Donor-Advised Funds: An Overview Using IRS Data

Abstract

For nearly a decade, the Statistics of Income Division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been the primary source of data on donor advised funds (DAFs) sponsored by nonprofit charitable organizations tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The data, from stratified random samples, show that the number and size of DAF sponsoring organizations has grown substantially since Tax Year 2006. Some 2,121 sponsoring organizations reported nearly $53 billion in DAF accounts for Tax Year 2012. The largest DAF sponsors each held over $1 billion in accounts; meanwhile, about 60 percent of the organizations reported less than $1 million. Though the median DAF payout rate was 7.2 percent for Tax Year 2012, nearly 22 percent of the sponsoring organizations reported no grants made from their DAF accounts. In each year for which statistics have been collected by the IRS, sponsoring organizations have received aggregate contributions in excess of aggregate grants paid. Despite challenges in data collection and analysis, SOI is committed to remaining the best source of data for this important part of the nonprofit sector.