Give Me Some Slack: Donor Advised Fund Granting During Crises

In 2020, the philanthropic sector faced unprecedented demands as it responded to the global pandemic and urgent calls for racial and social justice. Early evidence indicated that US-based donors using donor advised funds (DAFs) responded to those demands by increasing grantmaking. This article uses the concept of organizational slack to explain how and why DAFs allow donors to respond to emergent needs. We apply the concept of slack to the DAF context, creating a conceptual framework that explains variation in DAF giving patterns. We hypothesized that a DAF’s size, number of prior grantees, previous payout rates, contribution frequency, and endowment status predict the amount of slack a donor will have in their DAF to grant to emergent needs. We found that DAF accounts that were larger, had lower payout rates, received frequent contributions, and were non-endowed gave more in 2020. Fundraisers should especially target DAFs with these characteristics during crises.