VIDEO: How Wealthy Donors Warehouse Charitable Funds “for Generations”
Scripps News covered IPS’s new report “The True Cost of Billionaire Philanthropy” for a recent Giving Tuesday segment. They spoke with report co-author Chuck Collins, who highlighted our findings — including how ultra-wealthy donors are manipulating tax laws to get breaks without actually following through on their pledges to support charitable organizations.
“More and more of the growth in giving is from the ultra-wealthy. Yet, they give differently. They’re more likely to give to their own private foundations and donor-advised funds,” Chuck explained. “And we found that 41 cents of every dollar given by individuals now goes to these intermediaries controlled by wealthy donors.”
Those donors “get an immediate tax break the year that they give that money, but it can sit warehoused for years — generations — in a private foundation… They don’t give directly to the soup kitchen or the food bank like most people.”
Chuck concluded by calling on federal lawmakers to “close down some of these abuses, require transparency, and make sure that the money is flowing out of these private foundations and donor-advised funds and going to the actual community charities that really need the money right now.”
