Kudos to CalNonprofits, which is sponsoring a bill to regulate the part of their community that sponsors donor advised funds. It’s good modeling for a responsible sector.
Critics of donor-advised funds may have just been handed some pretty weighty fodder for their 2019 advocacy for regulation.
Stories are rolling in about 2018 year-end fundraising, and they are interesting but by no means decisive. In the Twin Cities, nonprofits report steady donations despite the 2018 tax law changes. Of course, many factors beyond tax deductions influence giving.
A new report shows that, as expected, the growth of donor-advised funds, which include commercial funds, community foundations, and common funds, was close to phenomenal at 27.3 percent over the last year.
Among the problems that critics have with donor-advised funds and supporting foundations is the lack of transparency around individual funds—and the lack of accountability to mission sometimes exhibited by the DAF sponsor.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is giving hundreds of millions to schools, but its layers of secrecy as it inserts itself into our public education system is nothing less than deeply anti-democratic.
Done the right way, reforming DAFs would not only help working charities, but would also allow community foundations to grow in stature and do what they do best.
This Voices from the Field feature from five community foundation leaders speaks to how they view the role of donor-advised funds and urges caution before rushing to regulation.
Remarks by the interim president at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation might make us believe that the board is not yet getting to the essence of what might ail the charity.
NPQ is initiating a new practice of explicitly trying to advance conversations that are stuck. This morning, we advisedly take up the massively contentious topic of donor-advised funds.
