Donor-advised funds: US regulators are scrambling to catch up with the boom in these charitable giving accounts
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Brian Mittendorf, The Ohio State University
(THE CONVERSATION) A revolution in charitable giving is underway due to the growth of donor-advised funds in the United States.
Known widely as DAFs, these financial accounts are designated for charitable giving. Donors can get an immediate tax deduction by putting money or other assets into the accounts, and advise the accounts’ managers to give away the money at a later date.
After years of concerns about how quickly the money reserved for charity gets distributed and whether donor-advised funds need to operate more transparently, proposed new federal regulations are now pending. Though the regulations would not create new requirements for how rapidly these funds distribute money, they do provide some new guidelines for what uses for DAFs are allowed by law.
As an accounting researcherwho studies DAFs, I believe these new changes may mark the start of what could become a...