The Price of Privacy: 4 Problems With Anonymous Giving—and a Case for Reform

Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine that the Gates Foundation was instead called the Good Foundation, and nobody knew the donor behind this operation—even as its vast grantmaking affected the lives of millions of Americans school children and people in poor countries. Does that sound unnerving to you? It does to me. But such an enterprise would be perfectly legal under current law, and we may well see something like it in coming decades. In fact, last year, Fidelity Charitable—the largest of the donor-advised funds—gave out nearly as much in grants as the Gates Foundation without revealing whose money was fueling these gifts.

The world of philanthropy is becoming less transparent, and that’s not a good thing.