> I initially liked that concept, but the soon as someone started being a jerk and picked a 503(c) that represented something distasteful, the police would have political ammunition to use.
I don't really see how people choosing to donate the money to particular organizations should be any more controversial than allowing the organizations to be tax exempt in the first place.
And using the money for a governmental purpose generally is a bad idea because it causes the people responsible for making and enforcing the laws to be the ones who benefit from issuing unjustified penalties. Giving it to the federal reserve is no different; it will cause them to soak up more government paper which allows Congress to spend more money which Congress likes and thereby provides them with the perverse incentive to pass bad laws.
An interesting alternative would be to dedicate the money to something that would otherwise be chronically under-funded, like the public defender's office. Which you could then sell as criminals funding the cost of their own defense.