Silicon Valley’s Favorite Philanthropic Loophole

It argues that DAFs may be "crowding out" contributions to charities, citing the fact that Fidelity Charitable raised more money than the United Way in 2015. But that is not evidence of anything. To a large extent Fidelity Charitable is basically an aggregator of charitable donations; comparing the total amount aggregated to the amount received by a specific charity is not illuminating.

There is a complaint that a DAF may allow investors to park money forever (although these articles never identify why it would be in their interests to do so). But the big bad guy, Fidelity Charitable, imposes similar "minimum grant activity" requirements on their DAFs that private foundations have by law. And they disclose that across all accounts, 28 percent is disbursed per year, far more than the requirement for private foundations.

An consultant to non-profits says "I have seen so many of my clients, the nonprofits, be hurt by it" but the article does not specify what the harm is or its mechanism.

If so many people are complaining about them I feel like there must be something wrong with Donor-Advised Funds but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is from these articles that keep coming up.