The Strategic Steward — September 2026
EDITION 006 : September 2026
Hiding in Plain Sight (article).
Donor-advised funds have become an increasingly important source of charitable giving, and charities have devoted considerable energy to understanding how they work. But they may not be asking the right questions.
Charity Spotlight. In August, as part of our Grow for Change project, we released interviews with Heather Ervin from The Globe Theatre in Regina, Canada as well as Kizito Musabimana, founder of the Rwandan Canadian Healing Centre.
Required Reading. Links to articles and books to keep you inspired.
Hiding in Plain Sight
NOTE: This article was originally published under the banner “The Strategic Steward” with Future of Good (futureofgood.co) in September 2026. A link to that version is here.
Your DAF Donors May be More Prepared to Act than you Realize
As donor-advised funds have become an increasingly important source of charitable giving, charities have devoted considerable energy to understanding how they work. Fundraisers have learned which sponsoring organizations are most active, how grants are processed, and how to identify gifts originating from donor-advised funds. In many organizations, considerable effort is now expended trying to determine whether a particular donor has a DAF and, if so, how to engage them more effectively.
While these efforts have undoubtedly improved fundraising practices, they may also have encouraged charities to focus on the wrong thing.
Too often, donor-advised fund holders are viewed primarily through the grants they make. A donor who directs a $5,000 grant is treated as a $5,000 donor. A donor who directs a $25,000 grant is treated as a $25,000 donor. Historical granting patterns become the primary lens through which the relationship is evaluated.
The difficulty with this approach is that a grant represents an output rather than a resource. It tells us what a donor decided to distribute. It reveals very little about the philanthropic capital available to them, the objectives they hope to achieve, or the circumstances that might motivate them to do something substantially different.
This distinction matters because donor-advised funds are fundamentally different from many other sources of charitable giving. When an individual contributes assets to a donor-advised fund, they have already made the decision to dedicate those resources to philanthropy. The tax receipt has already been issued. The charitable commitment has already been made. Although the donor retains advisory privileges regarding future grants, the assets themselves have effectively been set aside for charitable purposes.
Consequently, a donor distributing $10,000 annually from a donor-advised fund may be in a very different position than a donor contributing $10,000 annually from current income. The first donor may be making grants from a fund that contains several hundred thousand dollars. The second donor may be making an annual gift that closely reflects their available cash flow. Identical gifts do not necessarily reflect identical capacity.
Yet many charities continue to evaluate both donors in much the same way.
The Moneyball Mistake
Michael Lewis's Moneyball chronicled how Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics challenged many of baseball's conventional assumptions about talent. For decades, teams relied upon a familiar collection of observations and statistics to evaluate players. The system wasn't irrational, but it was deeply entrenched. Scouts and executives became accustomed to looking at performance in a particular way and, as a result, many stopped questioning whether they were measuring the right things.
Beane's insight was not that baseball lacked talented players. It was that the market was often looking in the wrong place. Valuable players were hiding in plain sight because everyone was focused on the same metrics. By asking different questions and examining different data, the Athletics discovered opportunities that other teams routinely overlooked.
Charities may be making a similar mistake with donor-advised fund holders.
The traditional fundraising metric is a donor's giving history. A donor who grants $5,000 annually is viewed as a $5,000 donor. A donor who grants $25,000 annually is viewed as a $25,000 donor. Campaign projections, stewardship plans, and future expectations are often built around those figures.
The problem is that a donor's grant history may tell us what they have done without telling us what they are capable of doing.
For many donor-advised fund holders, the annual grant amount may simply reflect a decision made years ago and repeated ever since. Yet charities frequently treat that historical figure as though it represents current philanthropic capacity. In Moneyball, teams were evaluating players using statistics that only partially reflected their value. With donor-advised funds, charities may be evaluating donors using numbers that only partially reflect the charitable resources available to them.
The more revealing question is not how much emerged from the fund last year. The more revealing question may be how much remains within it and what circumstances would motivate the donor to deploy it.
The Habit of Giving
Part of the reason this issue goes unnoticed is that donor-advised funds lend themselves to routine behaviour. Once a granting pattern is established, there is little incentive to revisit it. A donor creates a recurring grant, reviews it occasionally, and continues supporting organizations they care about. Years can pass without a significant reassessment of either the amount being granted or the balance remaining in the fund.
There is nothing inherently problematic about this. Consistent support provides stability for charitable organizations, and many donors appreciate the simplicity and discipline that donor-advised funds create.
The more interesting question is whether recurring grants always represent an intentional decision about how much should be given.
In some cases, they undoubtedly do. In others, they may simply reflect habit.
Any organization that has undertaken a thoughtful donor review process has seen evidence of this phenomenon. Donors often continue making the same contribution year after year despite significant changes in their financial circumstances, personal priorities, or charitable objectives. In the absence of a compelling reason to revisit a decision, people frequently continue doing what they did last year.
Donor-advised funds are not immune from this tendency. In fact, they may amplify it. The donor has already completed the difficult part of the process by contributing assets to the fund. Future granting decisions can become administrative rather than strategic. Grants are renewed, favourite charities continue receiving support, and substantial charitable balances may remain invested simply because nobody has provided a compelling reason to do otherwise.
The Lesson Behind #HalfMyDAF
This observation helps explain why the American #HalfMyDAF initiative has attracted so much attention. The program encourages donor-advised fund holders to distribute at least half of the assets held within their funds and has used matching incentives to encourage increased granting. Since its launch in 2020, participants have helped move more than $97 million from donor-advised funds to charitable organizations, and organizers frequently describe the initiative as providing the nudge many donors needed to accelerate their giving.
What makes the initiative noteworthy is not simply the amount distributed. Rather, it is the behavioural lesson it provides.
If substantial sums can remain within donor-advised funds for extended periods, and if a relatively simple challenge can motivate meaningful increases in granting activity, then it suggests that many philanthropic decisions are not constrained by a lack of generosity. The charitable capital already exists. What may be missing is a sufficiently compelling reason to deploy it.
This should be of particular interest to charities.
Fundraisers often spend considerable time identifying prospective donors with capacity. DAF holders represent a category of supporters where at least some portion of that work has already been done. The assets have been earmarked for charity. The donor has demonstrated philanthropic intent. The remaining question is often one of timing, prioritization, and perceived impact.
Unfortunately, many organizations rarely explore those issues in any meaningful way.
The Questions We Should Be Asking
Conversations with donor-advised fund holders frequently focus on grants that have already occurred rather than grants that could occur. Staff members thank donors for their support, provide updates on recent activities, and communicate future funding needs. These activities are important, but they do little to illuminate how the donor thinks about the assets remaining in the fund.
A more productive line of inquiry might focus on questions such as how the donor approaches charitable decision-making, whether they intend to spend down the fund during their lifetime, what circumstances might justify a substantially larger grant, and how they determine which opportunities deserve accelerated support.
Answers to those questions can reveal information that traditional wealth screening cannot.
More importantly, they can reveal opportunities that would otherwise remain hidden.
An organization seeking support for a major initiative may discover that a donor's annual granting history dramatically understates the resources available for philanthropy. Another may learn that a donor has been searching for a transformational opportunity but has yet to encounter a case compelling enough to justify a significant distribution from their fund.
In both cases, the limiting factor is not financial capacity. It is the quality of the conversation.
Looking Beyond the Grant
As donor-advised funds continue to grow, charities may need to rethink what it means to understand a donor. Knowing the amount of last year's grant is useful, but it is rarely the most important piece of information. Equally important is understanding how much charitable capital remains available, how the donor hopes to use it, and what circumstances might motivate them to act.
The lesson of the #HalfMyDAF movement is not that every donor should necessarily distribute half of their fund. Rather, it is that large reservoirs of charitable capital may be far more responsive than many organizations assume. The right opportunity, presented at the right moment and connected to a clear and compelling outcome, can cause donors to revisit decisions that may have been operating on autopilot for years.
For charities, the implication is straightforward. You cannot ask for resources that you do not know exist. If we define donors exclusively by the size of their most recent grant, we risk overlooking the charitable capital sitting just beyond our line of sight. The annual grant may be the number recorded in the database, but it is not necessarily the number that defines the opportunity.
A well-known proverb observes that a closed mouth doesn't get fed. The fundraising equivalent might be that a charity cannot invite a donor into a larger vision if it never discovers that the capacity for a larger gift exists in the first place.
The most important question may not be how much a donor granted last year. It may be how much charitable capital they are prepared to put to work when they encounter a cause they consider impossible to ignore.
Charity Spotlight
In July, through our Grow for Change project, we published two interviews that profiled Canadian charities that are making a difference. All episodes are available in video format on YouTube or in an audio-only format through Spotify. Listen now to learn more about the great work these groups are leading.
It's a long way from being a small theatre troupe touring Saskatchewan to becoming Canada’s only professional theatre in the round. But I guess that why Regina's The Globe Theatre is a pioneer. Dedicated teams of permanent, part-time, freelance, and volunteer workers have been bringing theatre to Regina and the surrounding communities every year since 1966.
The Rwandan Canadian Healing Centre (RCHC) is a registered nonprofit organisation founded in 2018. RCHC provides an environment for Rwandan Canadians and other members of Canadian society to overcome traumatic experiences from genocides, wars, and other catastrophes. They serve as a multidimensional PTSD Research Centre for the purposes of healing, education, research and advocacy.
Required Reading
A curated collection of articles and books meant to inspire you.
Blink by author Malcolm Gladwell has been described as a “book about thinking”. He draws on neuroscience and psychology to explore how humans make decisions. It’s a book about how decisions are made—in the blink of an eye—and what that process may not be as simple as it seems.
A lot of my articles contain references to literature and pop culture. Many don’t know that I once worked in academic publishing; combinatorial mathematics, to be precise. Paul Hoffman’s book about Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, is a nice read and it explores ways that we connect and keep track of how we connect to others.
Craig Swistun is Portfolio Manager with Lexicon Financial Group (www.lexiconfinancialgroup.com) at Raymond James Investment Counsel.
The opinions expressed are those of Craig Swistun and not necessarily those of Raymond James Investment Counsel which is a subsidiary of Raymond James Ltd. Statistics and factual data and other information presented are from sources believed to be reliable but their accuracy cannot be guaranteed. It is furnished on the basis and understanding that Raymond James is to be under no liability whatsoever in respect thereof. It is for information purposes only and is not to be construed as an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of securities. Raymond James advisors are not tax advisors and we recommend that clients seek independent advice from a professional advisor on tax-related matters.
There is no relationship between Raymond James Investment Counsel and either The Globe Theatre or Rwandan Canadian Healing Centre. Participation is at the viewers discretion. Images were created using Adobe Firefly.
