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A version of this article first appeared in CNBC's Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Strong stock market returns and tax reform gave a boost to charitable giving in 2025, according to DAFgiving360, one of the largest administrators of donor-advised funds.
The organization reported that its donors granted a record $9.9 billion to charities in 2025, an increase of $2.2 billion, or 28%, from the prior year.
Donors can contribute cash or assets to donor-advised funds, or DAFs, and get an immediate tax deduction before they decide how to distribute their gift to charities. For donors who want to offload appreciated assets without paying capital gains tax, it's much simpler to give stock or other non-cash assets to a DAF than directly to a nonprofit. Until the donor-advised fund makes grants to charities, the assets continue to appreciate.
Julie Sunwoo, president of DAFgiving360, told CNBC that a record 74% of contributions last year were made in the form of non-cash assets, including ETFs, index funds, real estate and cryptocurrency.
"If you have things like appreciated assets or things that are difficult to liquidate, DAFs really excel at helping people do that, put it into a portfolio, and then develop a real plan around how they want to make it out to charity and take their time," she said.
Sunwoo credited much of the surge to the passage of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, which reduced several tax benefits for high-income donors starting in 2026.
Many lawyers and tax advisors to the wealthy counseled clients last year to ramp up their charitable giving in order to take advantage of expiring tax benefits. For top earners, the effective tax benefit of charitable giving has been cut from 37% to 35%. The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy estimated last year this cap alone will reduce giving by $4.1 billion to approximately $6.1 billion annually.
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In addition, the bill limited tax incentives for itemizers, who will only be able to deduct donations in excess of 0.5% of their adjusted gross income. For instance, a taxpayer with $2 million in income would receive no tax benefit for their first $10,000 in annual giving, according to tax planner David Perez.
Perez said he advised clients to fund their DAFs with 3 to 5 years worth of contributions before the tax changes took effect. Once the DAF is loaded up, they can still spread out their donations to charities over several years.
He said he expects the tax law changes to continue to shift donors away from checkbook philanthropy. For instance, DAFs cannot be used to buy tickets to galas or charitable events, which would be partially deductible if the taxpayer bought it directly from a charity, according to Perez. And while DAFs are convenient to set up, recommending a grant from your DAF takes more time and effort than writing a check, he said.
"If they truly want to do it the right way, which is through their donor-advised fund, now they have to go through that entity or vehicle to contribute," he said. "They're gonna start thinking, 'Do I want to go through the trouble of doing this?'"
