You are about to have more money than you have a plan for, and someone has already said the words "donor-advised fund" to you. Good. Here is the answer to the question you actually have, before anyone asks you for anything.
What to do with IPO money you want to give away, in the order that works for most people: decide how much of the position is a gift before you sell any of it; move those shares — not the cash from selling them — into a charitable vehicle, if your lockup and your plan allow it; and then, separately, decide what the gift is for. The first two steps can be fast for publicly traded shares and slow for private or restricted stock — company approval, a transfer agent, sometimes a qualified appraisal. The third can take thirty years unless you decide it isn't allowed to.
That third step is this post. The share-transfer mechanics are post 3. The argument about where it should go is post 4. None of this is tax, legal, or investment advice; your advisor knows your situation and we do not.
two events that used to be one
For most of the history of giving, the moment you gave and the moment something happened were the same moment. You handed over the grain, the coin, the acre.
A donor-advised fund splits them. You contribute shares; the deduction posts this tax year; the money sits in an account you advise; and at some point — next quarter, next decade, never — you recommend grants out of it. There is no required annual payout. The deduction is real on day one. The gift is real when the grant lands somewhere that does something.
US donor-advised funds held $327.87 billion at the end of fiscal 2024 and granted $64.60 billion — a payout rate of about 25% measured against the prior year's assets (DAF Research Collaborative, Annual DAF Report 2025). Some of that balance is patience. Some of it is drift. The account statement cannot tell you which.
why this is arriving all at once
Scale, labeled, as illustration only. None of it changes what a gift is.
On All-In in June 2026, Coatue's Thomas Laffont said that if you add up SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, the three listings are "basically going to be more than the 10 years kind of combined" — more value than a decade of venture-backed exits. A month later the NVCA–PitchBook Venture Monitor put it more sharply (TechCrunch, 9 Jul 2026): the same three "will generate more value than all U.S. VC-backed exits since 2000."
Where that stands as of this writing: SpaceX listed in June 2026 at about $1.77 trillion. Anthropic's last private mark was $965 billion; bankers have floated something near $2 trillion (FT, Aug 2026), which is talk, not a price. OpenAI's last private mark was $852 billion, with a listing date that is still soft. Treat every one of those numbers as a photograph of a moving object.
What it means for giving is simpler than the numbers. A large number of people who work at these companies will hold appreciated equity, lockups will open, and the default advice from every wealth manager in the Bay Area will be the same: contribute shares to a DAF before you sell. Many of those people think in expected value and cause areas. The reflex will be correct. The reflex will also stop at the parking lot.
three doors
Once shares are in a charitable vehicle, there are three things you can do with them. They are not equal, and they are not exclusive.
| door | what you do | what exists afterward | when it's the right door |
|---|---|---|---|
| park | contribute, take the deduction, decide later | an account balance and a receipt | you need time — and you give yourself a date |
| grant to a cause | recommend a grant to a nonprofit working on a cause area | a program, a report, an annual letter | the organization has shown it can deliver, and you can name the unit ("this much does this") |
| hold a place | fund a named living system — a watershed, a forest, a soil, a species population — on terms that name the place, its condition, and where the money goes | a place in better condition, and a receipt that keeps showing the place | you want the gift attached to something that exists whether or not you fund it |
Most giving advice covers the first two doors well. The third gets left out for a specific reason: nature files under "climate" or "charity" in a cause-area spreadsheet, so it looks like one option among many. It isn't. Watersheds, forests, soils, species, and the water cycle exist whether or not anyone funds them — and every other cause on the list runs on them. A bed net protects a child who still needs a well that fills and a field that grows. Model weights need a grid that needs cooling water. That argument gets its own post, and post 5 makes the infrastructure case; here it is enough to say the substrate is a door, not a line item.
what "hold a place" means
Name a place, not a theme. A live example we already write is inland wetlands — a named living stock, not a cause area. Another is the Okefenokee.
A grant to a cause can buy work, an easement, or a year of operations. A hold on a place is meant to keep showing condition — the water table, the canopy, the population count — at a named location. Land trusts already hold named places: recorded easements, baseline documentation, annual monitoring. That work is real. What is usually missing for a distant donor is a unit they can keep seeing — condition, routing, and a receipt that does not file itself.
This is what ensurance is for. It is a way for a gift — from a DAF, a foundation, a taxable account, an employer match — to hold a named living system. The place has an account of its own (we call it an agent), and a certificate ties your gift or hold to that one place rather than to a theme. The certificate is bookkeeping. The watershed is the thing. Ensurance is how the gift can hold it; it is not what the living system is.
Where we are, plainly: being receivable from a DAF is a design commitment, not a shipped button. Today the path is a conversation, a named place, and — depending on your sponsor — a land trust or fiscal sponsor as the receiving charity. Post 6 walks the rails step by step. If you would rather look before you talk, the places that already have accounts are on the explore map.
frequently asked questions
what should I do with IPO shares I want to give away?
Decide the gift portion before you sell; give the shares themselves rather than after-tax proceeds if your lockup and plan allow it; and set a date by which the money leaves the vehicle for a named recipient. The first two steps are routine for any wealth advisor. The third is the one nobody will do for you. Post 3 covers the share transfer. This is not tax advice.
is a donor-advised fund the same as a gift?
Legally, a contribution to a DAF is an irrevocable gift to the sponsoring charity, and the deduction is real. Practically, nothing outside the sponsor has received anything until you recommend a grant and the sponsor sends it. A DAF is a gift to a holding account — not yet a gift to a cause or a place.
why do tech employees use DAFs?
Three reasons stack. Appreciated shares you have held more than a year, given directly, are generally deductible at fair market value and avoid capital gains on the appreciation, so the gift is larger than sell-then-give. Short-term property is usually deducted at basis. The deduction is also subject to adjusted-gross-income limits and a multi-year carryforward. The vehicle lets you take the deduction in the high-income year and choose recipients later. And some employers match equity gifts through DAFs — Anthropic's program, as reported, has run 3:1 matching on up to 50% of equity for earlier staff, and 1:1 matching on up to 25% of equity for newer hires — which makes the DAF the default rail before anyone has asked what the gift is for.
the series
Twelve posts for people about to have more money than plan, most of it headed for a donor-advised fund. Read in order or jump.
- the gift isn't finished when the deduction posts — you are here
- a donor-advised fund is a parking lot
- give the shares, not what's left after the tax
- effective altruism forgot the factory
- nature is infrastructure. a DAF can fund it
- how to grant from a DAF to a place
- longtermism still needs a living present
- pick a natural asset the way you'd pick a GiveWell charity
- the warehouse is the product unless you choose otherwise
- the model is trained on a basin
- some of this should be a grant. some of it should be a hold
- what you actually hold after the grant