What DAF Search Trends Reveal About Donors

For DAF Day, we examined search trends, donor conversations and the online behavior of people researching donor-advised funds (DAFs). We wanted to know how familiar people are with DAFs and what their questions can teach nonprofits.

Search interest is growing. Is the audience becoming more informed?

In our October 8 research, Google Trends showed U.S. relative search interest in the topic “donor-advised fund” running 50% higher in 2026 so far than in 2025.

“What is a donor advised fund” hit its five-year peak in December 2025. Year-end giving and tax planning offer a plausible explanation, and the approaching 2026 charitable deduction changes may have added urgency. In August 2025, the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta encouraged donors to “front-load several years of giving” into a DAF.

Six months later, in June 2026, “best donor advised fund” reached its five-year peak. The timing coincides with DAFgiving360's June 30 fiscal year-end, so sponsor activity may have contributed.

Searches about understanding DAFs peaked first, and searches suggesting people were comparing providers peaked after.

Could this indicate a maturing audience, with more people moving beyond basic awareness and evaluating their options? Google Trends can't tell us whether the same people made both searches, but the pattern is one we want to keep investigating.

The basics still need an answer

Semrush estimates 3,600 monthly U.S. searches for “what is a donor advised fund,” 170 for “why use a donor advised fund” and 480 for “how to set up a donor advised fund.”

People are also asking about tax benefits, donating appreciated stock and choosing providers.

Someone learning about DAFs needs introductory information. A donor who already has a DAF may be looking for a cause to support and needs a direct path to recommending a grant.

What donors value, and what frustrates nonprofits

In the Reddit discussions we reviewed, donors appreciated being able to give intentionally and anonymously. Nonprofit professionals described the difficulty of identifying donors, acknowledging gifts and building relationships when grants arrive without contact information.

Our SparkToro research, focused on people preparing to recommend DAF grants, shows strong affinities with Charity Navigator, Candid and GiveWell. Nonprofits could test whether evidence of their impact is as easy to find as their mission stories.

Can AI find your DAF content?

SparkToro also estimates that 37.6% of this audience uses ChatGPT at least monthly, compared with 35.8% nationally, a 5% relative overindex. For Claude, the figures are 20.7% versus 5.3%, a 292% overindex.

These figures cover platform usage on every topic, including activity unrelated to DAFs. Even so, they make a case for examining AI search alongside traditional search, and Semrush lists Google AI Overviews among the search features for all six queries in our question graphic. For nonprofit marketers, we'd suggest two tests.

Can AI retrieve your DAF content? Give a web-enabled LLM your DAF page URL and ask it to find your legal name, EIN and grant instructions. Verify that it actually retrieved the information. Check search-crawler access separately.

Can AI find your organization without being given the URL? Ask questions a prospective DAF donor might ask. Examine which organizations and sources appear in the response. Where the platform exposes its search activity, inspect the follow-up or fan-out queries, including any site: searches, to see which content the platform considers and cites.

Google confirms that AI Overviews and AI Mode may conduct multiple related searches to develop an answer.

What to do before year-end

Review your DAF page for someone learning about the option and someone ready to recommend a grant. Make your legal name, EIN and grant instructions easy to find. Explain what donor support makes possible and invite donors to share their contact information voluntarily so you can acknowledge their gifts.

Then check how your nonprofit appears when people ask AI tools about DAF giving.

How is your organization preparing its DAF content for traditional and AI search? Reach out to Streetlight Digital. We'd be interested in comparing notes.

Research sources: Google Trends, Semrush U.S. keyword research, SparkToro audience research and a Reddit Pro discussion summary. Search estimates and audience findings are directional.

What’s All the Buzz on Donor Advised Funds (DAFS)?

Donor Advised Funds: From small seeds to serious growth.

DAF Giving 101

Nonprofit professionals are hearing a lot about DAF these days, and for good reason. DAF giving has rapidly emerged as a massive driver of increased income for the nonprofits that have embraced a real strategy around it.

For those who need a quick DAF 101, here's an overview (and your 8-step checklist to boot!). A donor advised fund is a charitable giving account, similar to a savings account, but one that's set aside exclusively for donations. Unlike a savings account, however, the assets are no longer legally owned by the donor once they are contributed.A donor opens this account with a sponsoring organization (Fidelity Charitable or DAFGiving360) and deposits cash, stock, or even crypto into it. The moment those assets go in, the donor gets an immediate tax deduction, even if they haven't given a single dollar to a nonprofit yet.

From there, the money sits in the account and grows tax-free. Whenever the donor is ready, they log into their DAF portal and "recommend" a grant to a nonprofit they want to support. The sponsoring organization then sends the funds directly to that nonprofit.

All About DAF: The Numbers Are Actually Remarkable

This is a good time to clarify that DAF giving is actually much more than just a “buzz”, or simply another fundraising channel. The numbers are outstanding and worth taking time to educate yourself if you are a nonprofit leader.

According to the Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative's 2025 Annual DAF Report, total assets held in DAFs grew 27.9% in fiscal year 2024 alone, reaching $327.87 billion. Contributions into DAFs jumped 38.6% to $90.57 billion, and grantmaking out of DAFs to working nonprofits rose 17.9% to $64.60 billion. Every one of those numbers continues to move up and to the right.

Chariot's 2026 DAF Fundraising Report, built on $26.1 billion in real giving data from 54 nonprofits, gives us another insight: median DAF revenue growth from 2021 to 2025 was 75%, compared to just 9% growth in non-DAF revenue over the same period.

Why does DAF matter now?

This answer may begin back in 2017 when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act nearly doubled the standard deduction, making annual charitable giving tax-invisible for most households unless they 'bunched' several years of gifts together. DAFs became the obvious vehicle for that strategy, since they're dramatically cheaper and faster to open than a private foundation, with no minimum payout requirement, no excise tax, and no public disclosure.

The stock market is filling the accounts. DAF assets nearly doubled since 2020, hitting $327.87 billion in fiscal year 2024, largely from market gains on assets already inside (Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative, 2025 Annual DAF Report). This is also coupled with the surge of non-cash giving. A record 74% of DAFgiving360's 2025 contributions were non-cash assets like stock, real estate, and crypto, since donating appreciated assets avoids capital gains tax entirely (CNBC, "Donor-advised fund giving surges as tax cuts expire and stocks soar," Jan. 2026).

OBBBA sparked a rush. Advisors pushed wealthy clients to front-load DAF contributions before OBBBA cut the top-bracket deduction from 37% to 35% in 2026, helping drive a 28% jump in DAFgiving360’s 2025 grants (CNBC, Jan. 2026).

It's simply easier. Tools like DAFpay make giving from a DAF as easy as a credit card swipe, fueling an 11.5% projected annual growth rate for DAF platforms through 2034 (Intel Market Research, Charitable Giving and DAF Platform Market Report, 2026).

How do I know if I should get involved in DAF?

This is a very easy Streetlight POV we’re freely sharing with all our nonprofit clients and friends: you should. 

When existing donors switch to giving through a DAF, the average increase in their giving is more than 10x their prior level, and nearly half of those who make the switch more than double their annual giving (Chariot & K2D Strategies, 2026 DAF Fundraising Report). Through DAF, donors are able to give more and more consistently when they start routing their generosity through a DAF. Also, certain fundraising platforms like FundraiseUp, are now offering DAFpay to their online fundraising options, making donating from DAFs even more friction-less.

OBBBA: How does this new bill impact DAF giving? 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law in July 2025, reshaped the charitable deduction landscape starting in the 2026 tax year, and it changes this conversation in two important, yet opposite directions (Fidelity Charitable, "One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB): Impact on charitable giving").

For casual, non-itemizing donors: OBBBA introduces a new above-the-line deduction of $1,000 for single filers and $2,000 for joint filers on direct cash gifts to public charities. Good news for everyday giving, except contributions to DAFs are explicitly excluded from this deduction. In other words, this new incentive nudges small, occasional donors toward direct giving, not DAFs. 

For itemizing donors, especially higher-income ones there are more financial incentives. OBBBA introduces a new 0.5% AGI floor on charitable deductions (the first 0.5% of a donor's income given to charity is no longer deductible at all) and caps the deduction's value at 35% for top-bracket taxpayers, down from 37%. Because that floor applies per tax year, donors who “bunch” several years of giving into a DAF in a single high-income year only absorb that 0.5% haircut once, rather than paying it annually. That makes DAFs measurably more valuable as a tax-planning tool for exactly the donors most likely to make larger gifts. 

The OBBBA Conclusion

While OBBBA creates a stronger tax incentive for direct giving among some non-itemizing donors and increases the planning advantages of strategic, bunched DAF contributions for higher-capacity donors, DAF usage is not driven by tax considerations alone. Many donors continue to use DAFs because they offer convenience, flexibility, and a structured way to manage charitable giving over time.

This is an important nuance to build into your fundraising strategy. The biggest tax-planning opportunities may exist with major donors, but nonprofit organizations shouldn't overlook their mid-level donors, many of whom are already comfortable giving through DAFs. That means your mid-level and major donors are the audiences most likely to benefit from proactive education about DAF giving options. Sending personalized outreach and alerting them to options with DAFpay is a great way to strengthen that relationship with your mid-level and major gift level donors.

DAF Day: Your Immediate Opportunity 

We hope this article will help you prepare for DAF Day 2026, which falls on Thursday, October 8. Founded by Chariot in 2024, DAF Day is essentially the Giving Tuesday of DAF philanthropy: a single day when donors, nonprofits, and DAF providers all focus on moving DAF dollars out of accounts and into the field. Tens of thousands of donors are expected to participate this year.

This is the perfect moment to build a coordinated DAF Day push into Q4 planning: get ready to develop dedicated landing pages, DAF-specific email sends with instructions on how to move forward, and social content in the weeks leading up to October 8th.

DAF Day: What to get lined up now

Go ahead and run through this checklist leading up to DAF Day. It’s not too late to build messaging for your donors before October 8: 

1. Add a DAF giving option to your donation form. Keeping the payment option directly on your site (like FundraiseUp DAFpay) reduces friction and allows supporters to give without leaving your website. 

2. Make your EIN and legal name easy to find. Put them directly on a dedicated DAF giving page, not buried in an obscure place on your website.

1. Build a dedicated DAF landing page. Explain what a DAF is very clearly, show the step-by-step giving process, and give donors a direct link or button to act. 

1. Segment your donor file for DAF holders. Even a simple manual flag in your CRM for known DAF donors lets you tailor messaging instead of sending generic asks. 

1. Send at least one dedicated DAF education email per quarter. Don't assume donors already understand how DAFs work; many need someone to explain it clearly. 

2. Plan a DAF Day activation for October 8. Get listed on the DAF Day giving page, send a dedicated appeal in the days leading up to it, and consider a matching gift or challenge to create urgency. 

3. Review your messaging against the OBBBA nuance. Make sure mid-level and major donor communications acknowledge the bunching opportunity, not just generic “DAFs are tax-smart” language.

4. Talk about it everywhere! Make sure you’re talking about DAF giving across all your channels, including event fundraisers, social media, emails, etc. 

A recent Chariot webinar highlighted how one nonprofit doubled their annual revenue solely through DAF Giving. Now is the time to make sure your nonprofit is up and running to support DAF donations. This is the low hanging fruit nonprofits everywhere should be excited about, especially in a fundraising landscape that is rapidly changing.

beyond Blue links: Winning Donor Acquisition When AI Answers First

Upcoming webinar: Beyond Blue Links: Winning Donor Acquisition When AI Answers First, featuring experts from Streetlight Digital and the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation.

Streetlight’s webinar coming up in October is critical for our nonprofit friends. Whether you’re in the Direct Response world or peer-to-peer fundraising, every nonprofit leader should take the time to understand how to get your nonprofit visible when AI Overviews become the first answer to many online queries.

AI Overviews now answer many informational questions before a user ever reaches a website. For nonprofits, this means a visible drop in nonbrand organic clicks and CTR, while donor-ready intent such as donate and brand terms remains stronger. This session shows how to measure the impact, protect visibility, and rebuild top-funnel reach without relying on blue links alone.

Our webinar will share a simple diagnostic scoreboard that any nonprofit can replicate. Participants learn how to track AIO presence rate, the CTR gap when AI Overviews appear versus when they do not, the impressions versus clicks gap that widens over time, and performance on action-intent queries. The goal is to understand the pattern before choosing tactics.

Next, our team will cover how to compete for both discovery and selection. Nonprofits will learn how to earn citations in AI-generated summaries through answer-focused content, expert validation, FAQ schema, and entity clarity on deep pages. We will show you how to turn informational content into info-plus-action pages that offer real utility through tools, downloads, sign-ups, or helpful next steps that an AI box cannot replace.

From there, we apply Search Everywhere Optimization. Attendees learn where AI gathers its answers, what can be influenced, and what cannot be controlled. The session breaks down visibility sources across owned pages, knowledge listings, third-party directories, reviews, and public reference sites. This helps teams spend effort where it actually changes outcomes.

Finally, the session covers the current state of Google Ad Grants and where paid media still creates lift. The presentation closes with three practical ways to recoup lost informational reach using GA4 lookalikes, contextual native, and YouTube so nonprofits can continue growing donor pipelines even as AI reshapes search behavior.

Every nonprofit leader should attend this webinar, it doesn’t have to be so complicated to be found, but you do need to learn the next steps in the AIO world!

The Art and Science of a Great Comms Schedule

Last week's webinar on “The Power of Personalized Engagement” had some of the best chat energy we’ve seen in a while.

One thing that kept coming up: folks kept wanting a real comms schedule they could look at. And for good reason! Building a comms schedule that aligns all your channels is truly both an art and a science. The challenge is that the value isn't in the calendar itself. The value is in the audience analysis, channel strategy, fundraising goals, and performance data that drive the calendar. Every communications plan is built from the ground up around an organization's unique audiences, objectives, timelines, and resources.

Last week's webinar focused on just one channel: mobile. But building out a comprehensive comms schedule really brings all channels together into a coordinated strategy that delivers the right message to the right audience at the right time. We thought it would be helpful to share the four pillars we use when developing communications strategies with our clients:

Timing

When a message lands matters as much as what it says. Registration, fundraising minimums, event day, and post-event thank-yous all have different urgency windows, and your cadence should shift with them, not stay flat all season.

Channels

Email, SMS, and social all play different roles. The mistake we see most often is treating them as interchangeable rather than sequencing them so each channel does the job it's best suited for, at the moment a participant actually needs it.

Streetlight tip: Before sending any message, ask yourself: "Why is this channel the best channel for this audience, right now?" If you can't answer that question, rethink the channel, the timing, or the content.

Audiences

Not every participant is at the same stage. A first-time fundraiser six weeks out needs different support than a veteran team captain three days before the event. Segmenting by behavior and stage, not just by list, is what makes messages feel relevant instead of generic.

Creative

Even perfect timing and targeting fall flat if the message itself doesn't match the moment. Creative needs to flex in tone and urgency alongside the calendar, not stay static from kickoff to event day.

Streelight tip: Review your last five participant messages. If they all sound roughly the same, you're probably missing opportunities to reflect where different supporters are in their journey.

These four pillars work the best when they are built together, not as separate checklists. That alignment is where we spend a lot of time with our clients, and it’s what turns a generic drip into a comms program participants actually respond to.

If you want to learn more about developing a comms schedule tailored to your specific needs, reach out and let us know. We’d love to help.

The Next Great Campaign Idea Might Already Be Within

How DAV turned a decade-old digital campaign into a thriving peer-to-peer program, and what it taught us about looking inward

We'd love for you to take a listen to this episode of the P2P Soapbox, where our valued clients at Disabled American Veterans (DAV) share the story behind the remarkable growth of their peer-to-peer program, Field of Flags. The idea had been ruminating within their organization for some time. Through an opportunity assessment with Streetlight Digital, we were able to help bring it to life. And what a life it's taken on! In just four years, registrations have grown 473% and net revenue has climbed more than 2,000%.

On the season six finale of the P2P Soapbox, host Marcie Maxwell sat down with Laura Rusche, Strategic Fundraising Priorities Manager at DAV, to talk about how Field of Flags began as a digital fundraiser nearly a decade ago and evolved into one of DAV's signature peer-to-peer campaigns. What began as flags flown at DAV's national headquarters became a community-driven, DIY program with fields planted in all 50 states, an outward, public expression of gratitude to veterans.

What we love most about this story is that the vision was DAV's own. They paid close attention to their supporters, recognized organic momentum where it was already building, and had the instinct to imagine something bigger. That direction was theirs.

Where we were proud to help was in bringing it to life. Through an opportunity assessment, Streetlight worked alongside DAV to refine the vision, understand what teams across the organization saw as opportunities, align stakeholders around a shared plan, and map out a phased, achievable path to growth. The result was a clear business case and a step-by-step roadmap. It had the foundation that turned a promising idea into a funded, scalable program.

If you're sitting on a program with untapped potential, or wondering how to make the case for it internally, Laura's story is a great reminder that the best place to start is often by looking inward.

[Listen to the full episode of the P2P Soapbox with Laura Rusche.]

Curious how an opportunity assessment could help bring your next idea to life? [Get in touch with the Streetlight Digital team.]

Trust, Friction, and the Future of Fundraising

Our Biggest Takeaways from Bridge 2026

Our direct response team recently spent three days at The Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference, and we came home with pages of notes, sore feet from many hallway conversations (and some karaoke, of course!), and one very clear realization: The fundamentals of fundraising are not being replaced, they are being rewritten in real time. People still give to people. Trust is still earned, not assumed. Donors still want to feel something before they give something. What is changing is how quickly that trust has to be built, and across how many more channels it now has to travel. 

Here is the version of Bridge 2026 we would tell a colleague over coffee: the sessions that stuck with us, the stats that made us pause, and the ideas we can’t wait to bring back to our clients. 

Trust Is the Currency 

Keynote speaker Americus Reed II, a professor at the Wharton School, presents a reframe on donor identity.

Opening keynote speaker Americus Reed II, a professor at the Wharton School, set the tone for the entire conference with a simple reframe: nonprofits are not just in the donation business, they are in the identity business. Every donor is asking three questions of the organizations they support. Who am I? What do I believe in? Who will I become? The nonprofits that can answer those questions, Reed argued, are the ones that earn something far more significant than a single gift. 

He described this as an identity ladder, climbing from information and awareness at the base, through engagement and trust, up to identity, advocacy, generosity, and finally legacy. Donations, he reminded the room, are often not the only currency an organization can earn. Attention, self-expression, and belonging matter too. 

The most memorable line of the morning: if you are hiding from being a brand, you are making a mistake. Beautiful brands connect who you are with who your donors are, or want to become. Think of Apple. It gives its users language, creates community, and turns customers into voluntary ambassadors. Reed's challenge to the room was to build a community worth belonging to, one where people naturally invite others in, and to never let anyone else tell your story for you. As competition for attention grows, he argued, the real competitive advantage shifts from budget to trust. 

The Friction Problem, and the Clock That Is Ticking 

We kicked off day one with a challenge we would encourage every nonprofit marketer to try. Pull out your phone right now and attempt to donate to your own organization. How long did it take? How many fields did you have to fill in? How many times did you almost give up? 

If that experience felt frustrating, your donors are almost certainly feeling the same friction. Every extra click, form field, or moment of hesitation is a small tax on conversion, and those small taxes add up. 

That challenge landed next to a trend we've been watching for a while now: charitable donor participation in the U.S. has been declining for years. Nathan Chappell put a hard number to it during his session. We have lost two-thirds of individual donors over the last 20 years. If that trajectory continues, participation hits zero in 24 years. Reversing it starts with rethinking how we engage supporters and removing the barriers standing between intent and action, starting with friction at the moment of giving.

One Size Fits None: Generational Giving Strategies 

A session from Arreva made a case that many organizations already suspect but rarely act on: a single fundraising strategy cannot serve four very different generations of donors. The pressure is real. One in three nonprofits are already experiencing government funding disruptions, and a proposed $163 billion cut to domestic discretionary spending is on the table. Total giving dollars are still climbing, but who is giving, and why, is changing fast. 

The generational snapshot, in brief: 

• Boomers (ages 61 to 79) are legacy givers who trust institutions and hold the majority of current wealth. They respond to personal thank yous, direct mail, and phone calls. 

• Gen X (ages 45 to 60) are results driven givers at the peak of their careers and giving capacity. They want efficiency: automated giving options, smart reporting, and outreach through email, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

• Millennials (ages 29 to 44) are purpose led givers who fund causes, not just organizations. They expect transparency, real time donation tracking, and engagement through social campaigns, real stories, Instagram, and peer to peer fundraising. 

• Gen Z (ages 13 to 28) are change seekers who may not hold significant wealth today, but represent real lifetime value. They respond to authenticity, interactivity, and fast impact content on TikTok and SMS, often introduced by creators and influencers they already trust. 

A wealth transfer is coming over the next 20 to 30 years, and 70 percent of donor wealth currently sits with Boomers and Gen X. The session's framework for building an ask that works across generations was simple and sticky: hook, heart, hand. Hook them with urgency or curiosity. Move them with a concrete picture of transformation at a specific gift level. Give them a clear, time bound call to action. Bake the stewardship plan in from day one, not as an afterthought. 

When AI Answers First, Trust Has to Travel Further 

Streetlight’s Vijay Malavia (Director, Digital Media) and Lizzie Russell (Director, Direct Response Strategy) presented alongside valuable client Traci Osborne of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.

Our own Streetlight Digital team led a session at Bridge this year, titled “Beyond Blue Links: Winning Donor Acquisition When AI Answers First,” alongside our client, Traci Osborne of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation. The premise: the traditional search journey is changing. People still have questions. They still need information, support, and connection. But increasingly, those answers arrive directly through Google and AI tools before a supporter ever lands on a nonprofit's website. 

That makes trust more important, not less. The opportunity for nonprofits is not to produce more content. It is to produce content that is clear, accurate, expert-informed, and grounded in real, lived experience, the kind of content that helps a supporter feel confident in an organization before they are ever ready to donate, register, or advocate. Traci and the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation team shared how they are meeting people where they are, from educational resources to practical tools to lived experience content that AI can summarize, but never truly replace. 

The Infrastructure of Trust: Email Deliverability 

Not every session at Bridge was about creativity. One of the most practical hours covered the unglamorous, essential work of email deliverability. Spam filtering keeps getting smarter, security and authentication requirements keep getting stricter, and machine learning is changing what “reaching the inbox” even means. 

The diagnosis checklist organizations should run regularly includes: IP reputation, sending practices, spam traps, technical setup, the reputation of “neighbors” on a shared IP, domain reputation, engagement rates, and even the content itself. Deliverability is not a one-time setup. It is an ongoing relationship with inbox providers, and case studies from organizations like the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Foundation and Rails to Trails Conservancy showed how quickly a strong list can become a liability without attention to the fundamentals. 

Built to Last: Lessons from Reading Is Fundamental 

One of the most useful case studies at the conference came from Reading Is Fundamental, the nation's largest children's literacy organization, and Sage Communications Group, on building a major-donor case for support from scratch. Their challenge: no new building, no new program to announce, and a narrative that had moved on from the pandemic-era conversation about learning loss. RIF had also lost its federal funding in 2011, adding urgency to the need for a compelling private-philanthropy case. 

Their first instinct, a storybook concept, did not work. The tone was off, the framing did not align with a major donor audience, and the materials clashed with an audience of corporations, philanthropists, and family foundations, rather than RIF's typical bright, playful, kid-centric brand. They landed instead on a suite of materials: a soft-touch, coffee-table-style casebook, a highly customizable viewbook for major donors and foundations, and a proposal document for more formal asks, unified under a distinct campaign name and identity called READ. 

The lessons that translate to any organization building a major case for support: 

• Know your audience, and be honest when it does not match your everyday brand voice. 

• Give the campaign its own visual identity that still feels connected to your core brand. 

• Invest in photography early. Staged, overused, or thin photo libraries undercut even the best copy. 

• Balance donor centricity with your mission. The people you serve are the hero of the story. Donors are the supporting characters who make the story possible. Do not sugarcoat the need, but do use numbers your donor can actually visualize. 

• Get buy in from key stakeholders early, and approve the copy before scaling into design. 

• Make every deliverable editable, with base versions built for each audience segment from the start. 

Stronger Than the Moment 

We closed the conference the same way it opened, on the idea that trust is the real currency of a strong nonprofit brand. When donors see their own identities, values, and aspirations reflected back to them, they do more than give. They engage, they advocate, and they become part of a community worth belonging to. 

That is the thread running through every session we have recapped here: remove the friction that erodes trust, speak to each generation in the language it actually trusts, show up with content built for a world where AI answers first, give your program a voice people want to text back, protect the quiet infrastructure that gets your message delivered at all, build a case for support that treats your mission's story honestly, and keep listening long after the ask is made. 

We left Bridge 2026 energized, and we are already bringing these ideas back to the nonprofits we serve. If you want to talk through how any of this applies to your program, we would love to hear from you. 

Webinar Alert! The Power of Personalized Engagement: How Breakthrough T1D Increased Fundraising with a Mobile-First Strategy

Is Mobile the Missing Piece in your fundraising strategy?

REGISTER NOW > 

Speakers from Breakthrough T1D, Streetlight Digital, and Nuclavis will discuss how a mobile-first strategy helped increase engagement and fundraising results.

Join us for a candid conversation on August 27th with Streetlight Digital, Nuclavis, and Breakthrough T1D on what it takes to build a more connected supporter experience through SMS that will increase participant engagement and raise funds.

It's a critical time to have this conversation because everyone's talking about mobile. But how's it really going? Who are the ones who are actually seeing gains? What's the strategy behind a successful program? How do you layer it into your plans to get out of it what you really need? 

We're thrilled to break down all the nitty gritty on August 27, at 1pm ET for a behind-the-scenes look at how our client Breakthrough T1D put into action a practical and successful mobile-first strategy that genuinely connected with supporters and achieved critical results.

You'll hear directly from the Breakthrough T1D team about their experience, key learnings, and the role SMS played in their participant journey. We'll also explore how the partnership between Breakthrough T1D, Streetlight Digital, and Nuclavis combined strategy, project leadership, and mobile engagement technology to bring the program to life.

Helping Make-A-Wish America Reimagine Youth Fundraising Through Student WishMakers

There are projects you build, and then there are projects you get to pour your whole heart into.

Our work with Make-A-Wish America on Student WishMakers was one of those: a chance to work shoulder to shoulder with their team to take a big idea from strategic assessment to launch, reimagining youth fundraising under one clear, inspiring peer-to-peer program.

Make-A-Wish already had a strong foundation for youth fundraising, with existing programs that engaged students, schools, campuses, and local communities. But there was an opportunity to bring those efforts together into a more cohesive program that could create a clearer on-ramp for youth activation, peer-to-peer fundraising, and chapter engagement.

Streetlight began with a specialized assessment focused on program positioning, audience needs, naming structure, messaging, storytelling, activation strategy, resource needs, and digital presence. The goal was to help Make-A-Wish establish a stronger foundation for a reimagined youth fundraising program: one with a unified brand identity, a consistent messaging framework, and a flexible structure chapters could use ahead of the new school year.

One of the best parts of this project was the way the work happened. We got to work closely with the Make-A-Wish America team, combining their deep understanding of the mission, chapters, and youth audiences with Streetlight’s strategy, creative, digital, and fundraising expertise. From kickoff through launch, our team also led project management end to end, something many agencies leave to the client. That meant Make-A-Wish could stay focused on the vision while we kept the moving pieces aligned.

The result was Student WishMakers, a refreshed national identity designed to unite youth-led fundraising efforts under one empowering brand. Student WishMakers is now a nationwide youth fundraising movement powered by Make-A-Wish America, giving students of all ages a way to raise funds, rally their communities, and help grant life-changing wishes for children facing critical illnesses.

Once the strategy was in place, Streetlight worked alongside Make-A-Wish to bring the program experience to life across the website, messaging, visuals, and email journey. Our team supported the work across strategy, copywriting, UX, design, development, supporting visual assets, and email communications, including autoresponders, milestone messages, and coaching emails.

The website needed to introduce the new program clearly, make the audience pathways easy to understand, and inspire students, schools, chapters, and supporters to take action. The visual direction helped Student WishMakers feel distinct and youth-friendly while staying connected to the Make-A-Wish brand. The copy brought the program’s voice to life in a way that felt empowering, joyful, and easy for chapters to use.

For Streetlight, this project is a strong example of what happens when strategy, creative, technology, and fundraising expertise work together. Also, when trust and collaboration guide the process. We were grateful not only to help shape the program, but to work alongside a client team so committed to creating something useful, inspiring, and scalable for chapters and students.

We are grateful to have played a role in helping bring Student WishMakers to life. We can’t wait to see how students, schools, chapters, and communities make it their own.

Because when young people are given a clear path to lead, rally, and fundraise, they help make wishes come true.