Tech donors are an increasingly vital source of philanthropic capital. To reach them, what you need is a clear account of what a dollar buys, an honest read on what it changes, and the right giving vehicle. This playbook covers all of them.
Compiled for nonprofit development and program teamsPublished September 2026
Before you start: this is not tax advice
This research provides general educational information for US nonprofit fundraising teams. daoflo is an AI-native agency that helps mission-driven organizations with their brand strategy, communications and AI strategy and adoption. We do not provide tax, legal, accounting or investment advice, and nothing here is a recommendation for any particular donor or transaction. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances. Use this to understand the shape of the conversation, and send the specifics to a qualified advisor.
Short on time? Start here
Four things fundraising teams actually come here to do. Each one links to the section that covers it, so you can take the piece you need and leave the rest for later.
Who you are writing to, what they are actually listening for, and the evidence that they fund plenty of work with no technology in it.
Know the donor · 01
How tech donors think
Three patterns we see often in donors who work in software, hardware, product or data. Treat them as working hypotheses to test against your own file, not as established traits of a demographic: your giving history and the interests your donors have actually shown will beat any generalization on this page.
01 · Causes over symptoms
Scalable systemic solutions over operational relief
Tech donors perceive societal problems as systemic inefficiencies—coordination failures or broken feedback loops—rather than isolated misfortunes. They reject linear, high-depletion expenditures like emergency supplies, which address symptoms but not root causes. Instead, they prioritize initiatives that permanently lower operational friction and reduce costs over time.
What this means for your ask
"We need $50,000 to keep the pantry stocked through winter" answers a different question than the one they are asking. Say what keeps sending people to the pantry, what your program does about that, and what would still be true next winter if the gift lands.
02 · Cost per outcome
They want one number, and they want it defended
Aggregate budgets tend to land poorly. What works is a per-unit figure: what one outcome costs you today, what it would cost after the investment, and how you know the difference is real rather than selection effects.
The number that most often goes wrong
Cost per participant is not cost per outcome. If 100 people enroll at $2,000 each and 60 finish, your cost per completion is $3,333. And if 20 of those 60 would have finished anyway, your cost per additional completion is higher still. Section 09 works through this.
03 · Contribution before capital
They are willing to help before being solicited
Many tech professionals define themselves by what they can fix. Our experience is that being approached first as a wallet puts them off, and being asked for judgment on a real problem opens the door. The gift may or may not follow, so treat the conversation as worth having on its own terms.
What to actually ask them for
Not a hackathon. Ask them to pressure-test your cost model, poke holes in your scale plan, look at whether your outcome data actually supports your claim, or tell you what they would want to see before funding this. Those are 30-minute conversations that a senior engineer or product manager is genuinely good at.
The most common mistake: assuming they only fund technology
Development teams often conclude that reaching tech donors means proposing an app. The opposite is closer to true. People who build software for a living have sharp instincts against unnecessary software, and an app for a soup kitchen reads to them as a warning sign, not a signal of sophistication. What travels is not the technology. It is the reasoning.
Know the donor · 02
What they actually fund
Four examples of non-technical work that has attracted significant technology-sector money. What they share is an unusually clear account of what a unit costs and how it is verified.
Direct cash transfers
GiveDirectly moves money to people in poverty with minimal intermediation and has published randomized controlled trials on the results. The pitch is that fewer steps between donor and recipient means less loss, and that the claim is testable.
Nets are physical objects handed to households. GiveWell estimates roughly $4 to $6 per net, and somewhere between about $3,000 and $8,000 to avert a death in the places it funds, as of its December 2023 analysis. The range is part of the credibility, not a weakness in it.
Housing supply advocacy attracts tech money because a single zoning or permitting change can affect housing production for decades at a cost far below building units directly. Be careful with the arithmetic here: the honest version names the specific rule, the jurisdiction and the plausible range, not a multiplier.
Long-horizon human support
Programs supporting youth leaving foster care draw on the Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2013 cost-avoidance work, which estimated roughly $8 billion in avoidable societal cost per annual cohort. Useful context. Not a number you can claim your program recovers.
Every figure above belongs to someone else's program in someone else's context. Quoting them tells a donor you have read the field. It does not tell them what your program costs or achieves, and a donor who works in analytics will notice immediately if you blur the two. Cite other people's evidence as background. Put your own numbers, with your own caveats, in the ask.
And a caution about this whole guide: measurable outcomes are one good reason to give, not the only one. Immediate relief, dignity, long relationships, and the knowledge a community holds about itself are legitimate reasons too, and some of the most important work resists a unit cost entirely. If a number would misrepresent your work, do not manufacture one. Say plainly what you do and why it matters.
Part two · Sections 03 to 06
Follow the money
How a stacked gift is actually assembled, what the 2026 tax changes did to it, and why the arithmetic differs by state. The estimator comes last, once the pieces it models make sense.
Follow the money · 03
The capital stack
Three sources sit behind most large gifts from tech employees. Each has its own paperwork, timing and failure mode.
Source 01 · Money already set aside
Donor-advised funds (DAFs)
A DAF is a charitable account. The donor contributes, takes the deduction at that moment, and recommends grants out of it later. The 2025 Annual DAF Report, covering fiscal 2024, puts DAF assets at $327.87 billion across 3.59 million accounts, with $64.60 billion granted out and a payout rate of 25.2%. The report is now published by the Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative, which took it over from the National Philanthropic Trust for this edition.
Why DAF gifts run larger
The money is already committed to charity and the deduction is already taken, so it is not competing with a household budget. Chariot reports average DAF gifts of about $1,100 against about $204 for credit card gifts in one nonprofit's data, and the DAF Fundraising Report puts DAF gifts at roughly twenty times the size of non-DAF gifts.
Appreciated shares, which is not the same as new RSUs
Equity can represent a significant share of compensation at senior levels in tech, which makes shares a realistic gift for donors who would otherwise give cash. A donor who has held shares more than a year and gives them directly avoids the capital gains tax a sale would trigger, and can generally deduct the full fair market value, up to 30% of AGI.
The distinction that matters
RSUs are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, and the resulting shares generally begin with a basis equal to their value at vesting. Freshly vested shares therefore have little built-in gain, and donating them does not reverse the income already recognized. A gift of shares held a year or less can still avoid realizing the gain, but the deduction is generally limited to basis rather than market value. Shares held more than a year can generally qualify for a fair market value deduction, subject to the usual limits. So ask which lot the donor is considering and when it vested or was acquired.
The failure mode
Organizations lose these gifts by not being ready to receive them. If your brokerage transfer instructions are not published somewhere a donor can find them in under a minute in late December, the gift becomes cash or does not happen. This is the cheapest fix in this entire guide.
Large tech employers match employee gifts, commonly one to one. Figures widely reported at the time of writing include Microsoft to $15,000 a year, Disney to $25,000, Google and Apple to $10,000, and Salesforce to $5,000. Treat each as an example to confirm with the employer rather than a fact to quote to a donor: caps, ratios and eligibility change, and our sources are third-party databases rather than the companies themselves. Double the Donation's current data has about 92% of surveyed companies offering some form of gift matching, with participation ranging from roughly 12% to 40% depending on how generous the cap is, and estimates $4 billion to $7 billion going unclaimed each year.
Volunteer grants, in proportion
Microsoft and Apple pay about $25 an hour for employee volunteer time, Google about $10, and Salesforce gives 56 hours of paid volunteer time rather than a cash grant. Real money, but a full day of volunteering yields $80 to $200. Treat it as a relationship on-ramp, not a funding line.
A DAF grant is not a new deduction. The donor deducted the money when they funded the account, sometimes years earlier. Never tell a DAF donor their grant is deductible. It is not, and saying so damages your credibility with exactly the donor you were trying to impress.
Many employers will not match a DAF grant. Policies genuinely split. Bank of America and CarMax exclude DAF gifts outright. American Express, Chevron, Dow and Edwards Lifesciences allow them. Look up the specific employer rather than assuming the layers stack.
Pledges and event tickets need care. DAF funds should not pay any part of an event ticket or membership that lets the donor or a related person attend or receive benefits, including the portion that would have been deductible had the donor paid personally. Pledges are more nuanced than the flat prohibition you will often read: IRS Notice 2017-73 sets out conditions under which a sponsor may make a grant that happens to satisfy a donor's pledge, and sponsors differ on whether they will. The practical move is to avoid framing a DAF ask as a binding pledge at all, and to check the sponsor's own policy before December.
Follow the money · 04
What changed for 2026
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed federal charitable deduction rules for tax years beginning in 2026. Three of those changes land directly on the donors this guide is about, and a lot of fundraising material still in circulation was written before them.
Change 01
A 0.5% floor for itemizers
Itemizers can now only deduct charitable contributions above 0.5% of adjusted gross income. A donor with $300,000 of AGI deducts only the portion of their total giving above $1,500.
Why it matters to you
The floor applies once to everything a donor gives in a year, not separately to each organization. Splitting $4,000 across eight charities deducts exactly the same as concentrating it in two, so this is not an argument for being one of fewer recipients. What it does change is timing: a donor who gives a similar amount every year clears the floor every year, while one who combines two or three years of giving into a single year clears it once and loses less. Expect more donors to bunch, and be ready to accept a larger gift in an on year.
Change 02
A 35% cap on deduction value
For taxpayers in the top 37% bracket, the value of itemized deductions is capped at 35 cents on the dollar. Where a gift produces a usable deduction after the floor and the AGI limits, that moves $1,000 of giving from $370 of value to $350. It is not the outcome for every top-bracket donor.
Why it matters to you
This is precisely the donor most tech-donor material targets. The tax argument for giving got slightly weaker for the highest earners in 2026. It did not disappear, and the capital gains argument for giving appreciated shares is untouched, but the framing needs updating.
Change 03
A new deduction for non-itemizers
Donors who take the standard deduction can now deduct up to $1,000 (single) or $2,000 (married filing jointly) in cash gifts. Most Americans do not itemize, so this is a genuinely new incentive.
Why it matters to you
It excludes contributions to donor-advised fund sponsors. For your smaller and mid-level donors, this is an argument for giving to you directly rather than routing through a DAF, which cuts against the DAF-first advice you will read everywhere, including in section 06 of this guide.
What did not change
Gifts of long-term appreciated securities still avoid capital gains tax entirely and are still deductible at fair market value, subject to the 30% of AGI limit for capital gain property with a five-year carryforward. The 60% of AGI limit for cash gifts to public charities was made permanent. Shares held one year or less are still deductible only up to cost basis, which is why holding period is the first question to ask about any stock gift.
Most tech philanthropy material is written from California and quietly assumes California rates. If your donor is in Seattle, Austin or Chicago, the arithmetic is different, and in one case the standard DAF advice is actively wrong.
Two separate benefits that people constantly conflate
Giving appreciated stock produces two distinct advantages, and states treat them differently. Avoiding capital gains tax depends on whether the state taxes capital gains at all. Claiming a charitable deduction depends on whether the state allows one. A state can do one and not the other. Illinois taxes the gain but gives no charitable deduction. Texas does neither.
So a donor in a state with no individual income tax still benefits from giving appreciated shares rather than selling them first. The state layer is simply zero, and the size of the federal layer depends on that donor's own long-term capital gains bracket and whether the net investment income tax applies in their circumstances. Do not quote them a combined rate borrowed from a California example.
Approximate top marginal state rates on long-term capital gains and state charitable deduction treatment, as of September 2026. Top marginal rates apply only at high income levels and will not apply to every donor. Use the donor’s actual rate, and verify current rates before using any of this with a donor.
State
Taxes capital gains
State charitable deduction
What to know
California
Up to 13.3%
Yes
Capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. The 13.3% top rate applies only at very high taxable income, so it will not apply to every donor. Use the donor’s actual bracket, which cannot be inferred from the size of their gift.
Washington
7%, then 9.9% above $1M of gain, and only on a sale
Restricted
No income tax. The capital gains tax applies to a sale or exchange, and only to gains above an annual standard deduction ($278,000 for 2025, indexed). Donors below that threshold owe no Washington capital gains tax. Tiered above it: 7%, then 9.9% only on gain above $1 million. See the warning below.
New York
Up to 10.9%
Yes, limited
The deduction is phased down at higher incomes.
Massachusetts
5%, plus a 4% surtax above roughly $1M
Yes
The charitable deduction is available whether or not the donor itemizes federally, and the state calculation does not apply the federal section 68 limitation. Percentage limits on what is deductible are a separate matter from an income phase-down.
Oregon
Up to 9.9%
Yes
Relevant for Portland-area donors at Intel, Nike and adjacent employers.
Colorado
4.4% flat
Yes
Denver and Boulder have a growing tech base and a low flat rate, so the state layer is small.
New Jersey
Up to 10.75%
No
Taxes the gain, allows no state charitable deduction. The capital gains bypass still works. The deduction argument does not.
Illinois
4.95% flat
No
Same pattern as New Jersey. Relevant for Chicago donors.
Pennsylvania
3.07% flat
No
Low rate and no deduction, so the state layer is close to irrelevant.
Texas, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, Wyoming and others
None
Not applicable
No state income tax, so the whole benefit is federal and there is no state deduction to describe. Quote the donor’s own federal rate rather than a combined figure borrowed from a California example.
Washington deserves its own warning, because Seattle is a major tech donor market
Two different mechanisms, often confused. The first is that giving shares away is not a sale, so it triggers no Washington capital gains tax at all. That is true regardless of where the recipient sits. The second is the state's charitable deduction, which a donor claims against gains they realized elsewhere, and which applies only to gifts to organizations "principally directed or managed within Washington." National donor-advised fund sponsors such as Fidelity Charitable, DAFgiving360 (formerly Schwab Charitable) and Vanguard Charitable generally do not meet that second test. A national DAF failing the deduction test does not undo the first point.
That deduction is also narrower than most summaries suggest. For 2025 it applied only to donations above $278,000 and was capped at $111,000. Both figures are indexed, so confirm the current year's numbers rather than reusing these.
And a donor whose annual gains fall below the standard deduction owes no Washington capital gains tax at all. If you are courting Microsoft or Amazon employees, raise the question rather than assuming either way, and leave the answer to the donor's advisor.
A number of states offer no broad, generally available charitable deduction, including several that do tax income: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia. That is not the same as no benefit at all. Targeted credits for approved organizations or programs often still exist, and they can be worth more than a deduction: Indiana has no general charitable deduction but its Neighborhood Assistance Program offers a credit of up to 50% of an eligible contribution. If you operate in one of these states, check whether your organization or program qualifies for a credit before telling donors there is nothing.
Follow the money · 06
The gift leverage estimator
Two things are going on in a stacked year-end gift, and it helps to keep them apart. The first is what actually arrives in your account. The second is why a non-cash gift is attractive to the donor. This tool shows both, separately, with the assumptions on the surface.
Modeled total$10,000
The gift
Currently 20% basis, so 80% of the value is unrealized gain. Shares bought recently have a high basis and a small gain. Early equity has a low basis and a large one. Assumes the shares have been held more than one year, which is what makes the full fair market value deductible.
Use the donor's actual long-term capital gains rate rather than assuming one. It depends on their taxable income and filing status.
Washington taxes long-term gains only above an annual standard deduction ($278,000 for 2025, indexed), and the rate is tiered: 7% on the first $1 million of taxable Washington gains, then 9.9% only on the portion above that. Each "yes" option assumes the whole donated gain sits inside the tier you pick, which is a simplification. If part of the gain falls below the standard deduction or straddles the $1 million line, the real figure is lower. Leave this on "not sure" and the state layer is left out rather than guessed.
The leverage
One to one is the common case, not the only one. Some employers match at 2:1, some at 0.5:1, and some vary by cause or seniority. Confirm it rather than assuming.
Caps are annual and shared across every charity the donor supports. A donor who has already used part of theirs has less left for you, and this is the layer people most often over-count.
Only "approved or paid" counts toward the modeled total above. Confirming that a gift type qualifies does not establish that this employee qualifies, that anyone filed the request, or that the employer approved it. Policies also split on DAF grants: Bank of America and CarMax exclude them, while American Express, Chevron, Dow and Edwards Lifesciences allow them.
Assumes the pool matches this gift dollar for dollar, capped at the amount you set.
Modeled support if this gift is made
Gross of fees and costs, and excluding anything still conditional
$10,000
Donor's giftThe amount you entered above$10,000
Board challenge releasedAlready pledged, not new money from this donor$0
Employer matchApproved by the employer$0
Employer match, not counted aboveChoose an employer to model this layer$0
Potential total if that lands tooTreat as an upside, not a plan$10,000
Read this honestly before you put it in an emailOnly the donor's gift is money this donor creates. The challenge pool was already promised by someone else, and the employer match depends on a form being filed and approved. Saying "your gift becomes three times as much" is standard campaign language, but a donor who models things for a living may push back on it. "Your gift releases a match we already have committed" is both truer and, in our experience, more persuasive to this audience.
Why the donor may prefer stock
Directional estimate, not a tax calculation
$2,968
Capital gains tax the donor does not pay by giving shares instead of selling them first
Deduction treatment
State note
Assumptions in this figureRates are approximate top marginal rates, last reviewed September 7, 2026, and they change. This is a conversation aid, not a tax computation, and it does not determine any donor's actual liability or deduction. The donor's own advisor decides what is true for the donor.
What this tool deliberately does not do
It does not calculate the donor's deduction in dollars. Since 2026 that figure depends on the donor's adjusted gross income, their marginal rate, the 0.5% floor, the 35% cap, the AGI limits, and whether their state allows a deduction at all. A practical boundary for your team: explain the general options and what usually drives them, and hand any individualized calculation to the donor's own advisor. "Giving shares directly avoids the capital gains tax a sale would trigger, and your advisor can tell you what the deduction is worth in your situation" keeps you on the right side of that line without anyone having to decide where exactly it sits.
Part three · Sections 07 to 09
Build the case
Calibrate to the capacity you actually have, then write the two things this audience reads: an ask with a defensible number, and a memo that survives scrutiny.
Build the case · 07
Where your organization fits
Most guidance in this space is written for organizations with a development department. If that is not you, doing a smaller number of things properly beats attempting the full program badly. Pick the row that describes your actual capacity, not your ambition.
The constraint
You have hours, not headcount
You are probably the grant writer, the database administrator, the event planner and the newsletter. Anything requiring a new system, a vendor contract or a board decision will not happen before December.
What to skip
Almost all of it
Skip the innovation lab, the advisory council, the donor portal and the challenge campaign. Skip building anything. None of it will finish, and half-finished versions cost you credibility.
Do these three things
The three highest-value moves
Publish stock transfer instructions. Your brokerage name, DTC number, account number and a contact. Assumes you already hold a brokerage account that can receive shares; opening one takes longer than the writing does.
Add a matching gift search box to your donation confirmation page and your thank-you email. Most tools are a snippet of code, but check whether it needs a paid plan and who has permission to edit your site.
Email the donors most likely to hold a DAF and say plainly that you accept DAF grants and stock, and how.
The constraint
You can run one campaign well
You have enough capacity for a single coordinated push, but not for three simultaneous ones. The real risk is spreading a small team across a channel plan built for a larger organization.
What to skip
The seed round framing
Do not package your ask as a venture round. It reads as costume to people who do that for a living. Ask for what the work costs and be specific about what changes.
Do this
One number, one artifact, one match
Establish one defensible cost per outcome and one honest counterfactual. This is the whole game. Section 09 shows the arithmetic.
Write one short memo, a page or two, and use it everywhere instead of an annual report excerpt.
Secure one challenge pledge at whatever size a current major donor will commit to. It does not need to be six figures to work.
Add DAF checkout if your donation platform supports it. If integration takes more than an afternoon, defer it to next year and publish instructions instead.
The constraint
Donors think their gift disappears
At scale the objection is not credibility, it is significance. A $25,000 gift into a $60 million budget feels like it changes nothing, and no amount of impact reporting on the whole organization answers that.
What to skip
Governance concessions
Offering donors decision rights over programs in exchange for money creates real independence problems and will eventually create a conflict your board has to resolve. Advisory input is fine. Direction is not.
Do this
Make one thing visibly theirs
Ring-fence a named fund with its own budget, reporting line and measurable target. A fund your board designates internally can be undesignated by your board later, and stays an accounting and reporting decision. A gift the donor restricts in writing is a different thing: those terms bind you, so agree the wording deliberately and involve counsel before accepting it.
Report on that fund separately, quarterly, with the same numbers whether they are good or bad. Reporting a miss honestly is the single most persuasive thing you can do with this audience.
Convene an advisory group that reviews evidence and methodology, and be explicit in the charter that it advises and does not decide.
Build the case · 08
Rewriting the ask
You do not need to change your mission or your work. You need to say what a unit costs, what it changes, and how you would know if you were wrong. Pick a sector to see the same appeal written both ways.
Illustrative
The organizations, programs and figures in the examples below are invented to demonstrate structure. Do not reuse the numbers. Use the structure, and put your own numbers in it. The scaffold underneath is the part meant to be copied.
The version we see most often
“Our emergency food pantry is running out of funds to feed struggling families this winter. Rising prices mean our budget can no longer keep up with demand. Please donate $10,000 to help keep our doors open.”
Describes a budget shortfall, not a mechanism
No unit cost, so there is nothing to evaluate
Nothing in it would be different next winter
The version that holds up to questions
“About 40% of the households using our pantry are working, and they fall short in the last week of the month, when rent and utilities clear before payday. We run a bridge grocery credit at $84 per household per month through stores families already use, currently reaching 610 households. $120,000 funds 119 additional households for a full year at that rate. We track one outcome, whether the household enters rent or utility arrears in the following quarter, against a waitlist comparison group, and we will publish that at month nine whichever way it goes.”
Names the mechanism: timing of income against fixed costs
The arithmetic reconciles: $84 x 119 households x 12 months is the $120,000 ask
Names one outcome and one comparison group, and commits to a date
Fill-in template: write your own version
The panels above show what a finished appeal sounds like. Write yours here, one line at a time, in order. Nothing you type leaves your browser or is saved anywhere, so use the copy button when you are done, or print the page to keep a copy.
What condition keeps producing this need, and why does it not resolve on its own? One sentence, no adjectives.
In the plainest words available. If it is a person spending time with another person, say that.
Say which of the two you are giving, because they are not the same number. A cost per person served is a unit of service. A cost per outcome divides by the people who actually reached the outcome, not the people who enrolled, and needs an outcome rate behind it. Giving the first while calling it the second is the most common way this section goes wrong.
Either the share who reach the outcome without you and your cost per additional outcome, or a plain statement that you have not established it and will not guess.
Check the arithmetic: unit cost x number of units x periods should equal the amount you are asking for.
What you will measure, when, and what result would make you change course.
Two honest routes, and you do not have to take the harder one
The basic route. Report what you actually observed, and be precise about what it is: how many people you served, what it cost, how many reached the outcome, over what period. Then say that you have not established what would have happened otherwise. This is completely respectable, and it is where most organizations should start.
The advanced route. Add a comparison group and report a cost per additional outcome with its limits stated. It is stronger, but it needs a credible comparison, matched time windows, a consistent rule for missing cases, and someone's time to do it. If you do not have that, the basic route told honestly beats an attribution estimate you invented.
Why step four wins the meeting, when you can do it
Comparing your program's cost to the cost of the crisis it addresses, $6,000 spent against $300,000 of avoided lifetime cost, is the most common construction in nonprofit fundraising and the one this audience distrusts most. It assumes your program prevents the entire outcome for everyone it touches. Naming the share of people who would have got there anyway makes your number smaller and your argument far stronger. A funder who models things for a living reads an unhedged multiplier as either naive or dishonest, and neither one gets funded.
Build the case · 09
The one-page memo
Tech donors read a lot of short documents that have to survive scrutiny. A page or two with a defensible number will get further than a twenty-page annual report. We call it a one-page memo because that is the discipline: if it runs past two, you have not finished editing.
Fictional example
Riverbend Care Alliance and the Licensure Bridge do not exist. Every figure below is invented to show how the pieces fit together. We chose a workforce and health program deliberately: there is no technology in it anywhere, and it still works on this audience, because the reasoning is what travels.
Impact memo · Riverbend Care Alliance
The Licensure Bridge
Moving home care aides into licensed practical nursing roles
Request: $450,000
Over: 18 months
Cost per additional licensure: $19,200
There are about 4,200 home care aides working in our region at a median wage of $16.40 an hour. Annual turnover in these roles runs near 48%, which means facilities are permanently short-staffed and families experience constant caregiver churn.
The obvious fix is that licensure roughly raises the wage to $27 an hour and cuts turnover sharply. The reason it does not happen on its own is not tuition, which is modest and often covered. It is that licensure requires 480 clinical hours that are unpaid, scheduled during business hours, and impossible to complete while working the shifts that pay your rent. The binding constraint is income during training, not the cost of training.
We run cohorts of sixteen. Each participant receives tuition, a stipend that replaces lost wages across the 480 clinical hours, and a coach who handles scheduling conflicts with employers, which is the thing that actually causes people to drop out in month four.
There is no technology in this program. It is money, scheduling and a person who calls you when you miss a shift.
Cost per enrollment$9,400 fully loaded, including coaching and overhead
Cost per completion$13,200 at our 71% completion rate
Cost per additional licensure$19,200 the number we lead with
Here is why those three numbers differ. Of every 100 people we enroll, 71 complete licensure. But 22 of every 100 comparable aides in our region reach licensure on their own within the same window, without us. So the honest attribution is 49 additional licensures per 100 enrollments, not 71.
That makes our estimated cost per additional licensure $19,200 rather than $9,400. We publish the larger number because a funder who works it out themselves after we quoted the smaller one will never fund us again.
What this estimate does and does not establish. Subtracting a comparison rate does not on its own prove the program caused the difference. It is only meaningful if the comparison group plausibly represents what would have happened to these participants, over the same window, with missing cases handled the same way. Ours are aides who applied and were not placed in a cohort, which helps, but they self-selected by applying and we say so. Treat $19,200 as our best estimate under a stated comparison, not a measured fact.
Three cohorts of sixteen, so 48 enrollments over 18 months. At our current rates that produces roughly 34 completions and about 24 licensures that would not otherwise have happened.
$53,000 independent evaluation, including construction of the comparison group
Milestones. Cohort one enrolled by month two. First completion data at month eleven. Comparison group analysis published at month sixteen, whatever it says.
Two things would send us back to you. If comparison-group licensure rises above 40%, our estimated cost per additional outcome passes $30,000, which is high enough that we would want to compare it against alternatives before asking you for more. We are not claiming today that a different approach would do better; we are saying that number is the trigger for going and finding out. And if completion falls below 55%, the coaching model is not working and needs redesign before it scales.
We will report both numbers at month sixteen without being asked. If either threshold is crossed we will tell you and recommend where to move the money.
Fill-in template: build your own memo
The Riverbend memo above shows what a finished one looks like. This is that same five-part structure, empty and ready to draft into. Keep the order, because the sequence is what makes the argument hold. Nothing is saved: copy your draft out when you are done.
Population and size. The condition producing the need. Why it does not resolve on its own, as a specific constraint rather than a general hardship.
Name the constraint from step one and say how this addresses it.
Cost per enrollment, cost per completion, and cost per additional outcome once you subtract what happens without you. Explain the gap between them yourself. If you cannot do the third honestly, say so here instead.
Amount, units, expected outcomes, then a budget in three or four lines. Include money for measurement.
The threshold that would mean this is not working, when you will know, and what you will do about it.
If you cannot fill in step three honestly yet, that is the real project. Fill it in before you write the appeal, not after.
Part four · Sections 10 to 12
Run the campaign
The outreach sequence, honest timing rather than the vesting myth, and a phased year-end sprint with a version for teams that have almost no capacity.
Run the campaign · 10
The cultivation sequence
Four messages over three weeks, built on the principle in section 01: ask for judgment before you ask for money. Select any card to read the full text and copy it.
Illustrative
These use the fictional Riverbend example so the structure is visible. Replace the specifics with yours. The sequencing and the restraint are the parts to keep, particularly the second message, which asks for nothing.
Three things this sequence does deliberately
The second message asks for nothing. It is the one people cut, and it is the one that makes the sequence work. A message that delivers something and requests nothing is rare enough that it registers.
The unflattering number leads. Touch one volunteers the weakest point in your own analysis. That is disarming to an audience whose day job is finding the weakest point in an analysis.
Twenty-one days, not fourteen. Four asks in two weeks reads as a sequence. Spaced out, it reads as a person. If they reply at any point, stop following the script.
Treat it as something to test, not a formula. Run it with warm prospects first, where a misfire costs least, and watch what actually gets replies. The third message carries two openings depending on whether they answered: pick the right one, because thanking someone for a response they never sent is the fastest way to look automated.
Run the campaign · 11
When tech donors have money
There is a widely repeated claim that tech giving peaks in mid-November because that is when equity vests. It is partly true and partly an artifact of copying. Here is what actually varies.
There is no single tech vesting calendar
Schedules differ by employer and by grant type, and the differences are large enough to matter. Meta and Microsoft vest quarterly, including a November date. Nvidia vests quarterly. Amazon vests twice a year, in May and November, weighted heavily toward the later years of a grant. Apple vests semi-annually, closer to April and October. Google moved to monthly vesting, which flattens the effect entirely.
Cash bonus timing scatters just as widely. Google pays around January, Meta around March, Amazon reviews compensation in the spring, and Microsoft, whose fiscal year ends in June, pays in September. So a "Q1 bonus season" push aimed at a Microsoft donor is six months off.
"When does your equity vest, and does your employer's match reset on the calendar year?" is a normal question in a cultivation conversation and takes ten seconds to answer. One answer from one donor beats any general schedule, and asking signals you understand how they are actually paid.
Record it
Put the vest month and the match cap in your CRM as fields, not notes. Next year the outreach writes itself.
The one date that is close to universal
December 31
Many corporate matching programs run on the calendar year, and an unused annual allowance typically does not carry over. Confirm both the year and the deadline with the specific employer rather than assuming. A donor with a $10,000 cap who has used none of it has, in effect, $10,000 of their employer's money that expires.
Check the deadline, not just the cap
Submission windows vary. Microsoft accepts requests for gifts made in the preceding twelve months. Others cut off in January or February for the prior year. Confirm before you build a campaign on a date.
The date nobody plans for
The stock transfer lag
Brokerage transfers of securities are not instant, and late December is the worst possible time to discover that. Firms often need several business days, and some impose their own year-end cutoffs well before the 31st.
Publish a deadline of your own
Ask donors to start a stock transfer by around December 15 as an internal target. It is not a guarantee: completion depends on both brokerages, and some set earlier cut-offs of their own. Say it in November, not on December 20, and confirm the real date with your broker.
Run the campaign · 12
The year-end sprint
Written in September 2026 for the season immediately ahead. If you are reading this later in the year, start at the phase that matches the calendar rather than trying to catch up.
Phase 1 · September to OctoberDo first
Get the plumbing right
Publish brokerage transfer instructions on a findable page: firm, DTC number, account number, and a named human to notify.
Confirm you can receive a DAF grant cleanly. Check that your legal name and EIN in the major DAF sponsor directories match what a donor would search for. Mismatches here silently lose gifts.
Add a matching gift search tool to your donation confirmation page and your automated receipt.
Ask one existing major donor for a challenge pledge. Any size. It does not need to be six figures, and asking in September gives them time to say yes.
A realistic note on timing
Securing a large challenge pledge usually takes a quarter of cultivation, not three weeks. If you do not have a warm candidate today, do the other three items and plan the challenge for next year.
Phase 2 · NovemberPeak window
Make the case, then make the ask
Finish the memo before you send anything. One page, one defensible cost per additional outcome, one falsification threshold.
Start the four-touch sequence with the ten to twenty prospects most likely to respond. This is a small, hand-run list, not a segment.
Send a stock-gift note to your whole file in early November, well ahead of the December rush. Lead with the mechanics, not the tax.
Set an internal December 15 target for stock transfers and tell donors. Confirm the real cut-off with your brokerage, since the sending and receiving institutions each set their own.
Phase 3 · DecemberDeadline driven
Work the expiring money
Message the match deadline plainly. "Your employer has set aside up to $10,000 to match your giving this year and it resets on January 1" is a true, specific, useful sentence.
Run a DAF-specific appeal to donors you know hold accounts. Many are actively looking for somewhere to send year-end grants.
Follow up on submission, not just the gift. The match is lost when the form is never filed. A single reminder email in the first week of January recovers a surprising amount.
Acknowledge stock gifts correctly, describing the shares and the date without stating a value. Publicly traded securities are reported in Section A of Form 8283 even above $5,000, and need neither a qualified appraisal nor your signature. Do not chase donors for a countersigned form on a stock gift; that requirement belongs to Section B property such as art or real estate.
Part five · Sections 13 to 14
Working tools
Two things to work from rather than read: the sequence a stock gift actually goes through, and a tracker for the employer matches that routinely go uncollected. Both print, and nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere.
Working tools · 13
Stock gift checklist
In our experience most stock gifts that fall through fail on logistics rather than persuasion. This is the whole sequence, from being able to receive shares at all through to the acknowledgment. Work down it once before December and you will not be improvising in the last week.
Before any donor asks · readiness
When a gift is coming · notification
On arrival · reconciliation
Afterwards · acknowledgment
Working tools · 14
Match tracker
Matches are lost between the gift and the payment, usually because nobody owned the submission. Track them per gift rather than per donor, because a match follows the gift and dies on its own deadline. Fill this in for the gifts you already have, then work the blank cells.
The four questions that decide whether a match exists at all
Ask these before you spend time on a submission. Does the employer match at all, and at what ratio? Does this type of gift qualify, since many programs exclude DAF grants and some exclude stock? How much of the donor’s annual cap is already used, given the cap is shared across every charity they support? And what is the submission deadline, which is often months after the calendar year ends but not always?
Nothing here is saved. Fill it in and print, or copy the rows into your CRM or a spreadsheet.
Donor and gift
Employer
Gift type eligible
Cap remaining
Submitted
Approved
Paid
Owner
The column people skip is the last one. Assigning a named owner materially improves the chance a match is actually submitted, and recording the deadline is what stops it being submitted late. In our experience those two columns are worth more than the rest of the table.
Reference · 15
Sources and method
Everything below was last reviewed on September 7, 2026. Where a figure comes from a third-party database rather than an original publisher, we say so, because those two things are not the same and guides in this category routinely blur them.
Sector and DAF data
2025 Annual DAF Report ↗Covering fiscal 2024. Source for $327.87 billion in DAF assets, 3.59 million accounts, $64.60 billion granted, and the 25.2% payout rate. Published by the Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative, which took the report over from the National Philanthropic Trust for this edition. Cite the Collaborative, not NPT, for 2025 onward.
Giving USA 2026 ↗Total US giving of $617.20 billion in 2025, of which $394.2 billion came from individuals.
Chariot analysis of the DAF report ↗Vendor analysis, not an original source. Origin of the DAF gift size comparison, which comes from one nonprofit's data and should not be treated as a sector average.
Corporate matching
Double the Donation matching gift statistics ↗A third-party database and vendor. Source for participation ranges, the roughly 92% program availability figure, and the $4 billion to $7 billion unclaimed estimate. This estimate is frequently misattributed to CECP.
Employer policy entries ↗Match caps and volunteer rates for Microsoft, Google, Apple, Salesforce and Disney. Aggregated from employer programs by a third party. Always confirm against the employer's own portal before quoting a cap to a donor.
IRS Publication 526 ↗Charitable contributions, AGI limits and the treatment of capital gain property.
OBBBA charitable provisions ↗Summary of the 2026 changes: the 0.5% AGI floor, the 35% cap on deduction value, and the non-itemizer deduction that excludes DAF contributions.
Washington Department of Revenue ↗Capital gains excise tax rates, the standard deduction, and the in-state requirement for the charitable deduction.
Sources current as of September 2026. Matching gift policies, DAF statistics and tax rules all change, sometimes mid-year. Corporate policy details in this guide come from third-party matching gift databases rather than employer disclosures, and should be confirmed with the employer before being quoted to a donor. Tax treatment should be confirmed by a qualified advisor.
The Riverbend Care Alliance memo, the four sector appeals and the outreach emails are fictional, and are labeled as such where they appear. They exist to demonstrate structure. The figures inside them are not research findings and should not be cited.
