We traced every DAF grant in Canada. Here's where the money goes.

Canada's donor-advised funds grant $2.2 billion a year.

That's 157 DAF sponsors, 53,070 grants and 21,472 charities. About one in four registered charities in the country hears from a DAF in a given year.

Until now, you couldn't see where that money went. It sits in CRA filings, one charity at a time, in a format almost nobody reads. So we read all of it, mapped every grant, and put it in one place you can explore for free.

See the dashboard →

A few numbers stopped me.

278 grants carried 41% of the money

Half of all grants from DAF sponsors are under $5,000, and they reach charities everywhere.

Then there are the grants of $1 million or more. There are 278 of them, 0.5% of all grants, and together they moved as much money as the smallest 51,852 grants combined.

It's two economies running side by side. A wide one, where tens of thousands of charities get a few thousand dollars. And a deep one, where a few hundred cheques do most of the moving.

The money mostly stays home

68% of DAF dollars stay in the province where the sponsor is based. Quebec DAFs give about 80% of their money within the province.

If you're a charity, that's useful to know. The DAFs most likely to fund you are the ones down the street, not the ones on the other side of the country. Those relationships are worth your time.

Size matters more than cause

Charities with more than $25 million in revenue are 4% of DAF recipients. They receive 39% of the dollars. Charities under $500,000 are nearly half of all recipients and receive 8%.

Religion shows the same shape from the other side. Religious charities are a quarter of all recipients and receive 15% of the money: many small gifts to many congregations.

None of this is wrong. Large institutions run large programs, and donors give where they have relationships. But it's worth seeing clearly, because it shapes who can count on this money and who can't.

Money also flows into DAFs, not just out

A question I get frequently is whether DAF money leaks out to private foundations. The filings say the traffic mostly runs the other way. Private foundations granted $440 million into DAF sponsors, close to four times what DAFs sent to them.

Some of it is likely foundations meeting their disbursement quota through a DAF. Some may be families winding down a private foundation altogether. We'll dig into which in a future post.

Why this matters to me

When you can see how capital moves, you can build better systems around it.

If most giving flows to charities that are already well resourced, we can ask why, and decide whether we want to build systems that help some of it reach smaller organisations. We might not. But that should be a choice, not an accident.

If most DAF money stays in its home province, a charity can spend its time where it counts.

If you run a DAF, the bigger picture helps you advise your donors better. You can see what's normal, what's shifting, and where your fund sits next to its peers.

More data leads to better infrastructure. Better infrastructure leads to better collaboration, better giving and, over time, a stronger social safety net.

It starts with making this kind of information free and open.

That's why WellFunded exists. We build the systems that make Canadian giving more connected and better informed. This dashboard is one small piece of that, and it's yours to use.

What's next

This is part two of four on DAFs, and after that we'll move on to standalone foundations and more.

• Part three, early November: the DAF sponsors themselves and how the $18.6 billion they hold is invested.
• Part four, mid November: the charity side, with a lookup for any charity in Canada.

Explore the dashboard and tell me what stands out to you.

See where the $2.2 billion goes →

All figures come from each DAF sponsor's most recent CRA filing (T3010 and the T1236 gift list). CanadaHelps' DAF arm is left out: it's a DAF at law, but it works as a giving platform, with $175 million a year passing through accounts that hold $28 million. The full method is at the bottom of the dashboard.