Accept DAF donations with Fundraise Up

DAFpay is now available in the Fundraise Up online donation experience

Donors already give through card, Apple Pay, Venmo, and bank transfer inside Fundraise Up checkout. DAFpay is the next option in that list — not a link to a separate page, not a widget bolted onto a "more ways to give" section, not a redirect that drops the donor outside your donation flow. A payment method, sitting where the other payment methods sit, at the moment the donor is already reaching for their wallet.

When a donor selects DAFpay, they complete the grant recommendation right there. Fundraise Up captures their identity, their campaign, and their gift intent during that flow — and every one of those details lands in the same donor record as their credit card gifts, their recurring gifts, and everything else they've ever given you.

One donor. One record. Every giving method.

DAFpay powered by Chariot is the technology connecting a donor's DAF sponsor to your checkout is DAFpay, built by our partner Chariot — the standard for electronic DAF grant initiation. Chariot handles the mechanics: linking to Fidelity Charitable, DAFgiving360, Vanguard Charitable, and other sponsors, so a donor can recommend a grant in a few clicks instead of logging into a separate portal. Fundraise Up brings that capability inside checkout and adds the donor record, campaign attribution, and CRM sync so the gift Chariot executes and the gift your team can actually report on are the same gift.

The rise of DAF giving

Donor-advised funds are becoming more democratized as a giving vehicle for major donors. According to the DAF Fundraising Report 2026:

• 3.56 million DAF accounts in the U.S. — a record high
• $326.45 billion in total DAF assets, up 27.5% year-over-year
• $89.64 billion contributed to DAFs in 2024, up 37.3%
• $64.89 billion granted to charities from DAFs, up 19%
• 25.3% payout rate — DAF donors distribute funds well above the 5% floor required of private foundations
• 10x average size: when a donor uses their DAF, average gift size increases by 10x

Sponsors have also dropped the barrier to entry to almost nothing. Minimum balances near zero. Minimum grants as low as $18 at some providers. The result: DAF holders aren't only retirees with financial advisors anymore. Tech-sector wealth, donors in their 40s and 50s, and everyday supporters who never thought of themselves as "DAF people" are opening funds and looking for somewhere to send them.

Somewhere being the key word. If your checkout doesn't offer DAFpay as an option, that money doesn't disappear — it goes to the nonprofit that made it easy to give.

What changes when a DAF payment option lives inside checkout

See the full donor data behind every DAF gift. Today, a DAF gift that gets processed outside your platform arrives as a check from a fund name, weeks after the donor decided to give. With DAF in checkout, identity can be captured during the giving flow — not after, not eventually, during. Your team can start stewardship the same week instead of the same quarter.

The gift stops living in a different system. No need to link out to your ways to give page. No export-and-match routine between a DAF widget and your CRM. The donation record, the campaign attribution, and the donor profile all sit in the same place they'd sit if the donor had used a card.

The attribution stops breaking. Every DAF gift carries the same campaign and source data as every other donation. Reporting adds up because nothing had to be manually reconstructed to make it add up.

The DAF giving experience

Here's what happens, step by step — because understanding the mechanics tells you more than a list of caveats ever could.

1. The donor picks DAFpay at checkout. They search for their sponsor — Fidelity Charitable, DAFgiving360 (formerly known as Schwab Charitable), Vanguard Charitable, or another — and complete the grant recommendation through the embedded DAFpay experience, without being redirected away from checkout.
2. The DAFpay donation recommendation is instantly submitted, and Fundraise Up creates the donation record immediately: Pending status, full donor identity, campaign attribution already attached.
3. Grants are reviewed, approved, and disbursed as normal. Since DAF assets have already been committed to charity, there is a short administrative review window from the sponsor to release the funds.
4. Funds arrive as normal from the sponsor. Not through Fundraise Up. This is the one structural difference from every other payment method in your checkout: Fundraise Up captures the gift and every detail attached to it, but the money itself never passes through the platform.
5. Your organization confirms the grant in your Chariot dashboard: everything — donor, campaign, designation, status — syncs to Fundraise Up and your CRM from there.

Now with DAFpay, the identity, the attribution, and the record now live where the rest of your donation data lives.

New to donor-advised funds?

If you're still getting oriented on what a DAF actually is, how the tax deduction timing works, and why your year-end campaign playbook needs to look different for DAF donors, start with The nonprofit guide to donor-advised funds and year-end giving.

Come back here when you're ready to talk about what happens at checkout.

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