New York-based Chariot, which makes it easier to give via so-called donor-advised funds, or DAFs, has closed a $11 million Series A led by West Coast venture firm Maveron, whose co-founder includes former Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz.
Other participants included Boston-based Spark Capital, San Francisco’s SV Angel and Y Combinator, and angel investors including Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Mike Massaro, Ben Golub and Adam Nash. Subsequent to the Series A, Dan Levitan, who co-founded Maveron in 1998 with Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, joined Chariot’s board.
Exploiting ‘Major Gap’
A trio of executives — former Bain & Company executives Aaron Kahane and Drew Schneider, and former BlackRock engineer Salomon Serfati — co-founded Chariot in early 2022, after they “stumbled upon a major gap in the online giving ecosystem,” as they set out to give 10% of their incomes to charity. The perceived gap — an online feature that helps donors give via DAFs and save taxes.
“We couldn’t use our DAF dollars in any of the places online we were most inspired to give: a nonprofit’s website, a friend’s birthday fundraiser, a family member’s marathon page, etc.,” the founders wrote in a blog post to announce the Series A funding round. “If DAFs aren’t usable where most people give, we knew they weren’t a complete solution to maximize philanthropy.”
Making Giving Easier
According to Chariot, DAFs are the “fastest growing segment of philanthropy,” holding some $230 billion in assets. The funds grant out over $52 billion per year to nonprofits on behalf of over 3 million people.
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Advertising / Media / Communications / Public Relations
Nevins & Associates
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
“We are very excited to be partnered with Chariot as they help make charitable giving through DAFs a better experience for charities, donors and DAF providers,” said Levitan, Maveron’s co-counder and partner. “The Chariot team is fully aligned with these three constituencies to increase the amount and ease of giving via DAFs.”
Serfati serves as Chariot’s CEO, while Kahane is chief operating officer and Schneider holds the position of chief product officer. Chariot’s founders say they set out to build a payment option that could be “embedded into any donation form, making DAFs easier to use than a credit card and putting DAFs front-and-center for the millions of people giving online.” With proper DAF payments infrastructure in place, the company aims to make DAFs as common as 401(k)s, which are used by over 60 million Americans.
Chariot has built a seamless way to give — via a feature called DAFpay — for tens of thousands of charities, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Central Park Conservancy, Boys & Girls Club of America, Pan-Mass Challenge, and March of Dimes. DAFpay is also a primary payment option on fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe, Givebutter , DonorDrive, Springboard by Jackson River and Engaging Networks. The company is testing a feature that will allow DAF users to automate donations to charities on a recurring basis.
