Welcome to DAFinitive™, the only searchable database created to help you find information about donor-advised funds.
We’ve collected information on donor advised funds from over 275 DAF sponsors across the United States, including the top sponsors in each state. New international funds are being added every week, too!
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Back in 2020 we built a database of donor advised funds for the HBG team to search when we created profiles for clients. As this database continued to grow, it became apparent that the wider prospect research community would find this information useful as well, and DAFinitive™ was born!
Unfortunately, no. Not all DAF sponsors publish their fund lists (we know, we’re frustrated too!). The good news is that we have collected information from the largest DAF sponsors in the country and from each state that publish their fund lists.
No, but we’ve added the donor’s name(s) when the sponsoring organization specifically lists them (e.g. in a note or description). We don’t want to make assumptions about donors to (or current advisors of) funds, so even though the fund might be called “The Chris and Pat Washington Fund” you won’t see Chris or Pat listed as donor/advisors unless we’re sure. We’re adding more donors to the list of funds as we find them through our own research.
Most of the time you can’t, but we’ve found a few instances where the sponsor has provided the exact fund amount or a range. Sometimes a sponsor will provide information on the minimum amount required to create a DAF, and we’re adding that minimum amount to each record’s notes section as we find information.
Congratulations! You now know that they’re philanthropic, that they have money set aside to give, and they have an easy way to make donations.
According to the (really useful) 2021 DAF Report on donor advised giving from the National Philanthropic Trust, the average amount in a donor advised fund is around $159,000. You won’t ever know how much is in your donor’s account (unless they tell you), but you do know that they’re interested in giving it to nonprofits they care about.
The majority of the data in DAFinitive™ is donor advised funds, but we added in a bit more for some value-add including named endowed scholarship funds. Also, as we were researching DAFs, we discovered that some named memorial funds start out as DAFs while the people are still living, and we didn’t want you to miss those in case the donors are, in fact, still alive. You might find it interesting (as we did) that some DAFs are funded by companies (including family-owned and privately-held companies) so you’ll see those in DAFinitive™, too, in case they can help in your research.
We’re adding in new funds every business day!
Want to know the minimum amount required to establish a fund at each sponsor? Click below to explore that question and more at our DAF resource library. You’ll find white papers, articles, links to think tanks, research institutes, and more.
DAFinitiveTM DAF Resource Center