Philanthropy, incorporated for the public good, can and should make all its investments accordingly. In 2021, Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a bill to more tightly regulate donor-advised funds, commonly referred to as DAFs. While the Accelerating Charitable Giving (ACE) Act’s reforms were far from sweeping, the bill set off a bitter debate over who controls charitable funds: the donor or the public. The Act’s supporters plausibly argued that wealthy donors could use the increasingly popular philanthropic instruments for personal gain, and that DAFs allow them to hoard and perpetually control what becomes public money once [...more...]