Five Questions for Matt Nash, Executive Director of Blackbaud Giving Fund

Based in North Carolina, Matt Nash previously served as the senior vice president of marketing and donor experience for Fidelity Charitable. He’s now executive director of Blackbaud Giving Fund, the charitable arm of Blackbaud, the the cloud computing provider that serves nonprofits, foundations, schools and other social change organizations.

Blackbaud Giving Fund serves as a host for donor-advised funds, connecting donors and companies to nonprofits around the world, with a focus on workplace giving. The fund moves a lot of money — since August 2020, it has administered over $1 billion in donations to 195,000 nonprofits around the world.

I recently caught up with Nash to find out more about his work with Blackbaud Giving Fund, the kinds of donors it works with, and the organizations it support. And in a philanthropic era when donor-advised funds are in the spotlight, I also asked him about the potential dangers of DAFs and what the sector can do to make sure these vehicles are used effectively. Here are some excerpts from that discussion, which have been edited for clarity.

Can you tell me a little bit about your work at Blackbaud and your background before that?

Blackbaud Giving Fund’s mission is to connect donors to the causes that they care about. And the primary way we do that is through workplace giving. Blackbaud as a corporate entity has a lot of corporate clients that offer workplace giving programs to their employees, and we’re the donor-advised fund behind that that actually distributes funds out to charities all over the world.

My own personal background is, I spent a lot of years in financial services. I was with Fidelity Investments. The last five years at Fidelity, I was on the executive team of Fidelity Charitable, which is largest donor-advised fund in the country. In between Fidelity and this role, I was on a large philanthropic project called the Generosity Commission that is looking to increase the number of people who are giving in America, which, as you I think you probably know, has been on the decline over the last decade or so.

How exactly does Blackbaud Giving Fund work? What kinds of interests do your donors have?

Well, it’s pretty simple. An employee signs onto a platform. Through CSRconnect, donors can search for nonprofits or causes housed on our NPOconnect platform. There are 1.5 million of those charities. Then it works kind of like a high-speed transaction where an employee goes on and chooses the charity they’d like to send to and can use a credit card or a payroll deduction. That money comes into the giving fund, and usually, they are matched in some way by a corporate match program. Then we disburse those funds out to charities around the world. Last year, we did $682 million to 138,000 charities.

In terms of interests, it mirrors pretty well what Giving USA comes across in their annual measurements. Human services has been a big one. Obviously, education is big, religion is big. I’d say those are the three categories that are large with the employee donor, which is very similar to giving overall for individuals.

What are some of the companies you work with?

It's a mix. Anything from very large, multinational corporations to smaller, I'd say, mid-sized companies — companies with 3,000 to 5,000 people in them. Any organization who wants to set up a program within their employee base and help employees get more engaged. Something like 70% of employees want to work for a company that does good. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million employees in the United States have access to these programs, whether it be through Blackbaud or its key competitors.

What are some of the observations you've seen amongst your donor cohort? I understand that 94% of donors enrolled in a recurring giving program prefer to give on a monthly basis. What are some other interesting data have you come across?

We track a number of things. We know that if an employee gets engaged in something like this, that they'll kind of give on average $1,200 a year, which is a good start for many of these donors, who are pretty new in their giving. The employee donor is someone who is a bit younger than your typical donor. About 10-15% of employees are engaged in giving, a bit higher percentage in volunteering. That has a wide range. Some clients will have 90% of employees engaged. Depends on the culture. When we see big events occur, for instance, Ukraine last year, that was huge for us. Employees want to be engaged. When an event like that comes, that’s when they really open up their purses. This also gives them a chance to really learn how to give, which I think is a great way for nonprofits to connect with donors.

Another trend that is pretty clear is that if an employee donor volunteers for an organization, for instance, for a giveback day, they are much more likely to be a long-term donor for them. Because they really get a chance to see all the great work that occurs, and sometimes how sophisticated these nonprofits are. It really entices them and inspires them to give more.

The employee side of it, I think you have a higher proportion of less-wealthy donors giving. Anyone who works for a company has access to this, whether you’re C suite or working serving customers. But I think this represents an interesting possibility for nonprofits as they get involved with these programs, and again, are dealing with a younger donor base. They will be pretty engaged once they start acting, and they stick with it.

As someone who has been working in the DAF space for a long time, what do you think the field can do to tackle concerns over transparency and payout?

From our vantage point here, we’re at a 90% turnover in a given year. So 90% of funds we bring in in a given year, we give out. The only time it stays here is when we’re trying to connect the match to the original donation, and it’s taking a while for the matching. I see here that the DAF is used in different ways. We’re using it here to facilitate a process. Whereas something like a financial services firm is using it as a tool to help a donor give now and in the future. But even when you look at the data, there’s something like $234 billion in DAFs right now. In 2021, $46 billion that went out. Payout rates in the mid-20%. That feels like pretty strong giving overall. (Editor’s Note: Be sure to read Philip Rojc’s recent deep dive into the DAF reform debate here.)

I think that from my perspective, the DAF ecosystem works pretty well to help support nonprofits. But specifically in our case, the money literally doesn’t stay around long enough to count it.

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