Foster lifelong generosity with donor-advised fund software
Donor-advised funds (DAFs) are becoming increasingly essential to nonprofit strategy. In the past five years, the wealth flowing in and out of DAFs has more than doubled.
FreeWill provides DAFpay, a donor-advised software, to equip your supporters with an intuitive and effortless way to make DAF grants. Full visibility into donor and gift details makes it easy to build a robust DAF giving program that can support your organization’s work for years to come.
How it works
Make DAF contributions easy for your supporters
With FreeWill, making a grant is seamless and fully digital for most DAF providers and sponsoring organizations, powered by DAFpay.
See all your data in one place
FreeWill’s Portal provides full visibility into donation data, eliminating tedious detective work.
Strategically follow up and steward DAF donors
Gift details help inform successful stewardship strategies to sustain your DAF giving program.
A growing and sustainable opportunity
DAFs have seen remarkable growth in recent years. In 2023, wealth going into DAFs reached $59 billion, with the overall value of DAFs exceeding $251 billion—a record high. DAFs have also proven to be more resilient to economic downturns than other forms of charitable giving.
Source: National Philanthropic Trust
DAFpay creates an intuitive experience for donors
FreeWill partners with Chariot to enable donors to make grants directly from their accounts with leading DAF providers via DAFpay—streamlining the process to just three clicks. With DAFpay, most of your supporters can donate with their DAF without ever navigating away from your website to complete their donation–making it much more likely that your organization secures the gift.
Create a focused stewardship strategy
When supporters use FreeWill to make a DAF grant, you gain essential information to shape a targeted and effective outreach strategy. Through the FreeWill Portal, capture information about the DAF donor and what causes they most care about.
Leverage FreeWill DAF support to educate your supporters
In 2023, nonprofits received over $54 billion in grants from DAFs. Still, untapped wealth remains in DAFs, especially in uncertain economic times when other sources of giving contract. By providing supporters with a discoverable and easy-to-use DAF experience, you can remind and educate them to make grants from DAFs, either for the first time or as a continuation of their giving efforts.
Source: National Philanthropic Trust
Position your organization for success with DAFs
In 2023, 98% of organizations that actively solicited or promoted DAF giving received at least one gift. Despite no mandatory distribution requirements, grants from DAFs continue to increase and present enormous potential for nonprofits, especially during peak times for charitable giving like end-of-year. Not only are organizations receiving more DAF gifts than they did in previous years, the average gift size is increasing.
DAF software trusted by the smartest minds in planned & major giving
Capturing information from donors that are giving through donor-advised funds has always been a challenge for us. [FreeWill] has made it really simple for us…Now, we are actively tracking a pipeline and I think it’s going to really help us grow this revenue channel year over year.
Planned Giving, Susan G. Komen
Having FreeWill is like having a part-time planned giving officer. Our FreeWill strategist is there anytime I have questions, ideas, or comments. I trust their expertise, and all the support they provide means I can spend time on other priorities.
Knox Area Rescue Mission
For a small nonprofit, where we don’t even have a dedicated fundraising staff person, much less a major gifts or planned giving officer, FreeWill almost acts like the planned giving department I don’t have. FreeWill allows us to have a Planned Giving program that I otherwise would never have the time for. FreeWill lets us punch above our weight.
Library Foundation for Sarasota County
FAQ: Why invest in DAF software?
DAF dollars represent a major opportunity for nonprofits for a few reasons. They’ve skyrocketed in popularity among donors and now hold a considerable amount of wealth that has been specifically set aside for philanthropic purposes. DAFs currently hold a record $250 billion in assets. Donors who give through DAFs are also loyal, with nearly 80% of grants in 2023 going to nonprofits that the donor had previously supported with DAFs or other gifts.
Learn more with our guide, DAFs 101: The nonprofit’s guide to donor-advised funds.
Not at all! Accepting DAF gifts is typically much easier than accepting other forms of non-cash gifts since any non-cash assets are liquidated upon being contributed to the DAF. This eliminates the need to work through brokerages and reduces the chance of receiving a gift anonymously.
FreeWill uses DAFpay, the DAF software powered by Chariot, to close the loop by ensuring you properly collect and track the donor and gift information you need to run an effective giving program. Seamless data collection plus intuitive reporting features from FreeWill mean you can thank, steward, and engage your DAF donors for the long term.
Learn more about FreeWill’s comprehensive smart giving solutions.
Let’s start a conversation!
If you work for a nonprofit organization and would like to know how FreeWill can support your goals, please get in touch with our team by filling out this form.
One of our team members will reach out to you shortly to learn more about how we can help and to schedule a time to demonstrate how our products work.
In the meantime, feel free to review some resources our partners have found interesting: