They say charity is a virtue, but sometimes it's a little more complicated. The donor advised fund or DAF, has been a financial instrument for charitable giving in the United States for nearly a century - it's a useful tool for wealthy individuals to make philanthropic donations. But as the inequality gap continues to expand in this country, the DAF has come under increased scrutiny as people push for transparency within the moneyed class. In 2018 the New York Times published a piece asserting that donor advised funds are being exploited by high net worth individuals as a way to shelter them from capital gains taxes. And more recently, this week's guest on Sea Change Radio, Alex Kotch, wrote a piece for Optout and The New Republic examining the role of DAF fiduciary sponsors, particularly big investment firms like Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab. We discuss this article, learn more about DAFs, and explore the question of who should be held accountable when a donor advised fund facilitates donations to red-flagged hate groups.

00:02 Narrator - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

00:27 Alex Kotch (AK) - I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to, you know, ask an organization whether it's a company or it's a charity, to be responsible for the money that they are giving out.

00:38 Narrator - They say charity is a virtue, but sometimes it's a little more complicated. The donor advised fund or DAF, has been a financial instrument for charitable giving in the United States for nearly a century - it's a useful tool for wealthy individuals to make philanthropic donations. But as the inequality gap continues to expand in this country, the DAF has come under increased scrutiny as people push for transparency within the moneyed class. In 2018 the New York Times published a piece asserting that donor advised funds are being exploited by high net worth individuals as a way to shelter them from capital gains taxes. And more recently, this week's guest on Sea Change Radio, Alex Kotch, wrote a piece for Optout and The New Republic examining the role of DAF fiduciary sponsors, particularly big investment firms like Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab. We discuss this article, learn more about DAFs, and explore the question of who should be held accountable when a donor advised fund facilitates donations to red-flagged hate groups.

02:03 Alex Wise (AW) - I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Alex Kotch. He is an investigative journalist and the co-founder of Opt Out Media Foundation. Alex, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

02:16 Alex Kotch (AK) - Thanks a lot. Great to be here.

02:17 Alex Wise (AW) - So explain to listeners what Opt Out is - the Opt Out Media Foundation is a pretty bold new initiative.

02:25 AK - Yeah, we're a 501C3 nonprofit charity currently based in New York City, and we advocate for financially independent news media. So we have a website with curated news content. We have an app that we've we developed ourselves. It's a news aggregation app with hand curated news. Content as well from hundreds of financially independent, trustworthy newsrooms around the US. That includes national players like the New Republic, the nation, the Intercept and a lot of state and local newsrooms around the country. So you know, our goal is to elevate these independent media outlets and eventually through our app and our website and our newsletters, bring them into the national conversation and hopefully have them compete. For air time, you know, with big corporate media outlets. So we also do original reporting and we do collaborations often with members of our network like the New Republic.

03:22 AW - And there's a piece that you published in partnership with the New Republic that I wanted to speak with you about today. It's entitled blood money. How America's biggest charities are bankrolling hate groups without anyone noticing. So you did a lot of research into understanding the donor ...