Donor-Advised Fund Grants Increased by 9% in 2022

The value of donor-advised-fund grantmaking to charitable organizations increased by 9% to $52.2 billion in 2022, and the number of accounts grew by 2.9% to 1,948,545, National Philanthropic Trust reported this week.

“Donors increased the value of their grant recommendations for the 13th consecutive year despite the decrease in overall and individual charitable giving as well as the losses in the three main U.S. market indexes and record inflation,” NPT’s chief executive Eileen Heisman said in a statement, citing GivingUSA. 

Heisman noted that since DAF donors pre-fund their giving with irrevocable contributions, grantmaking from their giving vehicles to charitable organizations is not as correlated to financial markets and individual household economic volatility. 

“We believe we are seeing a ‘new normal’ for DAFs, meaning a return to the more modest historical growth rates than the growth we saw during the height of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021,” she said. “DAF donors recommended 9% more grant dollars than their previous historic high-water mark in 2021.” 

The annual DAF report primarily uses data from IRS Form 990 filings to provide the most up-to-date and reliable analysis of the DAF sector. The 2023 report examined 1,151 charitable organizations that sponsor DAFs, including national charities, community foundations and other sponsoring charities. 

The five-year history data file includes records from 1,295 DAF sponsors that operated during at least some of the period since 2007.