Cynthia Rowland’s Podcasts on Donor Advised Fund Proposed Regulations
Social media is so great, isn’t it? Especially because it makes amateurs of us all. You can be a musician, a reporter, a talking head, a dancer, singer, or even a weather person. You can be a chef, a physical trainer like Richard Simmons, or a movie producer. You can be just about anything you wanna be with social media. I am much better with the written word than I am with the spoken word so I haven’t yet mastered podcasting. It might be a new year’s resolution though.
Cynthia Rowland specializes in nonprofit organizations out in Northern California and she is also a pretty good talking head. She has a radio show called the “EO Radio Show” that has a series of podcasts on the proposed DAF regulations. Here is some of her bio from her “I love me” page. We all have an “I love me” page, I’m not throwing shade here:
Cynthia Rowland is a business and tax lawyer who helps philanthropists, including private individuals as well as for-profit and non-profit organizations, who wish to make the world a better place. As a business attorney and strategist, she helps her clients achieve personal, family, business, charitable, philanthropic, and community objectives. Cynthia’s expertise in this regard is broad, and includes entity formation, business transactions and grant agreements, regulatory compliance matters, partnerships and joint ventures, and mergers and dissolutions. In short, she’s well-attuned to the legal needs of philanthropic families, all forms of nonprofit organizations, and business enterprises with a corporate social responsibility directive.
She also advises trustees and directors of charitable organizations on fiduciary and tax issues, including those raised by actual and potential conflicts of interest, regulatory investigations and audits, debt financing of capital projects, including tax exempt bonds, as well as issues raised by settlement of complex litigation involving the fiduciaries and charitable organizations. Cynthia has a particular expertise in the legal and tax issues of corporate philanthropy—business enterprises using philanthropy to benefit their communities, push the boundaries of emerging science and technology not yet adequately funded by private capital, and other emerging approaches the betterment of the planet and its inhabitants. Her clients seek her advice when pursuing charitable co-ventures, fundraising, formation of corporate foundations, and other types of social benefit corporations and entities.
The first podcast is entitled “An Introduction to DAFs and Overview of the Newly Proposed DAF Regulations.” Here is the description:
Welcome to EO Radio Show – Your Nonprofit Legal Resource. I’m Cynthia Rowland, and episode 62 describes new proposed regulations important to the administration of donor advised funds. The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department published a Notice of proposed rulemaking on November 13, 2023, officially published in the Federal Register on November 14, 2023.
These Proposed Regulations guide sponsoring organizations, which include community foundations and many other types of charities that maintain one or more donor advised funds. The Proposed Regulations are also important for persons involved with donor advised funds, including the donors, the donor advisors, related persons, and certain fund managers.
This episode introduces the basic rules that apply to sponsoring organizations and donor advised funds and includes a brief summary of the highlights of the Proposed Regulations.
The second in the series is entitled “New Proposed Regulations Defining Donor Advised Fund Terms.” Here is the description:
In the previous EO Radio Show, episode 62, I introduced the basic rules that apply to sponsoring organizations and DAFs and a brief summary of the highlights in the Proposed Regulations. This episode looks closely at the defined terms in Proposed Regulations sections 53.4966-1 and -3 and includes a brief summary of the highlights in the Proposed Regulations. In upcoming episodes, we’ll discuss the exceptions to the definition of a DAF, and the penalties that can apply if a DAF makes taxable distributions.
The third episode is entitled “Exceptions to the DAF Definition Under the Proposed Regulations.” Here is the description for that one.
Episodes 62 and 63 covered the basic rules that apply to sponsoring organizations and DAFs and looked closely at the defined terms in Proposed Regulations. In this episode, we cover the important exceptions to the DAF definitions that take certain funds held by sponsoring organizations out of the onerous penalty tax regime that can apply to the operations of DAFs.
You can access and listen to all episodes in one convenient place. Nice work Cynthia.
darryll k. jones