Issues with Donors, Issues with Donees
At MIT, which was also caught up in the Epstein furor, the Boston Globe reports that the decision to name an auditorium after donor and energy company Shell has led to a backlash from both students and environmental activists. At the University of Pennsylvania, a plan to rename the law school to honor the $125 million gift from the W.P. Carey Foundation led to objections from alumni and students, Above the Law reports (hat tip: Nonprofit QuarterlyLaw.com). In response, the dean announced that the law school will keep its short-form name as “Penn Law” until 2022, when it will change to “Penn Carey Law.”
On the donee side, there were also several stories. Chick-Fil-A announced it would end contributions from its foundation to groups that have been criticized as anti-LGTBQ, instead limiting its 2020 donations to Covenant House International, Junior Achievement of America, and certain community food banks. This change triggered a backlash from conservatives, who issued a letter urging the company to continue its donations to The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Finally, two sponsors of donor-advised funds or DAFs have come under fire for recipients of their donations. Sludge reports that Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, the nation’s largest charitable grantmaker (over $5 billion in 2018), in recent years distributed tens of thousands of dollars to the New Century Foundation, which is commonly described as a white supremacist group (hat tip: EO Tax Journal). On a more local level, the Charlotte Observer reports that the Foundation for the Carolinas (the sixth-largest community foundation in the United States, with $2.6 billion in assets) gave millions of dollars to prominent anti-immigration groups over the past ten years (hat tip: Nonprofit QuarterlyCharlotte Agenda). In both instances, the DAF sponsors appear to have only considered whether the recipients were recognized as charities by the IRS (under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3)), which they are, and the Carolinas group explicitly said this was the case. But of course this begs the question of who actually controls the funds in reality.
Lloyd Mayer