The Institute to Accelerate Charitable Giving gets legs as Senators Grassley and King introduce the “Accelerating Charitable Efforts Act.”
John Arnold and Ray Madoff last year formed the Initiative to Advance Charitable Giving with their controversial (or innocuous, depending on your point of view) proposals to reform tax policy around charitable giving vehicles. Their goal is to force the flow of charitable dollars from don0r-advised funds and charitable foundations to operating nonprofits.
Their concern is that dollars meant for nonprofits—and already benefitting from charitable tax laws—are lying fallow in bloated (interest-bearing) bank accounts and not making their way to the nonprofits that need those dollars (and, more importantly, those that the nonprofits serve!). The Initiative offers several recommendations to modify the tax code pertaining to charitable gifts to ensure that charitable dollars make it to nonprofits.
This past Wednesday, those recommendations make their way into a newly proposed bill. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Angus King (I-ME) co-sponsored the cutely named "Accelerate Charitable Efforts (ACE) Act." Their bill proposes changes to the tax code initially offered by Arnold and Madoff's Initiative.
It will be interesting to see if the bill receives the support it needs to become law. Whatever one's personal judgment of the bill, it's certainly not a partisan effort, fitting obviously into neither the Republican nor Democratic platforms. It marks another interesting instance in the post-Trump era: the emergence of conservatives agitating for government regulations to promote positive social outcomes.
Time will tell how this bill pans out . . . stay tuned here to see what happens and for our take on the bill's impact on charitable giving!
Yes, please. Let’s unlock these funds for non-profits to serve their people!