The 'black hole' that sucks up Silicon Valley's money - A fast-growing type of charitable account gets big tax breaks but little oversight

and [the fund received] $526 million from Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of Emerson Collective, according to Bloomberg, which obtained two pages of IRS information that the agency mistakenly posted online. (Emerson Collective owns a majority stake of The Atlantic.)

Heh, calling out one of your bosses. Ballsy. Also:

”[The fund] got so drunk on the idea of growth that they lost track of anything smacking of mission”

Sounds familiar. And this is just insane:

Donor-advised funds can also be set up anonymously, which makes it hard for nonprofits to engage with potential givers. They also don’t have websites or mission statements like private foundations do, which can make it hard for nonprofits to know what causes donors support.

Because donor-advised funds are still categorized as public charities, they have no payout requirement and fewer disclosure requirements. And because they’re categorized as public charities, donors can give a higher share of their income to these funds than they could to a private foundation, which can help them avoid taxes.

In addition, those funds with high payout rates could just be giving to another donor-advised fund, rather than to a public charity, Madoff says. One-quarter of donor-advised fund sponsors distribute less than 1 percent of their assets in a year, Madoff has found.

Often, people give to donor-advised funds right before a public event like an initial public offering, so they can avoid the capital-gains taxes they’d otherwise have to pay, and instead receive a tax deduction.

Am I wrong in thinking these are complete scams? This shit makes me so goddamn angry. :(