---
title: "The Payout Question"
number: 12
statement: "What is the best rate to spend philanthropic money now versus later?"
progress: "A model that ties the payout rate to measurable inputs, such as investment returns, how fast the best opportunities are used up and discount rates, and gives ranges a funder can act on."
conditions: ["parked-money", "short-horizon"]
status: open
bounty: "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded."
---

## Why it matters

The Annual DAF Report 2025 estimated about $326 billion in donor-advised fund assets in 2024. Whether assets should be spent sooner is a substantial allocation question; the asset total alone cannot answer it. See [Parked Money](/diagnosis/parked-money/).

## Where to start

Economists have written “give now or give later” models. The open problem is grounding them in real data on how the cost of doing good changes over time.