Is the New Way to Give a Better Way to Give?
Most people think of charitable donations as happening in one of two ways. In one scenario, people decide how much they want to donate, then select a charity that will be the recipient of the funds. In the other scenario—one only available to the wealthy—a donor can take their money and set up their own foundation, transfer money over to it, have it grow, and then give away money over time, perhaps in perpetuity.
There’s also a third way that combines the first two approaches: It’s called a donor-advised fund, and it lets even small-scale givers put money into an account, let it mature, and then disburse it gradually. Donor-advised funds are becoming such a popular option that in 2015, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, the donor-advised fund set up by the financial firm Fidelity Investments, overtook the United Way to become the largest recipient of charitable funds in the United States.
This development, with the New York–based philanthropist Lewis Cullman in . The funds are, Madoff and Cullman went on to argue, not just inserting a middleman into the charitable-giving process, but they are also potentially slowing the regular streams of money going from givers to nonprofits.
