By Richard H. Levey

Four major donor-advised fund managers oversaw distributions of more than $26.9 billion during their most recent fiscal years. With only rare exceptions, major metrics — total amounts given, number of funders, average grants — increased from the previous year.

Fidelity Charitable-assisted funders granted $11.8 billion to charity during 2023, up from $11.2 billion for 2022. More than 322,000 donors made contributions to nearly 199,000 nonprofits, up from just under 304,000 and 189,000, respectively. Funders made 2.3 million individual grants, compared with 2.2 million in the previous year.

Not every metric increased. The average grant size facilitated by Fidelity Charitable was $4,625, down a tick from $4,798 in 2022. In both 2022 and 2023 accountholders gave an average of 11.8 grants. And in both years, 63% of the grants were unrestricted.

Among Fidelity Charitable funders, the most popular recipients based on number of grants (but not dollars allotted) were, in order, Doctors Without Borders USA; St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; American Red Cross; The Salvation Army; and Habitat for Humanity. Religion, human services and education topped the list of types of nonprofits supported by Fidelity Charitable funders, followed by health, international affairs, society benefit, environment and animals and arts and culture.

Schwab Charitable funders allocated $6.6 billion during its fiscal year 2024 (the 12 months prior to June 30, 2024), surpassing the organization’s previous high of $5 billion during the previous fiscal year. Donors supported more than 141,000 charities, up from more than 120,000 during fiscal year 2023. During fiscal year 2023, seven in 10 donors made grants to charities they had not previously supported, and 79% of donors issued grants to nonprofits they had previous supported. More than one third (36%) of grants were automatically recurring, and nearly three quarters (72%) of these grants were unrestricted, more or less in line with the previous year.

Schwab Charitable-spurred contributions to religious entities made up the single largest nonprofit recipient category, at 28%, followed by human service (17%), education (11%), health (10%), public and societal benefit (10%), international and foreign affairs (8%), environmental and animals (9% and arts, culture and humanities (7%) organizations.

Schwab Charitable funders often kept their largesse local. Nearly nine in 10 (87%) of donors made at least one grant to nonprofits within their state of residence.

Donor-advised fund participants who use the National Philanthropic Trust (NPT) granted $5.49 billion to 41,217 qualified charitable organizations during its fiscal year 2024 (July 2023 through June 2024), as previously reported in The NonProfit Times (https://bit.ly/3N170dK). While the total amount given increased from fiscal year 2023, when the NPT coordinated $4.52 billion in grants to 36,361 nonprofits, the amount given is off from a $6.41 billion high seen in FY 2021, when COVID-19-related nonprofits demonstrated significant need.

Between FY 2023 and FY 2024, the number of grants made increased from 107,000 to 129,000. While the organization did not provide hard numbers, during FY 2023 NPT leaders reported unrestricted gifts made up “the majority of grants” and FY 2024 unrestricted grants were “almost half of all NPT grantmaking,”

Vanguard Charitable FY 2024 (July 2023-June 2024) distributed more than $3 billion during its fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2024. That figure marks a 45% gain over the previous fiscal year, when distributions topped $2 billion for the first time. As part of its disbursements, the DAF coordinated a record $1 billion grants to 13,000 nonprofits through its Grant Payments with PayPal solution.

Giving in response to an experience or unexpected circumstances continued the trend of annual increases of around 24% the fund has seen during the past decade. In all, funders made more than 222,000 grants to just under 60,000 nonprofits during FY 2024, up from 195,000 grants made to more than 53,000 nonprofits a year earlier.

Human services, religion and education held the top-three positions as causes supported in 2024 as they did in 2023. The five nonprofits that received the highest number of individual grants were Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and CRU (Campus Crusade for Christ).

The post Top 4 DAFs Distributed $27 Billion To Nonprofits appeared first on The NonProfit Times.

Source From Non Profit Times