Another issue is that the tax savings felt by the donors is tied to the original contribution's valuation and not the valuation at the time the money is used. So in the case of GoPro's Nicholas Woodman, he got a tax break based on $500 mil, but the shares have dropped around 93% so if they're used for charity now it's like he only donated a fraction of that amount.
NYT also reports that the fees for some of these DAFs can be significant and so a portion of these donations are going to e.g. Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and similar firms.
Ya, that part seems legit. But if that's the lede, why not be more explicit about it?
> Another issue is that the tax savings felt by the donors is tied to the original contribution's valuation and not the valuation at the time the money is used. So in the case of GoPro's Nicholas Woodman, he got a tax break based on $500 mil, but the shares have dropped around 93% so if they're used for charity now it's like he only donated a fraction of that amount.
I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. I think that you should get the tax deduction for the value at the time of donation. Anything else would be pretty crazy.
> NYT also reports that the fees for some of these DAFs can be significant and so a portion of these donations are going to e.g. Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and similar firms.
Ya, that's sort of a real issue. But it's not at all specific to DAFs as far as I can tell, and it's not an instance of the "tech billionaires" screwing people over. If anything it's a criticism of these wall street banks.
I know when I donated stock to my DAF, it was liquidated and invested in the set of funds that the DAF supports
The only problem is if the "charity" isn't really a charity in that case the "pastors" of mega churches who have multiple private jets need to be looked at first.
Charity can be used to cover a lot of things: dinners, galas, trips, vehicles, lucrative jobs, etc.
Unless i'm missing something, they still eventually have to spend it on charity, right? So, whether they do that today or twenty years from now after accumulating interest seems kind of irrelevant to me. It'd be one thing if the NYT had done some reporting that showed these guys were exploiting some loophole to spend the money on themselves without paying taxes. That'd be a big story, and worthy of criticism. But as it is, I don't really see it. Am I missing something here? Anyone who disagrees care to tell me why i'm wrong?