In 1979, Emory University received a gift that would shape the institution for decades. Robert Woodruff and his brother George, the family behind Coca-Cola’s rise as a global force, donated 3 million shares of Coca-Cola stock, worth about $105 million at the time, then the largest single gift to any university in American history.
What happened next wasn’t just generosity. It was compounding.
Emory didn’t sell all the stock. They held a large position for decades, selling enough to fund new scholarships and programs. By 1996, Emory held 37 million shares worth $1.8 billion, driven by Coca-Cola’s extraordinary bull run. Over time, that single stock gift became one of the most well-known endowment stories in higher education.
A single stock gift, held over time, can fund and reshape an entire institution.
But why can’t individuals take this same approach to fund the charitable organizations they want to provide ongoing support to?
With Daffy, now they can.
Custom Liquidation: A Better Way to Donate Stock
For most of the history of donor-advised funds, the answer to that question has been simple and unsatisfying. When you donate stock to a DAF, the provider typically liquidates it immediately. No holding. No gradual sale.
Now, of course, if you have a professional financial advisor and an account over $5 million, a handful of traditional providers like Fidelity Charitable and DAFgiving360 will hold donated stock for a short period of time. But even for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, the process is limited and cumbersome. No technology or feature support, just a bespoke service executed manually. For everyone else, the Emory model is essentially out of reach.
That's what Daffy set out to change in 2025 with Custom Liquidation.
With Custom Liquidation, Daffy members can make a recommendation on when and how to liquidate the stock they contribute, donating when it makes sense from a tax perspective, while still allowing future gains to benefit the charities they support. Members can recommend that the shares be held for a period of time, sold gradually, or liquidated immediately.
For the first time, the kind of thoughtful, long-term stock giving that was once reserved for major institutional donors is available to anyone. The Woodruffs didn't have a donor-advised fund. But if they had, this is exactly what it would have looked like.
The Next Level: Liquidate to Donate
Since releasing the feature, we've seen an incredible response from our members with over $30 million in stock set aside with custom liquidation recommendations, including shares of GOOG, TSLA, HOOD, FIG, and NVDA.
Launching new features is always illuminating. Before launch, you rely on research and theory to guide design. But once you are live, members show you (and tell you) what they want from the feature.
One of the most common things we saw our members do is donate stock with a recommendation to hold it, and then contact us to recommend a liquidation when they wanted to make a donation. But they didn’t recommend liquidating all of it — just enough to fund their immediate giving needs.
One member contributed a significant position in Nvidia (Ticker: NVDA) and recommended that 20% be sold and reinvested in a diversified portfolio, so it was available for their planned giving for the upcoming year. Another donated Alphabet (Ticker: GOOG) and recommended liquidating a portion of the shares to fund a donation to their child’s school.
So we did what we always do. We got to work adding this capability to the platform.
Today, a new type of recommendation is now live: partial liquidation. Daffy members can not only make new recommendations on the platform for any stock held in their donor-advised fund, but they can also recommend selling any fraction of the shares to fund their current giving plans.
This isn't a feature for a specific kind of donor. It's for anyone who has ever contributed stock to their DAF, chosen to hold it, and then faced a moment where they wanted to give.
Hold Stock For the Long Term. Give When Inspired.
When you've earned equity over years, watched it grow, and held through volatility, selling isn't just a transaction. People want to give, but they don't always want to part with something they believe in.
At Daffy, our mission is to help people be more generous, more often. We believe that by making it simpler for people to donate stock without immediate liquidation, more people will donate stock, more often. Given the popularity of custom liquidation, the evidence seems to support our belief.
At Daffy, we’ve seen a clear pattern: deciding how much to set aside for giving often flows from your financial strategy. But the act of giving itself? That’s rarely planned. It’s driven by moments.
Members can now set stock aside for charity anytime it is convenient for them, and have the peace of mind knowing that some of that stock can be available for donation whenever they are inspired to give.
That's what Emory understood in 1979, even if they never had a name for it. While the Coca-Cola stock grew from $105 million to $1.8 billion, grants kept flowing. The endowment funded the university's growth: new faculty, new programs, a massive scholarship program, new buildings, and more. The stock kept growing — and the giving never stopped.
For the first time, that same approach is available to everyone. Not just institutions with billions in assets and teams of financial professionals. Anyone who has stock they believe in, and causes they care about.
If you're looking to put shares from your investments or your employer aside for the causes and organizations you care about, with the confidence that the growth from those shares will help fund your donations for years to come, Daffy is here to help.
Daffy is The Donor-Advised Fund for You™.