After LinkedIn went public in 2011, then-vice president of product management Adam Nash faced a pleasant dilemma: he was sitting on a bonanza of newly-liquid shares, but needed a tax efficient way to contribute some of it to charity. That's when he discovered donor-advised funds, or DAFs. These special accounts can offer an easy and effective way to give to a wide variety of charities to support everything from animals to veterans to the environment.
Nash loved the idea of DAFs—but was less impressed with the bothersome process of setting them up and making donations. Nash, a long-time Silicon Valley executive and angel investor who went on to run wealth management platform Wealthfront from 2013 to 2016, wondered why there wasn't an app to streamline and automate charitable giving via donor-advised funds, similar to other fintech platforms that helped users budget, save, invest, and so on.
