Flexible by Design: How Donor-Advised Funds Empower Smarter, Global Giving

Philanthropy is most impactful when it’s thoughtful, efficient, and aligned with your long-term goals.  Around the world, donors are seeking ways to maximize impact while navigating cross-border tax structures, diverse asset types, and long-term charitable giving.  

In our recent webinar, Flexible by Design: Planned Giving Built on a DAF, TrustBridge Global Foundation’s leadership explored how donor-advised funds (DAFs) can serve as a flexible platform—much like a Swiss Army knife—for solving intricate charitable planning challenges. Just as a Swiss Army knife equips its user with multiple tools in one compact form, a DAF brings together a range of capabilities in a single structure, enabling donors to navigate different tax environments, contribute various asset types, and support charities across borders with ease. 

TrustBridge Global CEO Bob Collins shared a helpful framework when thinking about planned giving: your resources ultimately flow into three areas—personal use, taxes, and charitable giving. Strategic planned giving enables greater generosity when the right structures are in place, making it possible to shift potential tax liabilities to greater giving towards causes donors care deeply about. 

“When donors understand how their gifts interact with taxes, assets, and timing, they often discover they can give far more than they imagined—without increasing their personal cost,” said Bob. 

This is where DAF comes in. 

A Platform Built for Possibility 

Donor-advised funds have evolved into one of the fastest-growing philanthropic tools worldwide. In the United States alone, charitable assets held in DAFs rose to $251.52 billion in 2023, while grants flowing from DAFs to nonprofits totaled $54.77 billion—highlighting that donors are increasingly relying on DAFs to support causes they care about. 

Jim Rich, Vice President at TrustBridge Global, likens DAF to a Swiss Army Knife, a collection of various tools designed to solve a range of different problems. One might think that a DAF can only accept cash, but it can also receive publicly traded securities, private company shares, real estate interests, and art and nontraditional assets.  

“Many different types of assets could be donated into a donor-advised fund and leveraged for more giving than you thought was possible. And one of the other very interesting things about DAF is that it's a collection point for giving that can be distributed to many charities,” shared Jim.  

Making Taxes Work for Your Giving 

Another key insight from the webinar was the tax coefficient of giving, which helps donors understand how to give more to charities at a lower personal cost. It illustrates how much it actually costs to give one dollar to charity and how thoughtful planning can lower that cost and help take your generosity farther. A coefficient of 1.0 means the donor spends Sfr 1 for every Sfr 1 that the charity gets. The lower the coefficient, the better. 

For example, a donor in Canada wants to contribute the equivalent of CAD 100,000 of publicly traded stock to charity. If they sell the stock first and then donate the cash, they must pay tax on the gain. After taxes, the charity receives only CAD 78,600, and the donor ends up spending more out of pocket. But if the donor gives the stock directly to a DAF, something very different happens. The charity receives the full CAD 100,000, while the donor avoids capital gains tax, and the actual cost drops significantly. 

This principle applies across many countries. Tax-efficient strategies built on a DAF can help donors multiply their impact in different ways. Donors who file taxes in the U.S. and U.K. can benefit from dual tax relief structures, allowing a single gift to generate deductions in both countries. In countries like New Zealand, refundable tax credits can turn the same out-of-pocket cost into a much larger charitable outcome. And in countries where estate or donation taxes apply, structured giving allows more resources to go toward charities rather than tax obligations. 

A donor-advised fund brings these opportunities together in one place. It can receive a variety of asset types, support grants to charities around the world, and simplify the cross-border compliance that often complicates global giving. In this way, DAFs enable generosity today while supporting thoughtful planning for the future. 

A Global Approach to Global Giving 

As charitable priorities increasingly extend across countries, donors need tools that work across borders. Through DAF, donors can meet this need, making it easier for generosity to move internationally and enable donors to support causes wherever they are. 

Since 2017, TrustBridge Global Foundation has worked within this landscape, helping donors grant more than SFr  500 million to charities in over 100 countries and territories.  

Through this work, we’ve seen how flexible giving tools can remove barriers and help generosity move more freely. 

If you’re exploring ways to elevate your giving, whether through international tax coordination, complex assets, or long-term planning, our team is here to help you design an approach that reflects your goals and magnifies your impact.