“Five years have come, and five years have gone, and still we stand together as one.”
Five years ago, on September 30, 2021, I told a story. It was a story about my children, and a simple tradition at their school to help teach children to give. I also asked a simple question: could technology play a role in helping people be more generous?
Daffy was born.
It was a bit of a silly name, which is an acronym for our tagline, the Donor-Advised Fund for You™. But it was based on a very serious idea that the same behavioral research that has helped millions of people save for critical financial goals like retirement also applied to giving.
Today, it’s remarkable to see what Daffy has become.
Our members have come together around one of the simplest and most enduring ideas: everyone should put something aside for those less fortunate than themselves. And it's been inspiring to see so many people embrace that idea.
In March, we celebrated hitting $1 billion in charitable assets. In May, we celebrated hitting 100,000 donations. And now, on our fifth birthday, we can announce that, together, Daffy members have not only put aside more than $2 billion for charity, but the platform has already sent out over $500 million in donations.
Celebrating $2 Billion in Charitable Assets
It would have been impossible to predict the incredible growth and impact of the Daffy platform five years ago. What launched as a simple way for people to put aside a few dollars weekly or monthly for charity now serves members across the entire wealth spectrum.
A huge part of this story is the growth of stock and stock-based compensation at both public and private companies. That's the change Daffy was built to meet. We built it from the ground up to make it as simple as possible for members to put money aside for charity, in any way they want, whenever it is convenient for them.
Over $800M has been contributed to Daffy in the first nine months of 2026 alone, and over $675M of those contributions have been in either public, private, or restricted stock.
Is that really surprising? The wealth creation in public markets over the past few years has been incredible, and the multi-decade trend of growth in the private markets has been even more astounding.
When Daffy launched its private stock platform in 2024, our strong belief was that it was incumbent on us to ensure that some of that wealth creation was put aside for charity.
Then, in 2025, we gave every Daffy member unprecedented flexibility to recommend how public stock is held or sold in their DAF, with the belief that this would drive even more people to set more aside for charity.
This year, we announced support for stock-based employer matching on our Daffy for Work platform, enabling companies to match contributions with cash, public stock, or private stock.
We are always going to look at every new technology and ask the question:
“How can we use this to help people be more generous, more often?”
Giving is Human, but Technology Can Help Us Be More Generous
We all lead busy lives, and it is all too easy for daily to-do lists to fill our days. Too often, this means not enough time to think about what gives our lives meaning, and how we engage with greater concerns beyond our own needs.
Technology can give us back that time.
I have long believed that the best products are built based on old ideas. Technology may change, but people stay fundamentally the same. For thousands of years, across religions and cultures, generosity has been treated as a fundamental part of what it means to live a good life.
But it’s one thing to believe in an idea, and another to see it alive in the world.
We now have real data that shows that technology can make people more generous. Cohort by cohort, Daffy members give more and more over time.
AI Will Transform Giving
When we launched Daffy five years ago, ChatGPT had not yet launched, which shows how quickly technology can transform our daily lives. We believe AI will also transform giving.
Unsurprisingly, most of the philanthropic sector is focused on capturing wealth being created from the AI sector. That makes sense. Most of our competitors still base their business model on charging fees on the assets they hold, and as a result, they will always chase dollars.
Hundreds of billions of dollars will likely flow to philanthropy over the next decade from AI employees and investors, in part because these companies are taking a more proactive approach to giving than previous generations.
At the same time, the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities is creating a sense of much-needed urgency about the needs of people impacted by that change. Not surprisingly, Daffy has proven exceptionally popular with the people building the next generation of AI platforms and services.
At Daffy, however, we think the biggest impact AI will have on philanthropy is on giving itself.
When we launched five years ago, we knew there was intrinsic value in building a modern technology platform, from the ground up, dedicated to giving. What we didn’t realize was that we weren’t just building it for our members, but also for the agents that our members increasingly trust for advice and depend on for execution.
It's now largely accepted that most of the activity on the internet will not be driven directly by people, but by agents recommending and executing actions on their behalf. That’s why we announced our MCP platform earlier this week, ensuring that as more and more advice and execution moves to AI services, Daffy will be there to help them understand how to give.
There is some irony in the idea that in our quest to create artificial intelligence, we may have created the tools to bring more humanity into all of our lives.
Giving is human, but AI can and will make us more generous.
The Next Five Years
Wealth keeps taking new forms, and giving should be able to keep up. The donor-advised fund is the perfect platform to meet the moment. Daffy can now accept over 300 crypto assets, 2,500+ public stocks, 10,000+ ETFs, and private stock from over 1,000 unicorns. If our members want to donate, we’re here to help.
It took Daffy a little more than a year to reach $20M in charitable assets. Now, five years later with more than $2 billion in charitable assets, Daffy is over 100x larger.
We believe platforms like Daffy can expand giving by trillions of dollars. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world that care, and there are millions of organizations who need their support. Technology has the unique potential to now make this possible.
But it all starts with a single step. A simple commitment.
Take a few seconds to put something, anything, aside for charity. Income is volatile and variable, but our commitments and beliefs are consistent. Daffy helps bridge that gap.
Daffy is the Donor-Advised Fund for You™
Join us.