If there was some sort of slush-fund thing going on it would be a problem, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. The tax rate on gifts isn’t that high, and so you’d have to be doing really extreme fraud for it to me more profitable than a straight gift.
>The government provides generous tax benefits for charitable giving but the rules provide very little assurance that this giving will actually make its way to charities. A well-planned gift can save a donor as much as 74 percent of the value of that gift in taxes. That means a $10 million gift can cost the federal government $7.4 million in forgone taxes and therefore only cost the donor $2.6 million after in after tax dollars.
>Right now, there's over $1 trillion dollars set aside in private foundations and over $120 billion set aside in donor-advised funds. Donors get all the same tax benefits from putting their money in these intermediary vehicles as when they give funds outright to a working charity, like a food bank. Yet the public has no assurance of getting any benefit from this money, because there's no requirement under current law that these funds ever be distributed for public benefit. Donor advised funds have no payout requirements under current law and private foundations can fully meet their payout requirements by giving to donor-advised funds or by paying salaries to family members.
https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/a-new-initiative-aims...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
It is just so undemocratic for a handful of people to be in control of infrastructure projects that will affect the lives of millions or billions. They can so easily make a project look good that still benefits them unfairly and there is some evidence that this is what's happening.