A Billionaire Criticizes Donor Advised Funds


credit: Flickr

John Arnold, a Houston-based billionaire, has been criticizing donor-advised funds (DAFs) in a way that shook the world of philanthropy.

In an interview with Arnold, Theodore Schleifer of Vox, asks effective questions that have stirred up philanthropic organizations.

Arnold says that he is willing to talk about DAFs because he found out that legacy foundations, when they are managed by staff and board structure, everything gets more bureaucratic. He adds there is also the other problem with the idea of "giving from the grave".

Arnold points out that the DAF issue is one of the areas where the criticism is valid. He says that people are getting tax advantages by putting money into the DAFs, and they're not "abiding by the spirit of the regulations about how that money is to be put back into society."

Arnold also argues that each DAF account should meet that minimum 5 percent spend and notes down possible ways to enforce this.

Arnold also responds to today's new conversation around billionaire power in politics and to what extent public policy and role of government can provide solutions to help. Read the Entire Article


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Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.



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