DAFinitive FAQs

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 DAFinitive® is consistently growing! Our team is researching additional information and uploading new funds, and/or adding new information to current funds, on a weekly basis..

  • The name of the fund
  • Name(s) of donor(s) and/or fund advisors
  • Year the fund was founded
  • Sponsoring organization
  • State and/or Country
  • Interest areas
  • Giving
  • Keyword search on notes that the sponsor shared about the fund

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.

Unfortunately, most of the time you can’t.  We have only found a few instances where the sponsor has provided the exact fund amount or a range, and when we do, we will add that information to the notes section of the record.  More frequently, our research will find that a sponsor will provide information on the minimum amount required to create a DAF at their institution.  We maintain a list of Sponsor defined fund minimums here.

All of the hyperlinks in DAFinitive® are verified as live accurate links by our team on the most recent date that a fund was updated.  Unfortunately, if the owner of the source URL changes a URL, links may become unavailable.  If you find a broken link, please feel free to notify us and we will attempt to update it.  Also note that most of the hyperlinks in DAFinitive® have also been saved to the Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/)  and you will likely be able to find an archived copy there.

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) 2023 DAF Report on donor advised giving from the National Philanthropic Trust, the average amount in a donor advised fund is around $117,000. You may not 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.

We’re uploading new funds and/or adding information to existing funds once a week!