The Origin Story

In our first episode we will begin pulling back the layers of the DAF controversy by looking first at the origin story. Who created the modern donor advised fund and why? The answer might surprise you. 

Links from episode:

DAF Research Collaborative Report

Idle Treasure is sponsored by the Center for Financial Discipleship.

Transcript

Asking The Right Question

Speaker 1 0:00

I think that your question of why uh money stays in a DAF is a good question to ask. And I know this, if you don't ask the right question, you can never get the right answer.

Speaker 4 0:11

Why are there billions of dollars accumulating in donor advice funds? And how should Christians be responding to the amount of charitable assets waiting to be deployed? In today's episode, we'll begin pulling back the layers of the DAF controversy by looking first at the origin story. Who created the modern donor advice fund and why? The answer might surprise you. Let's get ready.

Speaker 3 0:51

Struggle into stuff by one day I'll make it.

Host Introduction And Shock At DAFs

Speaker 4 1:05

I'm your host, Courtney Markley, and I'll admit, when I first heard how much money was in DAFs, I was shocked. But it led me on a journey to discover what really lies beneath this number. Some Christians say there isn't a problem. Others are frustrated by the amount of charitable assets not getting deployed. But this story isn't just about donor advised funds. It is about you and me. This is a story about how our culture has shaped the way Christians behave with money. It's a story about the goodness of wealth and the weight of responsibility we feel to steward at wealth. It's a story about the vulnerable reasons why we often keep money to ourselves. And it's about the opportunity of a moment. Journey with me as we seek the answer. How should Christians respond to this idle treasure? Let's begin with the setup. It was February 2025, and I was attending a conference along with about 2,500 Christian financial advisors. On the first day of the conference, I went to a breakout session with a friend, not knowing the bomb that was about to be dropped in my lap. Halfway through the session, the speaker began doing a QA and asked the audience what they wanted to talk about. My friend turned to me and she whispered, I want to know why nobody is talking about the $250 billion sitting in donor advised funds. This was my first time hearing anything about money accumulating in DAFs, and I wasn't sure what she was even talking about. Now, just for the record, I am not an advisor. I don't manage money for anyone or sell any financial products. I'm a financial counselor. My days are full of helping people understand why they behave with money the way that they do. So I focus more heavily on the spiritual and the emotional components to money and less on the practical side of things. So at the beginning of 2025, I could say I knew the bare minimum about donor advice

Cultural Roots Of Christian Giving

Speaker 4 3:20

funds. We'll also call these DAFs. I knew they were common tools used for giving, but I wasn't sure how they worked, and I had never really heard about the assets that had accumulated in them. I found it to be very curious, and like my friend, I wondered why it didn't appear to be a concern of others. I let our conversation marinate for another month, and then in March 2025, the government announced their plans to close 83% of USAID programs, which meant eliminating nearly $76 billion of funding to foreign aid. As I observed people's reactions to this decision, again the theme of DAFs came up. Many people began to ask: is now the time for Christians to step in and help? Should we be deploying more funds to those suffering around the world? At that point, my curiosity couldn't be silenced anymore. I wanted to learn more about DAFs. I wanted to hear from industry experts to understand what really lies beneath that $250 billion number. I wanted to learn what false assumptions we might have. What questions should we be asking to get a holistic view of what's really going on? I wanted to talk to trusted voices in Christian ministry to discern how God's people should be responding to the wealth that has been designated for charity but has yet to be deployed. I spent a year interviewing experts, and overwhelmingly the response I received was, yes, this is a problem. But I also felt a deep conviction that the real problem may not be the obvious one. This podcast isn't simply about donor advice funds. It is about you and me and the elephant in the room. Christians give less today than they did during the Great Depression. It's simply become normal for people not to live generously. And I have to wonder, could our lack of giving be a sign that something greater is going on? As we lean into the conversation, I invite you to set aside

Conference Moment And $250B

Speaker 4 5:20

any assumptions you may have about DAFs or giving or even the Christian walk. This is a deep, complex problem rich with nuance and controversy. This topic is not a simple two-sided coin with right or wrong answers. It's more like a Rubik's Cube with twists and turns and new things to explore each time you pick it up. So as we lean into the controversy, I want to remind you that judgment and curiosity do not coexist. Let's remain curious about the problem. This is where we learn compassion and empathy. It's how we show love to our neighbors and it's how we ultimately ensure God remains honored in this work. In today's episode, we're going to take a closer look at the origin story of donor advice funds. But before we go there, let's define a few key words. You may be asking yourself, what is a donor advice fund? Let's turn to Kendra VanderMeulen, CEO of National Christian Foundation, for a simple definition.

Speaker 6:25

It's an account that you can have that when you put money into it, you're setting that money aside for charity as a and you can never do anything else with it. You can't have it back, right? So it's you're giving it away. And as a result, you get a tax deduction at that moment for the money that you put in your donor advice fund because you've given it away, you can't get it back. It's only can go to charity, right? And then in that account, it can grow tax-free if you have if you leave it for any length of time. And then you can recommend to the donor advice fund sponsor where you want the grants to go. And you can do that over time. Um, you can set up recurring grants that go out every month for you, every week, or whatever you want. So it's a very easy like savings account for your charity that

USAID Cuts And Rising Urgency

Speaker 7:16

has like automatic bill pay on the other end, right? That sends sends money out to charities. That's what a donor advised fund is. Now it's because it exists, you can do many, many more things with it than what I just said, but that's what it is in its simplest form.

Speaker 4 7:31

So a donor advised fund in its simplest form is a charitable bank account designed to help you simplify major gifts and save money on taxes. It's also important to know that anyone can open a donor advice fund. It's a much simpler process than establishing a private foundation. And usually there are no minimum requirements to get started. We'll explore the different ways people use DAFs, the benefits, and more of these details in our next episode. For now, let's start to wade into where the tension exists within DAFs. As Kendra mentioned, when you put money into a donor advice fund, you are technically designating that money for charity. So you receive a tax break as an added benefit. Now, the majority of service providers who manage donor advice funds get paid through an assets under management model, which simply means the more money you manage, the more money you get paid. So there's an interesting system in place where DAF users are financially incentivized to put money into their account. And the service provider is financially incentivized to keep the money in the account. But no one is incentivized to actually deploy the funds to charity. And this is what some people call the DAF dilemma. It's important to note that when I began this project in 2025, the latest data available showed there were $250 billion in donor advice funds. Since then, those numbers have increased to over $325 billion. The amount in DAFs is continuing to accumulate, so as you listen to this podcast, I'd encourage you to look up the most recent numbers. You can find these in the Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative. I'll include a link in the show notes. On one hand, many Christian financial advisors and other DAF service providers are frustrated

Is The Real Problem Us

Speaker 4 9:20

by the growing amount of money in donor advice funds. They want to see these resources given away. One advisor I spoke with summed up this tension really well. In a private conversation, he vulnerably shared. At the end of my career, I want to know I did something more than help people build bigger barns. On the other hand, many earnest Christians look at the billions of dollars in DAFs and don't see a problem. When they think about DAFs, they think about large business assets being held in donor advice funds with intentional giving plans spanning decades and families passing down a legacy of giving. For these folks, DAFs are functioning exactly how they were intended to, and it is expected to see large numbers associated with DAFs. Through all my research, I found there are a multitude of reasons why people store money in a donor advised fund. Now, some may be legitimate and some may not be. We'll explore these reasons more in later episodes, but for today, it is important for our story to start at the beginning with three guys named Terry Parker, Ronald Blue, and Larry Burkett. You may recognize these names as the founding fathers of the Christian financial industry, but you may not know that these three men helped create and launch the Modern Donor Advice Fund. Journey with me as we gain an understanding of why DAFs were created in the first place, what problems existed at the time, and how DAFs eventually grew in popularity. Let's start with Terry Parker. When a friend introduced me to Terry, she called him Mr. DAF because it was Terry who, in 1982, applied for a private letter ruling from the IRS asking them to pre-approve what would later become known as the Modern Donor Advice Fund. At the time, Terry was a tax lawyer in Atlanta and he was growing frustrated because the local foundations in his area would not grant to evangelical organizations.

Defining Donor-Advised Funds

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Many of Terry's clients were Christian, and they wanted a foundation that would allow them to grant money to their local church, and the current system would not allow them to do so.

Speaker 11:34

The donor advice fund construct has been around since the 1930s. This is Kendra again. Our founder, Terry Parker, did not feel that those solutions were actually providing for the needs of the kinds of givers that we serve, Christian givers. And as a tax lawyer, he had a lot of experience with litigating before the IRS and really felt it was important to make friends with the IRS as opposed to trying to buck them. So in fall of 1982, he filed for a private letter ruling from the IRS, which he received talking about the desire to operate an organization that sponsored donor advice funds and helped givers give through a Christian perspective. So that's how National Christian Foundation was born 43 years ago.

Speaker 4 12:28

Terry was known to his clients as a problem solver. If they wanted to use a community foundation to grant to evangelical causes, Terry was the man to make it happen.

Speaker 1 12:39

There was no problem that it was too big for Terry.

Speaker 4 12:43

This is Ronald Blue. Ron has been spreading the message of biblical financial wisdom for over four decades. He's the founder of the Ron Blue Institute, Blue Co., Blue Trust, Kingdom Advisors, and he's the co-founder of the National Christian Foundation. You may recognize Ron from one of his books on personal finance. He's written over 20 of them.

Speaker 1 13:06

He's so knowledgeable, and as an attorney, he's incredibly creative. And it says he's the he's the perfect type of attorney when you say, This is my problem, can you help me? And he's he said, certainly.

Speaker 4 13:21

So in 1982, Terry simultaneously founded the National Christian Foundation, applied for the private letter ruling, and began creating a pathway for his clients to have more of a say in how their giving dollars could be used. National Christian Foundation, at its start, was a small

The DAF Dilemma Of Incentives

Speaker 4 13:40

organization that ran out of Terry's desk drawer for about 10 years. Its board members, which included Terry, Ron Blue, and Larry Burkett, were the main users. Ron Blue, who we heard from a moment ago, was busy growing a Christian financial advising firm, the first of its kind, Ronald Blue and Company, which still exists today as Blue Trust. Larry Burkett hosted a popular radio show focusing on Christian financial counseling. In his lifetime, he wrote over 70 books, now with over 11 million copies sold. Larry also planted the roots to some of the most influential stewardship ministries that still exist today. Terry was handling the legal side. Ron began utilizing DAFs with his clients, and Larry used his platform to help champion the use of Christian community foundations. And the three friends continued building momentum through the 90s.

Speaker 1 14:35

Through the rest of that decade, we were the primary users. Ronald Blue Company was the primary users of National Christian Foundation. And we had one part-time employee at the foundation. Mary Carroll's her name. And uh Mary Carroll officed in our office, and she was a part-time employee, and she was the only employee. She would write the checks and I would sign the checks because that's all she had to do was walk down the hall and I would sign the checks that were the donor checks.

Speaker 4 15:07

More people began catching the vision and came to National Christian Foundation asking for guidance to set up foundations within their local cities, and the idea continued to grow.

Speaker 1 15:17

But when Terry began talking about leaving the law firm and going full-time, my response to him was uh this thing will be big, Terry.

Speaker 4 15:31

The widespread use of donor advice funds continued gaining momentum through National Christian Foundation until eventually they were approached by major financial institutions like Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, and more, all

Numbers Surge And Data Sources

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wanting to learn from Terry. The group began meeting regularly to form an industry standard called DAF Best Practices and eventually shared those best practices with Congress. The regulations Terry helped set in place have remained essentially the same until now. With the controversy around DAFs, more people are beginning to propose regulation changes. I think it's important to start the conversation here with Terry, Ron, and Larry. They lit a spark that caught fire, and the results have been billions of dollars given to charity. National Christian Foundation alone has granted over $21 billion since its conception in 1982, and it now has over 350 team members serving in more than 30 offices around the country.

Speaker 1 16:51

So my original vision, I see that as evidence that uh uh God did something that we would not have anticipated. It's kind

Why Some See No Problem

Speaker 1 17:04

of the the biblical parallel is the mustard seed.

Speaker 4 17:08

The scope of what Ron, Terry, and Larry accomplished didn't end with donor advised funds.

Speaker 1 17:14

The whole area of wealth management from a biblical perspective has matured into a legitimate subset of the wealth management world that that does have significance. It's out of control, which is the way it should be.

Speaker 4 17:31

I'll admit, when I was speaking to Ron, a part of me felt very humbled, like a child who learns for the first time what his parents had to sacrifice in order for him to be successful. I want to take a moment to acknowledge that without people like Ron and Terry and Larry, the Christian financial industry wouldn't be nearly what it is today. That financial conference I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the one with over 2,500 advisors. Yeah, that was started up by Ron and Larry. It's impossible to calculate the widespread influence that these three men have had on the generosity movement. It's about God showing up in such a way that it completely disrupted the financial industry as we knew it. It's a story about faith. With the debate about donor advice funds, I have to wonder, are we asking the right questions?

Enter Terry Parker, Ron Blue, Larry Burkett

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We are living in a world where three friends, with a unified heart for Jesus and a vision to see goodness spread, created a system for philanthropy to thrive. Is the system broken, like so many claim? Should we be putting stricter regulations in place so DAF users will deploy more funds? Is that the solution? Or perhaps we need to take a look at ourselves. If three guys can establish an entirely new market for Christians in the financial space, what could a few thousand people do with a few billion dollars? Do Christians really lack regulations? Or do they lack vision? Now, this is not an isolated issue. There may be billions of dollars in donor advised funds, but there's trillions of dollars in private foundations. But let's not stop there. Let's think about the countless amount of money currently stockpiled in our own personal bank accounts and investment portfolios. What does it say about our faith when God's people are content with the suffering around the world? It seems. As long as we ourselves remain unaffected. DAFs, foundations, personal savings accounts, it's all the same conversation. What causes us not to give? Perhaps we need a reminder why donor advised funds began in the first place, with Terry.

Speaker 20:05

He wanted to teach people how to align their giving with scripture. He also wanted them to be able to discover the journey of generosity and find the joy that's in giving. So Terry from the beginning, it was about, remember, I said it was about aligning giving the biblical principles, and at the core of the biblical principles is the reason that we give because God gave. This is all about stewarding heart issues long before you're stewarding money issues.

Speaker 4 20:35

There is a bigger story here, and we're going to examine it from many angles. By narrowing in on DAFs, it gives us some guardrails to push up against. But the giving patterns are similar no matter what vehicle you're examining. I'll say this. While working on this project, I have often felt like I'm walking a tightrope. On one hand, I don't want to offend anyone. I know there are a lot of amazing people promoting DAFs and the generosity that can flow from them. On the other hand, I want to speak boldly and challenge a generation of Christians who appear to have forgotten what it means to pick up your cross and follow Jesus with everything you have. There are many people currently lamenting the church in the West. We could look at our lack of giving and what it represents and say we are a people who have lost their way. Like the ancient Israelites wandering through the desert, we have forgotten who we are, and we have forgotten whose we are. We have forgotten that we serve a God who warns us where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And for many of us, our treasure just might be stuck in a DAF.

Speaker 2 21:54

Do not lay up for yourselves, treasures

The 1982 IRS Ruling And NCF Birth

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on her. Destroy with thieves breaking and steal. Well I hear Lord, but I still want more. I want an estate for a rainy day, stocks and bonds in real estate, security beyond what I heard you say. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also what your measure is. It'll measure you also what you really want will be given to you someday.

Speaker 4 22:51

Thank you for listening to Idle Treasure. Special thanks to Ron Blue and Kendra Vandermulen. Our closing song is Where Your Treasure Is by John Guerra. Tune in next week as we ask the question: Are these numbers right? We'll explore statistics and dive deeper into the numbers that lie behind the daft dilemma.

Speaker 2 23:13

Who you gonna serve? Everybody gotta serve, gotta serve somebody. Who you gonna serve? Everybody gotta serve, got our money. No one can serve two masters. If you hate the one, then you love the other. If you love the one, then you hate the other. Who you gonna serve? Everybody gotta serve, gotta serve somebody. Who you gonna serve? Everybody gotta serve, got our money. No one can serve two masters. If you hate the one, then you love the other. If you love the one, then you hate the other. If you hate the one, then you love the other. If you love the one, then you hate the other.