What Is Endaoment? Turning Gifts Into Grants
Endaoment is the grantmaking nonprofit engine powering our modern donor-advised fund program. We turn a gift of almost any asset into support for the causes you choose, on infrastructure we built and operate end-to-end.
We turn gifts into grants. Contribute almost any asset, and we convert it, vet the recipient, and move compliant dollars to the cause they choose. Sounds simple, but before you trust any organization with this work, you deserve to know exactly who is doing it and how. We're Endaoment, a 501(c)(3) public nonprofit, classified under Section 509(a)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code, and a national sponsoring organization of donor-advised funds under Section 4966. It is the same legal foundation the largest and oldest DAF sponsors stand on, but we treat every obligation it carries as a point of pride, not a box to check.
We made a deliberate choice at the start. Rather than license another company's software or build on legacy back-office systems, we built our own. Endaoment runs on infrastructure we design and maintain in-house, which lets us pair legacy-grade compliance with a modern experience. It comes from our conviction that giving deserves technology held to the same standard as everything else you rely on. Open or recommend an Endaoment donor-advised fund, and you are working with an independent nonprofit and a national DAF sponsor, not a spinoff from your brokerage or custodian.
How the donor-advised fund works
When you open a donor-advised fund with us, you make an irrevocable, tax-deductible gift to Endaoment and keep the right to advise when and where the money goes. We hold and steward the assets. You recommend the grants. Gifts are deductible the same tax year as they're given, but the grant recommendations can follow on your own schedule.
Each recommendation undergoes full due diligence, confirming that the recipient is an IRS-qualified 501(c)(3) or a verified international equivalent, screening for program existence, disqualified persons, and impermissible benefit issues, and more. Over 1.8 million organizations are grant-eligible today. Overseeing all of this activity is our amazing group of directors. Our full-time staff keeps our Form 990 available and up to date, and each year, Endaoment completes an independent financial audit. It is the quiet, unglamorous work that makes generosity trustworthy, and we hold ourselves to the legal standards and beyond.
About the blockchain
What does going beyond mean for us? Our infrastructure runs on a public blockchain, and for some, it gives pause. So we will be direct: the blockchain serves as our ultimate ombudsman; a clear, public ledger enforcing our fees, policies, and accounting atop all of the back-office accounting and recordkeeping we already do. We chose to build on top of stablecoins and smart contracts because every contribution, grant, and fee that moves through Endaoment should be publicly known (and anonymized). That is the same accountability a nonprofit has always carried, the spirit of the 990, and now, paired with a record you can verify for yourself.
Audited books, audited code
Our books and our code are both audited by outside experts, and the reports are public.
An independent, AICPA-certified firm audits our finances each year, as required by our California registration. Our onchain records serve as the immutable general ledger those auditors reconcile against, account by account and grant by grant. You can read the public financial audit report.
Because so much of what we do is software, we audit the software too. Our review reaches past our tax status and into how the platform performs day to day. Our smart contracts have been reviewed by OpenZeppelin and LeastAuthority, with the full reports published. Jump in the deep end with us with our audit summary and reports.
Why our discipline is your advantage
The tax-exempt status, the sponsoring-organization structure, the grant vetting, the AML and sanctions screening, the audits: together they define the quality of the product. Because we have already done that work, everyone who builds or gives with us stands on the same cleared ground. Our compliance is not a cost we pass along. It is one of the most valuable things we can offer.
For a builder, embedding philanthropy into a product otherwise means years of legal work before a single feature ships. With the Endaoment API, we remain the 501(c)(3) of record on our own infrastructure. Your users give, we answer for compliance, and you ship in weeks.
For an advisor or donor in the app, the same holds true. You can recommend grants and, in an advisor-managed portfolio, advise how the charitable assets are invested, while Endaoment retains ultimate legal control over them once the gift is made. The diligence, receipting, grant review, and recordkeeping are our responsibility, not yours, so you gain the credibility of recommending an audited 501(c)(3) without the liability of running one. Advisors can open and manage donor-advised funds for clients in the Endaoment App, and our partnerships team is ready to help bring Endaoment to your firm.
What it means for the nonprofit receiving the grant
We hold ourselves accountable to the nonprofit on the receiving end, too. A grantee needs no technical knowledge to work with us: we handle the asset conversion, the diligence, the payout, and the donor's tax paperwork, and the funds arrive as US dollars through our distribution partner, GiveChariot, or over ACH. That provenance raises the standard of trust for everyone a gift touches, and, we would argue, for the field as a whole.
Technology and services
Endaoment provides the technology and services for turning investments into impact. The technology accepts almost any asset (cash, appreciated stock, equity compensation, the proceeds of a business sale, collectibles, or digital assets) and turns it into a tax-deductible gift, settled quickly and recorded publicly. The services are our people. When you bring a complex gift or an urgent question, it is our own dedicated team that answers and stays with it until the outcome is right.
Why you can stand behind it
We built Endaoment on the core premise that charitable capital is meant to move. Too much of it sits idle, waiting on systems that were never designed for the pace of modern life. Our work is to clear the path for that movement while holding the trust that keeps giving legitimate.
If you are deciding where your giving should live, look for yourself. Explore endaoment.org, review our latest numbers at impact.endaoment.org, and read the compliance and audit trail in our documentation. If you're a builder, feel free to dive into our API docs, and when you're ready for production, our partnerships team is ready to help you launch.
Endaoment does not provide tax or legal advice. Please consult your own CPA or attorney about your specific situation.
About Endaoment: Endaoment is a nonprofit that provides the technology and services for turning investments into impact. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a national sponsoring organization of donor-advised funds, giving platforms and donors alike the infrastructure to convert any asset, from cash, stocks, and bonds to crypto and alternative assets like private equity, real estate, and pre-IPO shares, into transparent, tax-deductible support for any of more than 1.8 million nonprofits, with every gift independently verifiable onchain. Builders can embed giving directly into their own products through our modular API, and donors can give any asset through the Endaoment app. Learn more at endaoment.org.
