and habits, they look exactly like everyone else on your list.
We have covered the explosive growth of DAFs and what it means for the sector in two earlier posts, DAFs Are Reshaping Philanthropy and our most recent update on where the landscape stands today. The short version: DAF assets crossed $326 billion in fiscal year 2024, grantmaking grew 19%, and multiple platforms are now targeting DAFs to everyday donors for the first time. The money is there and it is moving. The challenge is figuring out who in your existing donor file is holding it.
This post is about exactly that: the practical work of identification, segmentation, and cultivation that turns your database into a DAF pipeline.
Why This Is Worth Your Attention Right Now
With more than $326 billion in DAF assets alone, nonprofits need to establish strategies to identify these donors in your database and nuture them in your giving pipelines.
DAF donors have extremely high retention rates. According to Chariot's 2025 DAF Fundraising Report, when a donor gives through a DAF, their retention rate jumps from 46% to 59%. And when an existing donor shifts to DAF giving, Chariot found their contributions increase by an average of 10 times. The Chariot and K2D Strategies study, covered by NonProfit PRO, put the five-year average increase at 96%. Those are not rounding errors. Those are transformational numbers that justify serious investment in finding and stewarding this segment.
The same research produced a finding that should change how you think about your database: at least 26% of current DAF donors at the organizations studied were already in the donor file before they made their first DAF gift. They were not new donors discovered through prospect research. They were people who had been giving in smaller amounts for years, then quietly upgraded to DAF giving without anyone flagging the change.
That 26% is sitting in your database right now. The question is how to idenfity them.
The Core Problem: DAF Giving Is Designed to Be Opaque
There is a structural reason this is hard. DAFs are privately held accounts. They are not public records. When Fidelity Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, or a community foundation sends a grant to your organization, the grant often arrives with minimal identifying information about the underlying donor. Some sponsors default to anonymizing transactions. Others do not. GoFundMe's recently launched Giving Funds product defaults to transparency, which the Chronicle of Philanthropy noted as an intentional departure from standard practice.
The result is a visibility gap. Gifts arrive, get entered as institutional grants, and never get linked back to the relationship in your donor file. The donor receives no personal acknowledgment. No stewardship. No follow-up. And no one on your team knows you just received what could be the largest gift that person has ever given.
According to the 2025 FreeWill Donor-Advised Fund Report, 83% of nonprofit fundraisers say DAFs will be a higher priority for their organization this year. But priority without process does not close that visibility gap. You need specific tactics.
Strategy 1: Mine the Grants You Are Already Receiving
Start with what you have. Pull every institutional or foundation gift from the past three years and examine the sender. Grants from Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, DAFgiving360, National Philanthropic Trust, or any community foundation are almost certainly DAF-originated. The same goes for grants from Benevity, YourCause, and other workplace giving platforms, which now increasingly route through DAF-style structures.
For each of those grants, search your existing donor database for any individuals who gave around the same time, give to similar causes, or live in the geographic area the grant came from. A match is not guaranteed, but you will find more than you expect. When you find a likely link, note it in the donor record, and flag the contact for a personal outreach from a gift officer. The goal is not to confront them about whether they have a DAF. The goal is simply to re-engage the relationship as if the gift had a face on it.
Anything you find, capture it. Build a custom field in your CRM for "likely DAF holder" or "confirmed DAF holder" and start populating it now. That data compounds over time. In Julep, this is easily set up with Actions or Attributes on the People Profile.
Strategy 2: Ask. Directly and Often.
This sounds obvious, but most organizations are not doing it. Add a question about DAF giving to your donor surveys. Include a sentence in your acknowledgment letters: "Do you give through a donor-advised fund? Let us know so we can make the process seamless for you." Put a one-line mention in your email footers.
Only about 17% of U.S. adults are familiar with donor-advised funds at all, according to FreeWill's research. A large share of your donors who have DAFs may not even know that terminology. Ask them whether they give through Fidelity Charitable or Vanguard Charitable or through their financial advisor. Those questions will land better than "do you have a DAF?"
When you get a yes, record it immediately. Update the donor record with the DAF sponsor name if you have it, the approximate account size if they share it, and the date of the conversation. That record becomes the foundation of a major donor cultivation plan. In Julep, you can also tag this information with Notes.
Strategy 3: Use Wealth Screening to Reveal Hidden Prospects
Behavioral signals and conversation cues are useful, but they scale slowly. Wealth screening is what lets you work the whole database at once. Using a wealth screen tool allows you to run your existing donor records against a comprehensive set of financial and philanthropic indicators to identify who in your database has the capacity and giving history consistent with DAF ownership.
What are you looking for? Several markers reliably correlate with DAF holding: real estate holdings above $500,000 (particularly second properties or investment properties), stock ownership and documented equity transactions, a history of charitable giving across multiple organizations, affiliation with financial institutions or wealth management firms known for DAF programs, board membership at other nonprofits, and business ownership or executive-level professional affiliations.
According to Windfall's analysis of DAF identification, about 24% of affluent households either currently have or plan to establish a giving vehicle such as a DAF, private foundation, or giving circle, per the 2025 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy. That means roughly one in four of your high-net-worth donors either has a DAF already or will open one soon.
You are not searching for a needle in a haystack manually. You are running a filter that shows you which haystacks to look in.
Strategy 4: Build Relationships With the People Who Manage the Money
Community foundations, financial advisors, and philanthropic consultants are the gatekeepers of most DAF assets. They work directly with the donors who hold DAF accounts, and they are often looking for strong nonprofit partners to recommend to their clients.
Invest in those relationships. Offer to present your organization at a community foundation lunch or financial advisor educational event. Send quarterly impact reports specifically designed for financial professional audiences, short, data-forward, and focused on outcomes rather than emotional appeals. Make yourself easy to recommend.
When a community foundation calls to ask if you are in a position to receive a grant, respond the same day. When a financial advisor asks for your EIN to facilitate a DAF grant for a client, have that information ready and follow up with a thank you they can share. These intermediaries talk to each other. A reputation for being easy to work with spreads quickly in those networks.
Strategy 5: Make the Technical Mechanics Frictionless
If you ask donors whether they have a DAF and they say yes, the next question they will have is: "How do I send a grant to you?" That process needs to be simple, documented, and findable within 30 seconds on your website.
At minimum, your website should have a dedicated DAF giving page or a clearly labeled section within your Ways to Give page that includes your legal name exactly as registered with the IRS, your EIN, step-by-step instructions for recommending a grant through the largest DAF sponsors, and a direct contact for donors who need help navigating the process. Some organizations have also added a DAF payment button through platforms like Chariot directly on their donation forms, allowing donors to complete a grant recommendation without ever leaving the website. The lower the friction, the more likely the grant happens.
Cultivating DAF Donors Once You Find Them
DAF holders are not a standard donor segment. They have already committed money to charitable giving. The only question is whether your organization ends up on the list. Cultivation for this segment is less about making the case for generosity and more about making the case for your mission and your organization's effectiveness.
Treat the first DAF gift as a major gift, regardless of size. A first-time DAF grant is often a test of your stewardship. If the experience is good, DAF donors come back at much higher rates. The 59% retention figure from Chariot's research only holds if the donor receives a quality acknowledgment and follow-up. Automate nothing about that first thank you.
Invite them into your inner circle early. DAF donors tend to be intentional philanthropists. They want to understand your work at a level beyond the standard newsletter. Offer a facility tour, a program site visit, or a conversation with a program leader.
Communicate year-round, not just at giving season. One of the most consistent findings from the National Study on Donor Advised Funds is that only 32% of DAF grants occur in the fourth quarter, even though that is when most organizations concentrate their appeals. DAF grantmaking is distributed far more evenly across the calendar year than contributions into DAFs. If you only reach out in November and December, you are missing three quarters of the opportunity.
Ask about succession and legacy. DAF accounts can name successor advisors and can be structured to fund charitable purposes after a donor's death. A conversation about long-term philanthropic intent opens the door to planned giving discussions and can deepen the relationship significantly. Many DAF donors have not had that conversation with any nonprofit yet.
Putting It in Your CRM
None of this works at scale without clean data practices. Inside Julep, that means building DAF identification into your standard records workflow. Every time you confirm a DAF relationship, update the constituent profile with the DAF sponsor name and account information if available, the date of first confirmed DAF gift, gift officer assignments and follow-up tasks, notes from donor conversations about philanthropic priorities, and wealth screening results. This is where flexible features such Keywords, Attributes, Actions and even Notes are invaluable. You can set up these tools to easily capture this data.
Julep's Moves Management tools allow you to track every touchpoint and set structured follow-up timelines for your DAF prospects, so these relationships stay active even when your team is managing hundreds of accounts simultaneously. The goal is a DAF pipeline that is visible, assigned, and measurable, not a pile of vague notes in a spreadsheet.
The Donors Are Already There
The most important thing to understand about DAF prospecting is that you are not hunting for strangers. You are illuminating people who already know your organization, have already decided to give to causes like yours, and are actively looking for places to direct committed charitable dollars. They just need a reason to direct some of those dollars to you.
The asset base is at $326 billion and climbing toward the $2 trillion combined milestone. Grantmaking grew 19% last year. Fidelity Charitable data shows DAF grants grew 25% year over year in 2024. The pipeline is genuinely flowing.
If you are just getting started on DAF strategy, read our foundational posts: DAFs Are Reshaping Philanthropy covers the big picture, and our recent update on the 2026 landscape covers what changed this year. Then come back here and start building the identification process. The donors are in your database. The tools are available. What is missing is usually just the intention to look.