Donor Advised Fund (DAF) Calculator

A donor advised fund (DAF) is a giving account you fund now, take the tax deduction for immediately, and then recommend grants out of over time. The money is irrevocably charity's, but you keep control over which organizations receive it and when. Funding one with appreciated securities instead of cash is the classic move: donate the stock directly and skip the capital gains tax you'd owe selling it yourself, while still deducting the full fair market value.

This calculator compares that DAF strategy against the alternative most people default to: selling the securities, paying the capital gains tax, and giving the after-tax cash outright, so you can see exactly what funding a DAF with stock instead of cash is worth.

How does this calculator work?

Enter the fair market value and cost basis of the securities you're considering contributing, and how many years you want to project the fund's growth and grants.

Set your AGI and marginal tax rate: contributions of appreciated securities to a DAF are capped at 30% of AGI per year (60% for cash), with any unused deduction carrying forward for up to 5 additional years before it expires unused. The calculator models that carryforward for both the DAF and cash-outright paths.

Set an investment return rate for the DAF's invested balance and an annual grant payout rate (DAFs have no IRS-mandated minimum payout, unlike a private foundation's 5%), and the calculator projects the balance, grants, and cumulative tax savings year by year.

Worked example

Contributing $100,000 of stock with a $30,000 cost basis to a DAF, versus selling it and giving the after-tax cash, at a $300,000 AGI, 35% marginal rate, 6% DAF growth, and a 10% annual grant payout.

Capital gain if sold directly

$70,000

Capital gains tax avoided by donating stock

$10,500

DAF deduction (year 1 / year 2 carryforward)

$90,000 + $10,000 = $100,000 total

Cash path: net after-tax gift

$89,500

Cash path: tax savings

$31,325

Year 1 grant to charity (10% of $100,000)

$10,000

How the numbers work

Selling the stock yourself would realize a $70,000 gain ($100,000 minus $30,000 basis) and trigger capital gains tax on it. Donating the stock directly to the DAF instead means the DAF sells it tax-free, so that $10,500 in capital gains tax simply doesn't happen.

The full $100,000 deduction is capped at 30% of your $300,000 AGI ($90,000) in year one, with the remaining $10,000 carrying forward and used in year two. All of it gets used, just spread across two tax years instead of one.

Had you sold the stock and given cash instead, you'd only have $89,500 left to donate after capital gains tax. And since cash gifts are capped at 60% of AGI, you'd have gotten the full deduction in a single year, but on a smaller amount.

Donating appreciated stock directly to a DAF beats selling and giving cash whenever there's meaningful embedded gain: you deduct the full pre-tax value while the capital gains tax simply disappears, rather than shrinking the gift and the deduction both.

The trade-off is the AGI cap: a large stock gift relative to your income may take a year or two of carryforward to fully deduct, versus a smaller cash gift's higher 60%-of-AGI ceiling. Model both here before deciding which asset to give.

For larger or more structured gifts, a charitable remainder trust pays you income while leaving charity the remainder, its annuity-trust variant pays a fixed sum instead, and a charitable lead trust reverses the order to pay charity first. A plain charitable deduction covers an ordinary gift, and your marginal tax bracket sets what any of them is worth.