What Giving USA Really Told Us: Average Americans Are Giving a Smaller Share of Their Incomes to Charities philanthropy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from philanthropy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Episode 40: The Great DAF Debate
May 21, 2021
Donor-advised funds (DAF) have dominated philanthropy in any number of ways over the past decade, whether it’s increasing charitable contributions, boosting assets, or simply garnering attention within the public square.
That could be why it takes a super sized episode of
Fresh Research tackle the topic. This episode diverges from the usual format; instead of one interview there are two interviews, each taking a side on the subject of DAFs and proposed reforms around charitable giving.
Professor Ray Madoff
The first segment features Ray Madoff, co-founder and director of the Boston College Law School Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good. She’s part of the Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving, a coalition of philanthropists, nonprofits and foundations pushing charitable reforms, including new rules around donor-advised funds. Since this episode was recorded, Madoff released a new paper with UC-San Diego Professor Jame
New Report Says Charities Lost $300 Billion in 5 Years in Part Because Donors Stashed Money in Advised Funds May 4, 2021
New research from two scholars who are advocating for new rules on foundations and donor-advised funds suggests “working charities” lost $300 billion in recent years due in large part to the proliferation of donor-advised funds.
According to a new data analysis from Boston College law professor Ray Madoff and James Andreoni, an economist at the University of California at San Diego, charities lost out on that sum from 2014 through 2018 as charitable donations went instead into donor-advised-fund accounts and private foundations and didn’t come out. The amount lost is substantial: For context, “Giving USA” estimated individuals donated $295 billion to all charities, including DAFs, in 2018 alone.
Yves here. While this paper pursues a very important question about norms, I have strong doubts about its conclusions, which is basically that there are clear tipping points and they are durable. For instance, abortion rights are far from settled in the US. The women’s liberation movement made the huge tactical error of not getting abortion rights enshrined in legislation, and instead relied on the Supreme Court to hold their win. Richard Nixon made sure that abortion rights meant less than they seemed to by refusing to fund the procedure. And despite the belief that women can get an abortion, that right is increasingly empty as MDs are not learning how to do abortions in med school, Six states have only one clinic, and in 2014, 90% of US counties had no clinic. Moreover, many conservative state make abortions a two-day process by requiring women to hear lectures about how they are killing a fetus and watching videos and then waiting 24 hours after that to have the abortion. How ma
The Surprising Mental Health Benefits of Volunteering
A program in Connecticut offers psychotherapy in exchange for voluntary service in the community. But the act of volunteering itself can have mental health benefits of its own.
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Empowerment, agency, and control. Impact, self-esteem, and social connections. A sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of contributing and with all that, a feeling of reward.
All are elements in the psychological impact of volunteering.
And all are critical pieces of Volunteers in Psychotherapy, a West Hartford, Connecticut, program that offers pure talk-therapy sessions in exchange for voluntary service in the community. The longstanding, forward-pushing nonprofit was designed as a corrective to the usual medicalized approach to mental healthcare, which too often strips the autonomy of patients and too often prioritizes pharmaceuticals over in-depth therapy. Many people can’t afford mental healthcare out of pocket; when it is covered by