The article makes it seem like donor advised funds are only for millionaires but your average Joe can set one up online in a few minutes at Fidelity or Vanguard. Last I checked Fidelity's minimum investment to set up a donor advised fund was only $5,000. If you're going to give even only a few hundred to charity over the next 10 years it might make sense to set up one during a year when your tax bracket is high (like a year you have a windfall) or you already have a lot of deductions.

It's definitely a "tax hack" as it's often done to (hopefully) minimizing taxes, but it's legal and the charitable contributions are 100% real and you can't spend that money any other way other than on charity. It's like claiming people who are contributing to 401ks are "hacking their taxes." It's not nefarious as this author it making it out to be.

I was intending to set one up myself during the years when I was itemizing deductions, because I don't plan on having enough deductions to itemize for the rest of my life and I'd like to give to charity throughout the years. Then the tax reform passed very suddenly, I'm going to claim the standard deduction this year, so I missed my window to save thousands on taxes. Oh well.