Sarah Angello: Rebuilding Trust, Rethinking Philanthropy, and Refusing to Play Small

When you spend fifteen years inside an industry, you know its strengths and its blind spots. You also know the parts everyone tolerates because things have always been done a certain way. For many leaders, that familiarity becomes a ceiling. For Sarah Angello, it became a catalyst.

Today she is the cofounder of Daffodil, a fintech company designed to bring transparency, accessibility, and speed to a philanthropic system that has gone unchanged for decades. Most people hear the word philanthropy and picture big checks, foundations, gala dinners, or sprawling annual reports that read more like technical literature than impact storytelling. What they rarely see is how hard it is for donors to understand where their dollars go and how much friction stands between generosity and action.

Sarah had seen all of it. The outdated systems. The slow processes. The opaque metrics. The lost potential. And she reached a point where the disconnect was too big to ignore.

Our conversation with Sarah on Badass Women in Business was not just about a company. It was about a founder who saw a problem long before the sector acknowledged it and chose to build the solution instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

This is the story of how a musician turned nonprofit strategist turned tech founder decided that transparency was not optional and that the future of giving needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.

From Music and Arts to the Mechanics of Philanthropy

Sarah’s career began far from fintech. She studied music, built her early career in arts administration, and immersed herself in the cultural spaces of New York and San Francisco. She fundraised for orchestras and musicians, worked with Grammy award winners, and spent time serving a foundation in Uganda. Her early path was less intentional strategy and more survival and curiosity.

She was honest about that part. After college she needed a job. Benefits. Stability. A reason to believe her skills could translate into something practical. She realized quickly that she was good at talking about programs, connecting with donors, and building relationships. So she stepped into fundraising and discovered she loved watching resources flow toward ideas that mattered.

Fifteen years in philanthropy is long enough to understand both the beauty and the frustration of the work. Philanthropy can be a force for transformation, but the infrastructure around it often slows progress instead of supporting it. Nonprofits work tirelessly but are forced to operate inside systems that were never designed for them. Impact is hard to measure. Donor retention is low. Trust is declining. And most technologies in the sector have been retrofitted from industries that do not share nonprofit realities.

Sarah loved the mission. She loved the work. But she could not unsee the gap.

Seeing the Problem Clearly and Choosing to Move Toward It

The gap Sarah described is simple yet profound. There are people and institutions with the desire and capacity to give. There are organizations with real impact that need those resources. Between them sits a broken bridge.

Most donors never know where their money goes. They receive outdated reports. They search for impact but do not find it. They make one gift but never make a second. Less than half of first-time donors give again, a statistic that should concern anyone focused on sustainability.

Nonprofits, on the other hand, work hard to produce outcomes but often lack the tools to communicate that work in a steady and accessible way. Reporting is manual, slow, and burdensome. Impact stories live in newsletters, posts, static reports, IRS filings, and staff conversations that never make it to the donor in real time.

This is where Sarah became restless. She knew that philanthropy did not need more marketing campaigns. It needed modernization. It needed a shared source of truth. It needed a simpler way for people to see and trust what they were supporting.

She also began to see a massive opportunity within donor advised funds. Known as DAFs, these accounts hold more than 250 billion dollars that has been designated for charitable purposes but often sits untouched. The question was not why donors were not giving. It was how hard it was for them to see impact clearly and deploy capital confidently.

This was the beginning of Daffodil.

The Birth of Daffodil and the Power of Real-Time Visibility

After shifting into tech and learning the language and speed of the industry, Sarah and her two cofounders launched Daffodil with a simple promise. Move philanthropic dollars further and faster. Reduce friction. Increase transparency. Build trust.

The heart of the platform is something Sarah calls zero burden impact reporting. Instead of asking nonprofits to create new materials or complete more forms, Daffodil pulls from the systems they already use. Social posts. Emails. IRS reports. Newsletters. Data sources. These are transformed into clean, real-time summaries that show donors exactly what their contributions support.

Nonprofits do not have to lift a finger. Donors are not guessing. Transparency becomes natural rather than a heavy administrative lift.

The model is free for nonprofits. Revenue comes from the entities that move philanthropic capital. Family offices. Foundations. Financial institutions. Advisors. Anyone who sees philanthropy as part of their client services.

The mission is not just reporting. It is rebuilding trust at a time when trust has reached historic lows.

The GoFundMe Lesson and Why Consent Matters

During our conversation, Sarah addressed a recent incident where GoFundMe launched donation pages for almost every nonprofit in the United States without their consent. On the surface it looked like a convenience. In reality, it rattled the sector. It showed how easily big platforms can override nuance and relationship.

To their credit, GoFundMe corrected the issue quickly. But the moment validated Daffodil’s thesis. Philanthropy is relational. Consent matters. Transparency matters. Trust is not something you can automate. You have to design for it.

Daffodil exists because donors want clarity and nonprofits want to spend their time doing the work, not producing outdated reports that no longer reflect the pace of impact.

Making the Leap from Nonprofit Work to Tech Leadership

Sarah admitted the hardest shift was not vocabulary. It was speed. Technology moves quickly. Decisions happen today. Not in six weeks. Not after three committee meetings and two rounds of review.

She loved that shift. She embraced it. And she learned how to navigate a world where innovation is expected and agility is essential.

She also shared an honest truth. She bootstrapped. She raised a friends and family round. And now she is preparing for a seed round in a landscape where less than three percent of venture capital goes to women.

Her mindset is refreshingly grounded. She does not focus on the statistic. She focuses on traction. She focuses on value. Investors invest in clarity. They invest in growth. They invest in excellent execution.

And execution is where Sarah thrives.

Choosing the Right Co-Founders and Building on Trust

Daffodil is powered by three founders who already knew they worked well together. They had been through the trenches. They had scaled a prior company from pre-product to millions in ARR. They understood each other's strengths and blind spots.

Their roles were clear. Sarah owned the domain knowledge. Her cofounders owned product and technical development. Accountability was non-negotiable. They still hold daily standups even as a small team because clarity and alignment matter.

Partnerships can make or break a business. Daffodil was built on relational equity, mutual respect, and an understanding that the right team creates velocity.

Wins, Setbacks, and the Decision to See Opportunity Everywhere

When Sarah talked about competition, her perspective stood out. Many founders fear being copied. She finds it validating. If a major company is studying what a one-year-old startup is building, she sees it as proof of momentum. Proof of value. Proof that she is solving a problem worth solving.

This is the mindset she carries. Abundance, not scarcity. Execution, not fear. Transparency, not secrecy.

Her wins reflect that same energy.

• Winning the pitch competition at Blackbaud’s conference.

• Being added to the Kitsis Advisor Tech map within a year of launching.

• Finding investors who see the potential of real-time visibility in philanthropy.

These wins were not accidents. They were outcomes of clarity, speed, and a willingness to build in public.

What Daffodil Means for Donors and Everyday Givers

Sarah made a strong case for why individual donors should care about their own giving strategy. Most people give at the end of the year, sometimes reactively. Many do not realize that donor advised funds can help with tax planning, liquidity events, or long-term charitable goals.

Daffodil helps donors consolidate their giving and decide where their dollars can have the most impact. It also helps business owners develop corporate philanthropy strategies that align with their values.

The platform turns charitable giving into a structured, visible part of financial planning rather than something left to instinct or pressure at year end.

The Ten Year Vision and the Future of Giving

Sarah imagines a future where transparency is attached to every single charitable transaction in the United States. She imagines Daffodil expanding globally. She imagines a world where donor trust is rebuilt not with promises, but with data and stories that arrive in real time.

To get there she needs partners. Family offices. Foundations. Institutions that want to transform legacy processes and invest in systems that meet donors and nonprofits where they are.

It is a bold vision, but it is rooted in the reality she has lived. Philanthropy can evolve. It can modernize. And Daffodil is positioned to lead that shift.

The Lesson She Carried With Her: Almost Everything Is Fixable

At the end of our conversation, Sarah shared the lesson that grounded her entire career. Almost everything is fixable. You can make mistakes. You can take the wrong job. You can try something new and fail. But very few professional decisions are permanent.

The story she shared was from fifteen years ago when she sent a mail merge email containing personal information to the wrong list. It felt catastrophic at the time. She owned it. She apologized. She learned. And she moved forward.

This story was small. But it was real. It was human. And it illustrated something every founder eventually learns. You do not need perfection. You need accountability and the courage to keep going.

Why Sarah Belongs in the Badass Women in Business Community

Sarah represents exactly what we celebrate.
- A woman who sees a broken system and chooses to rebuild it.
- A leader who moves between industries with curiosity and conviction.
- A founder who understands that transparency is power.
- A woman who believes that success is not a straight line and that mistakes are part of the process.

She is proof that innovation does not always start with technology. It starts with noticing what no one else is willing to question and then deciding you are the person who will solve it.

You can learn more about Daffodil at getdaffodil.com or reach Sarah directly at sarah@getdaffodil.com.