In 2024, contributions to donor-advised funds accounted for 22.8% of individual giving, and total assets in DAFs stood at more than $326 billion—almost double the assets in DAFs in 2020. Market returns explain some of this change, but new money also plays a role. And DAFs may have even more appeal after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

As DAFs grow in importance, so do questions about where distributions from those funds go. Setting questions of timing aside, do DAFs simply replicate the regular individual giving sector, or are they better characterized as a different sector altogether? In a series of popular and academic articles, Brian Mittendorf (Ohio State, Fisher C. Bus.) and Helen Flannery (Inst. Pol’y Stud.) examine DAFs in their social and political context, with a healthy dose of the tax planning that goes into these increasingly important vehicles.

Some DAF statistics for 2024, as well as Mittendorf and Flannery’s recent popular work, below the fold.

Dan Heist et al., The Annual DAF Report 2025, DAF Rsch. Collaborative (Dec. 2025):

DAFs grew significantly in 2024. The total number of DAF accounts reached a record high of 3.56 million[, representing an 18.4% increase from 2023] . . . . Total assets in DAFs grew 27.5%, reaching $326.45 billion. Contributions to DAFs rebounded strongly, increasing 37.3% and totaling $89.64 billion, following a decline in FY 2023. Grantmaking from DAFs continued to rise, with a 19.0% increase, reaching $64.89 billion. The overall payout rate from DAFs remained fairly consistent with the prior year, increasing by 1.3 percentage points to 25.3%. The average account size also increased 7.8% to $91,611.

Brian Mittendorf & Helen Flannery, Donor-Advised Funds Have More Money than Ever—and Direct More of It to Politically Active Charities, The Conversation (Dec. 12, 2025):

One distinguishing feature about DAF donors is that when they dispatch money from their charitable accounts, they fund politically engaged charities at higher rates than people who give directly to charity. . . .

We consider charities “politically engaged” if they either do lobbying or have related organizations that participate in political campaigning. These groups span the political spectrum . . . .

When we crunched the numbers, we discovered that nearly 6% of payments from DAF accounts go to politically engaged charities. In comparison, other funding sources paid out only 3.6% to politically engaged charities.

[The] funding rate [of politically engaged charities] from DAFs is 1.7 times the benchmark level [6% of contributions versus 3.6%]. When it comes to fringe hate and antigovernment charities, overall funding levels are low, but the DAF difference is more pronounced—DAF donors fund these groups at a rate 3.5 times that of other donors.

[Moreover,] social service nonprofits, which include homeless shelters and food banks, get 25% of all giving, but only 20% of DAF giving. This may seem like a small difference, but it can actually represent seismic shifts in where charitable dollars go.

Helen Flannery, Donor-Advised Funds: A Power Tool for Political Engagement, Inequality.org (Aug. 22, 2025):

. . . DAF sponsors don’t have to reveal their major donors at all, and only have to report their grantees in aggregate, not by individual account. So if a [private] foundation donor wanted to give anonymously to politically engaged charities, funneling their foundations’ grants through DAFs would be a logical way to do it. 

It does turn out that when DAF sponsors receive more funding from [private] foundations, they also give significantly more to political organizations. This suggests that foundation donors may indeed be circumventing public disclosure of their political giving by filtering funds through DAFs.

Related TaxProf Blog coverage:

• NY Times: Should You Donate to Charity This Year or Wait? It Depends (Dec. 12, 2025)
• Giving Tuesday 2025: Transitions and Tax Incentives (Nov. 29, 2025)
• Are Donor-Advised Funds Facilitating Anonymous Giving To Politically Engaged Charities? (May 30, 2024)
• Walker: Donor-Advised Funds In The Wake Of The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act (Oct. 19, 2022)