Where Canada's donor-advised money actually sits
205 Canadian charities sponsor donor-advised funds. This page maps every one of them, using the numbers each charity filed with the Canada Revenue Agency.
The 15 largest DAF programs in Canada
Donor-advised fund assets, latest filing. Click a bar for the full profile.
Who got the most money to charities
DAF grants disbursed to charities, latest filing. Click a bar for the full profile.
These 15 sponsors moved $1.46B of the $2.00B granted out: 73% of everything that reached charities.
DAF assets by province
Where the money is held
DAF assets by sponsor type
As classified by WellFunded
Rankings
Pick a measure. The province and type filters above apply here too.
Donations received into donor-advised funds during the latest fiscal year.
Does admin shrink with scale?
Median management & admin as a share of total revenue, by DAF program size
Whole-charity figures, for charities with $1M+ in revenue. Larger sponsors run leaner as a share of what flows through them.
Reading these numbers
What the T3010 can and cannot tell you
DAF figures (assets, accounts, donations in, grants out) describe only the donor-advised fund program, so they compare cleanly across all 205 sponsors.
Figures marked whole charity cover everything the charity does. A hospital foundation's admin spend pays for far more than its DAF program. Compare like with like: use the type filter to rank gift funds against gift funds, or community foundations against each other.
Every view on this page has its own link. Filter it the way you want, copy the URL, and it will open the same way for whoever you send it to.
Every DAF sponsor in Canada
205 sponsors · click any column to sort · click a row for the full profile · missing something? Email us
| Sponsor | Type | Accounts | DAF assets▼ | Avg fund | Donations in | Grants out | Fund holder payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal / La Fondation Communautaire Juive de MontréalQC | Community foundation | 2,445 | $2.52B | $1.0M | $437M | $237M | 9.4% |
| Charitable Gift Funds Canada Foundation / Fonds de Bienfaisance CanadaON | Bank affiliatedRBC, BMO | 3,306 | $2.43B | $736K | $619M | $216M | 8.9% |
| The Winnipeg FoundationMB | Community foundation | 971 | $1.09B | $1.1M | $34.3M | $60.5M | 5.5% |
| Private Giving FoundationON | Bank affiliatedTD | 1,956 | $972M | $497K | $195M | $132M | 13.6% |
| Jewish Foundation of Greater TorontoON | Community foundation | 1,516 | $888M | $585K | $144M | $62.3M | 7.0% |
| Aqueduct FoundationBC | Bank affiliatedScotia | 645 | $840M | $1.3M | $89.8M | $78.7M | 9.4% |
| BenefAction FoundationON | Wholesale infrastructure | 1,438 | $792M | $551K | $257M | $80.9M | 10.2% |
| CHIMP: Charitable Impact Foundation (Canada)BC | Online native | 13,769 | $713M | $52K | $168M | $133M | 18.6% |
| The Calgary FoundationAB | Community foundation | 685 | $637M | $930K | $64.7M | $45.8M | 7.2% |
| Strategic Charitable Giving FoundationON | Wealth-firm affiliatedMackenzie, IG Wealth, Canada Life | 3,386 | $510M | $151K | $58.5M | $32.9M | 6.4% |
| Brookfield Partners FoundationON | Public & private foundationsBrookfield Corporation | 17 | $414M | $24.4M | $107M | $69.2M | 16.7% |
| Vancouver FoundationBC | Community foundation | 1,031 | $409M | $396K | $26.9M | $38.5M | 9.4% |
| Morris and Rosalind Goodman Family Foundation / Fondation de la Famille Morris et Rosalind GoodmanQC | Public & private foundations | 203 | $378M | $1.9M | $53.1M | $16.9M | 4.5% |
| Nicola Wealth Private Giving FoundationBC | Wealth-firm affiliatedNicola Wealth | 567 | $365M | $643K | $50.5M | $39.5M | 10.8% |
| Canada GivesON | Wholesale infrastructure | 339 | $332M | $979K | $58.0M | $35.3M | 10.6% |
| Université LavalQC | Public & private foundations | 894 | $299M | $334K | $33.0M | $29.3M | 9.8% |
| Abundance CanadaMB | Faith-affiliatedMennonite Community | 1,513 | $270M | $178K | $60.3M | $55.4M | 20.5% |
| Toronto FoundationON | Community foundation | 742 | $204M | $276K | $26.1M | $22.8M | 11.2% |
| Fondation Philantra Philantra FoundationQC | Bank affiliatedNational Bank | 165 | $181M | $1.1M | $62.7M | $11.1M | 6.1% |
| The Edmonton Community Foundation Priv ActAB | Community foundation | 481 | $175M | $364K | $8.1M | $6.5M | 3.7% |
| Hamilton Community FoundationON | Community foundation | 83 | $158M | $1.9M | $5.8M | $6.2M | 4.0% |
| The Victoria FoundationBC | Community foundation | 299 | $153M | $512K | $9.1M | $9.5M | 6.2% |
| Ottawa Community Foundation / Fondation Communautaire d'OttawaON | Community foundation | 504 | $141M | $279K | $20.8M | $23.3M | 16.5% |
| Waterloo Region Community FoundationON | Community foundation | 428 | $130M | $303K | $6.1M | $7.5M | 5.8% |
| Oakville Community FoundationON | Community foundation | 311 | $108M | $348K | $18.1M | $4.9M | 4.5% |
What is a donor-advised fund?
A donor-advised fund, or DAF, is a charitable giving account held inside a registered charity called a sponsor. A donor contributes cash or securities, receives a donation receipt right away, and then recommends grants from the account to charities over time. The sponsor legally owns the money, invests it, and handles the disbursements.
DAFs are now one of the fastest-growing ways Canadians give. Community foundations, faith-affiliated foundations, bank programs, and a newer wave of online-native platforms all sponsor them. What has been hard to see, until now, is where that money sits, how much flows in each year, and how much actually reaches charities.
Every registered charity reports this on its T3010 information return. This page pulls together the latest filing from every active charity that reported sponsoring donor-advised funds with at least ten fund accounts.
The eight kinds of DAF sponsor
- Community foundation.
- Place-based public foundations serving the donors and charities of a city or region.
- Online native.
- Digital-first platforms built around an online giving account, like Charitable Impact and GiveWise.
- Bank affiliated.
- DAF programs offered through a bank’s wealth-management arm, like TD, RBC, BMO, and Scotiabank.
- Wealth-firm affiliated.
- Programs run by or for independent wealth-management firms, like Nicola Wealth and Raymond James.
- Wholesale infrastructure.
- Back-office sponsors that power giving programs for advisors and families, like Benefaction and Canada Gives.
- Faith-affiliated.
- Sponsors rooted in a faith community or tradition, from Abundance Canada to local congregations.
- Causal DAF.
- Mission-first sponsors organized around a cause area, like MakeWay.
- Public & private foundations.
- Hospitals, universities, United Ways, and other foundations that also sponsor donor-advised funds.
Methodology & source
Data comes from CRA T3010 Registered Charity Information Return filings. The page includes every active registered charity that reported holding donor-advised funds (line 5860) with at least ten fund accounts, using each charity's latest filing (fiscal years ending in 2024 or 2025). Monetary values are whole Canadian dollars as filed. A blank line on a charity's return appears here as a dash.
Fund holder payout is calculated as DAF disbursements divided by DAF assets in the same filing (T3010 lines 5864 and 5862). It describes how fast fund holders moved money out of their accounts, and it is not the CRA disbursement quota, which is a legal minimum calculated for the charity as a whole on a different base. Rates above 100% usually indicate a flow-through fund that grants money out faster than it holds it. Sponsor types and affiliations are assigned by WellFunded from each charity's filings and public information, and may not reflect how an organization describes itself.
Fund holder payout reflects different giving models, not just different effort. Endowment-model sponsors, including most community foundations, typically grant near a 4–5% spending policy so the fund lasts forever. Flow-through sponsors aim to move money quickly. That is why each profile compares a sponsor to the median for its own type as well as the national median.
Spot an error, or missing something? Email us and we'll look at it.
The money is here. Moving it well is the hard part.
WellFunded builds the rails that DAF sponsors, foundations, and advisors use to verify charities and get grants where they're meant to go. If you steward any of the $17.3billion on this page, we'd love to show you what thoughtful disbursement looks like.