The “Charity” of Elon Musk

Nobody who has followed Elon Musk’s rampage through the world of business, social media, and politics would be surprised to learn that his approach to charitable giving has been a bit, well, ill-considered. Heedless. Self-serving. Disrespectful of the norms and the rules. Certainly infuriating.

And Musk’s charitable impact? Only a bit more than negligible.

Musk’s charitable misdoings have come to our attention thanks to a shocking-but-not-surprising New York Times story by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Fahrenthold and his colleague Ryan Mac. For those of us who have been writing and speaking about how some of the wealthiest Americans take unconscionable advantage of the charitable tax laws, it’s instructive when the single wealthiest person of all shows just how off the rails high-end philanthropy has become.

First, an assertion and an affirmation: I admire so many philanthropists. I’ve written about MacKenzie Scott’s refreshing and astoundingly generous and trusting approach to giving. I’m blown away by Ruth Gottesman’s recent billion-dollar gift to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which will make the school tuition-free for all students going forward – and I love that she refused to have the school named after her. (She responded to the offer by saying, “We’ve got a gosh darn name – we’ve got Albert Einstein!”) Moreover, nearly every day with my clients, I am moved by gifts that may have fewer zeroes and commas than those from Scott or Gottesman, but that produce high impact for important causes, and that are given for the right reasons.

Then, there’s Elon Musk. And people like Elon Musk.

Allow me to sort Musk’s tactics as described in the Times article – and to add one more.

1. The Tax Dodge

According to Fahrenthold and Mac, since 2020, Musk has donated around $7 billion of stock to the Musk Foundation, in the process saving himself some $2 billion in tax payments. Two billion dollars is a lot of money not going to the common good through taxation.

2. The Self-Interest

Musk’s “philanthropy” in large part has gone to enterprises that technically qualify as charitable, but that also support his own business interests and even his family’s welfare. For example, a major recipient of grants from the Musk Foundation has been Ad Astra, a nonprofit school founded by, yes, Elon Musk. In fact, it is a school his own children attend – along with the children of his top executives at SpaceX. As the Times story explains, “In its first year of operation out of [Musk’s] home in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, five of Ad Astra’s 14 students were his own children.”

Ad Astra continues to receive funding from the Musk Foundation, but now it’s relocated to the campus of SpaceX in Texas – and is situated behind security gates. It’s technically a public charity, but it’s not available in any real way to the public.

Speaking of Texas, Musk has recently been giving lots of grants to Brownsville, the seen-better-days border community next door to where SpaceX launches its rockets. His philanthropy particularly ramped up after one of his rockets blew up and scattered debris around the city. Musk has made grants to spiff up Brownsville’s downtown, for example. That’s helpful to some of the residents, of course – but it is also clearly aimed at making Brownsville a more palatable place to live for SpaceX engineers and executives.

Here’s one last example of Musk’s grants directly benefitting Musk: The Musk Foundation gave $5 million to a United Nations program called Giga that helps rural nations connect to the internet. It turns out that two of those countries (Rwanda and Kazakhstan) ended up as customers of the Starlink satellite service. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is owned and controlled by Elon Musk.

Charity begins at home, right?

3. The Self-Aggrandizement

Musk is one for making the grand gesture that will win him praise and attention. Then his follow-through is, shall we say, spotty.

One clear example was when he responded to a young activist in Flint, Michigan, by tweeting, “Please consider this a commitment that I will fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels. No kidding.” That would have been wonderful – but instead of responding to the city’s subsequent proposal for funding for new water infrastructure and wide-scale pipe replacements in homes, the Musk Foundation donated $1 million to Flint schools for water filters and laptops. A million dollars is not nothing, but it’s also not close to what he promised. Oh: I need to add that Musk sent a Tesla executive to Flint to give rides around the city hall parking lot in a self-driving car, so there’s that.

How about this as a tagline for the Musk Foundation? “Over-promise. Under-deliver. And free rides in a cool car.”

4. The Underpayment

The federal government requires private foundations like the Musk Foundation to direct 5% of their assets each year to charitable purposes. The rules are loose around what counts as the 5%: Foundations can include many administrative costs, including salaries of staff, even those who are related to the founder/donor. All of which is to say that it’s not hard to meet this minimum distribution of 5%.

But in recent years the Musk Foundation has failed to hit that target. In 2021 the Musk Foundation fell $41 million short. It was even worse in 2022: The foundation missed the mark by $193 million, giving away only 2.25% of its $7 billion in assets.

5. The Lack of Accountability

The consequences for Musk’s disregard of the regulations are negligible, at least in terms of what matters to Musk.

When a foundation under-distributes to charity, the IRS can assess a penalty equal to 30% of the shortfall. If the feds indeed assess this fee, it is the Musk Foundation that would owe the money, not Elon Musk himself. Given that he clearly doesn’t care about charity, and given that this penalty would only mean that his foundation would have a bit less to distribute in the future, I’m guessing that the penalty wouldn’t bother Musk in the slightest.

Now, if, on the other hand, the IRS were to say, “Clearly, this guy is taking us for a ride. Let’s claw back that $2 billion tax deduction from when he contributed stock to the foundation!” – well then, Musk might take notice. But that’s not the way it works, and Musk knows that. His tax break, essentially, is forever, especially for a guy with the money, power, and reach of Elon Musk. So why should he break a sweat to distribute grants?

6. The Understaffing

The Musk Foundation is one of the twenty largest charitable foundations in the country. The foundation has only three board members: Musk and two employees from his family office. And the operation essentially has no staff.

In the past I’ve complained about the tendency for foundations to be overstaffed and unnecessarily bureaucratic, so I’m not typically one to push foundations to hire up. That said, without question, a $7 billion foundation needs professional staffing. Musk clearly has utter disregard for conventions around charitable giving, and he has all the altruism of a turnip. Why should he pay professional staff to run the foundation correctly – and even to create some charitable impact – since none of it really matters to him?

7. The Lack of Transparency

The Musk Foundation provides no contact information. In fact, it has no website, unless you consider this a website. Somehow, I think that one of the leading technologists in the world would have the wherewithal to put up a website. Unless he doesn’t give a damn. Which leads me to…

8. The Disregard

Musk’s attitude reminds me of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was shut down by the State of New York in 2019. (Yes, this was many, many Trump scandals, lawsuits, and criminal cases ago.) The court found that Trump had used his foundation as a personal checkbook for causes that feathered his own nest, paid for his personal obligations, or furthered his public image. Like Musk, Trump did not have professional staff, other than the part-time attention of courtiers of the Trump Organization, and his board was VERY closely held – Trump himself, along with Trump Organization CFO and vassal Allen Weisselberg, and the troika of Eric, Ivanka, and Donald, Jr.

Essentially, Musk – like Trump – thinks the rules don’t apply to him. If Musk says it’s a charitable priority, it is. He can make the decisions himself and have the bookkeeper at the Musk family office cut a check. If he fails to make the requisite payout, he has the foundation pay the fine. He gets to keep his tax break whether he runs the foundation well or poorly. Meanwhile, he gives to causes that enhance his businesses and image, and he doesn’t quite step over the legal line into self-dealing.

And throughout, he maintains power. Even though he’s done a miserable job of distributing grants to worthy causes, and even though his charitable preferences have more to do with helping himself than making the world a better place, Musk nevertheless holds the keys to one of the largest charitable foundations in the country. The potential grants from his foundation give him power. People will cozy up to him in the hope that some money will eventually flow their way, if they only play their cards right.

Musk is a terrible man, but he’s not stupid. This all works for him.

9. The Redirect

The Times article fails to mention a long-time tactic of Musk’s: Instead of making outright gifts to charity, the Musk Foundation dumps money into donor-advised funds that Musk controls. This is an old story: Back in 2016, three-quarters of the Musk Foundation’s grants went to a donor-advised fund at Vanguard. That was back when Musk bothered to care about meeting the 5% distribution requirement described above. (Grants to donor-advised funds count toward the required charitable distribution, because DAFs are sponsored by public charities. I know. These grants shouldn’t count. But they do.) Apparently, Musk still likes the tactic, because according to the Musk Foundation’s 990 return, in 2022 over $36 million went to a donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable.

This is a way for Musk to look as though he’s giving money away, while he’s really only shifting funds from the Musk Foundation into another charitable pocket he controls. It’s also a way to avoid transparency, because any grants that come out of Musk’s Fidelity donor-advised fund (if, in fact, any grants do come out from it) are not attributed to him or his fund.

Why Does This Matter?

We can look at Elon Musk’s charitable record and say to ourselves, “Well, isn’t he a jerk?!” And we’d be right. But the problem goes way beyond one rich guy flouting the rules.

Congress introduced the charitable income tax deduction in 1917 to encourage wealthy individuals to give to charitable causes. The United States had established the income tax a few years before, and the government did not want the nation’s leading philanthropists, facing this new tax, to fold their tents and let critical charitable services wither. The solution was the charitable deduction. Essentially, Uncle Sam said: I’ll tax you less the more you give to charity.

That arrangement – whereby the government gave up tax-generated income when the taxpayers gave to charities of their choice – has always been ripe for abuse. But we’re now facing a perfect storm of factors driving charitable misdealing into hyperdrive.

  • Since 1980 we have seen an astonishing rise in wealth inequality — and with it, increased power for those at the top;
  • In response, during recent decades we have witnessed the development of what activist and author Chuck Collins calls “the Wealth Defense Industry,” defined as armies of attorneys, accountants, and investment managers who help high-net-worth families avoid any and all taxes;
  • An increasingly activist, conservative Congress has consistently underfunded the IRS, the agency that both regulates charities and enforces tax compliance, and has bullied the IRS into ignoring rogue charities;
  • Donor-advised funds, the least transparent and most unregulated entities in the nonprofit world, now receive a quarter of all charitable gifts;
  • As a result, fewer dollars are flowing to actual working charities, while the government is sacrificing significant amounts of tax revenue because of the charitable deduction – an estimated $289 billion over five years, according to the Urban Institute.

Big philanthropy has long catered at least as much to the desires of the wealthy as to the needs of society, and people are taking notice. A recent poll by Inequality.org and The Giving Review — organizations on opposite ends of the political spectrum — showed that 83% of respondents think taxpayers should not have to subsidize wealthy Americans who create permanent legacy foundations, while 79% feel that the assets in donor-advised funds should be distributed to charity within five years.

Can we translate that public sentiment into strong reform legislation and enforcement? I surely hope so. Without real change, Elon Musk won’t be the outlier among philanthropists, but the role model.

Copyright Alan Cantor 2024. All rights reserved.

35 Comments. Leave new

  • What a well researched and informative article. It saddens me to know that another seemingly smart person has chosen to use his powers for evil vs good. Is it so hard to be a good person? Can’t people put as much effort and thought into doing good deeds as they do subverting the law? As a supposed futurist, Musk portends a pretty grim one.

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  • Doreen Baker
    March 20, 2024 5:17 pm

    Thank you! I would love to see a boycott of various products by the masses. Like evading taxes, hitting profits is the only language that seems to be understood.

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    • Elyse Rosenberg
      January 22, 2025 12:39 am

      With his buddy as President, he’ll never be hit with penalties. In fact, he’ll get even lower taxes now. At one time I considered buying a Tesla. Now, I’d rather walk than drive one of his cars.

      Reply
  • What an enlightening description of a truly cynical and despicable being. Would that I had discovered this article 8 or 9 months ago. It has strengthened my belief that Elon Musk is at the bottom of the elite dung-pile that is the top one percent of the wealthy.

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  • Gotta love how he makes sure his philanthropy money makes the smallest beneficial societal impact possible.

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  • In light of Musk’s current push to eliminate funding to all real charities I did a search on how he has donated to date. He is even worse than I thought he would be – a self absorbed, selfish jerk. And with all that money his t-shirts are too short to cover his substantial gut.

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  • Amazing that Scott and Gottesman get accolades for large donations but only look at the tax deduction by Musk. So you think Scott and Gottesman didn’t take a tax deduction? Try not showing such partisanship.

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    • I don’t know much of anything about Gottesman, Steve, but MacKenzie Scott has been the largest philanthropist in recent American history — not simply piling money into her foundation or DAF, but actually giving it away in an unrestricted way to actual, working charitable organizations.

      By contrast, Musk’s funds sit in his Foundation. In fact, a recent New York Times piece shows that in 2023 the Musk Foundation fell $421 million short of meeting the annual spending requirement — that is, the funds that are legally required to go toward a charitable purpose. Moreover, he is making some grants (according to the Times, $25 million in 2023) to a donor-advised fund he controls, which is legal, but a way of avoiding giving the funds away to actual charities, or having transparency on his donations, or both.

      Meanwhile, this all saved Musk an estimated $2 billion in taxes. Which essentially cost the rest of us that same amount.

      Do I like Musk’s politics? Not at all. Though I’ll note that my article was written before he went all in on Trump in the 2024 election. Regardless of his political positions, Musk’s stance on charity is clear: He doesn’t give a damn about it, other than to support causes that benefit his own family and businesses, and to get a big, fat tax deduction.

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    • Getting a tax deduction when you actually give money away is fair. Getting a tax deduction when you are actually just hiding the money in a tax sheltered foundation and never really giving money away is fraud and those that do this, like Musk, Trump and many other greedy, selfish, immoral, ultra wealthy GOP supporters and leaders, should be punished.

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    • Stop it. Just stop diverting attention from the evil that is Elon Musk. There is absolutely no comparing people whose donations actually DO something, and people who donate to themselves. And yes I understand that most philanthropists have foundations or trusts that fund their charities and that they earn tax deductions. Bottom line: How did their donations make the world a better place?

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  • Thanks. This was a very helpful explanation. As I finished reading, I got to thinking about how, a while ago, if you wanted to make it in polite society, you made charitable donations. It was expected. With the new class of bro’s, though, it seems that their attitude is utterly dismissive: they do not believe that people are worthy of charity. After that, I got to thinking about how much the Ad Astra “school” probably pays in rent to Musk and Space X, thereby recycling the money.

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    • Thanks!

      There’s always been a self-serving element in some forms of charitable giving. For example, a wealthy person gives to the symphony and then enjoys a higher quality of life, personally, by attending the concerts — and mingling with other well-to-do folks there. But the level of self-centeredness in Musk’s grantmaking certainly goes miles beyond that. As you point out, it’s likely that the Ad Astra School DOES pay rent to Musk’s company. The problem is, who enforces this? The IRS is charged with approving 501-c-3 applications, and on the rarest of occasions with revoking their status, but the IRS is not really the logical body to do any of that. In any case, the EO Division (Exempt Organizations) of the IRS, and the IRS as a whole, are deeply underfunded. Meanwhile, the state regulators for charitable organizations — usually run as a division of the Attorney General’s office — are uniformly dealing with tiny budgets and limited capacity. Would any of these state regulators take on the richest man in the world to say, “Tsk-tsk! This is self-dealing!”? Of course not. And on the federal level, of course, the IRS wouldn’t touch Musk with a 20-foot pole, now that he’s whispering in Trump’s ear.

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  • This entire piece is so in depth and detailed but unfortunately I am not shocked. What I am asking myself today as I read this is, I wonder if all that money Musk gave the Trump campaign came out of his foundation but how? Then I say to to myself that Musk “The Tax Dodger” will find a way. Therefore in 2024 he will make his 5%.

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  • I must have missed your article on the Clintons and their foundation.

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    • Thank you for exemplifying the defensive and reactive response to any criticism of a conservative political figure. “Hey! The other side does it, too! And WORSE!” Well, in this piece, I’m writing about Elon Musk. I’m not trying to weigh the misdoings of each and every public figure in America. If you want to write about the Clintons, please knock yourself out. Nobody’s stopping you.

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    • “Whataboutery”: the go-to fallacy for right wingers since forever 🤡😂

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    • I agree with Pleiades and Mr. Cantor. I am so sick of the “Whataboutery.” Obviously, there is no honest defense, so you change the subject. You may think that you have successfully diverted attention from the wrongs, but thinking people see that you have no logical, truthful response.

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  • Anne Marie Gregg
    January 12, 2025 10:33 pm

    Thank you for the very informative article. It truly is sad that a man with so much money, is so cheap when it comes to charity. With just a small portion of his money, he could end world hunger, assist all people fleeing war, violence, and corruption with decent housing and basic essentials, educate millions, and provide medical care for those in need, etc. However, he doesn’t. He truly is a selfish and evil person!

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  • I’d appreciate a clarification about DAFs. It’s my understanding that once the money goes to Fidelity Charitable, the donor cannot benefit from it ever again. For an individual, there’s an immediate deduction and the money might not go immediately to a non-profit, but the donor has no incentive to let those funds sit (and the DAF keeps the earnings for future grants). For a foundation, I assume, the money is fully committed to be used for charitable purposes. The nonprofits to which Fidelity Charitable (and presumably all other DAFs) grants the funds are vetted; for starters they have to be 501c3 charities. In my experience, FC also contacts the charities to “ensure the recommended charity is an eligible grant recipient under standards set by its Trustees, including that the grant will be used solely for charitable purposes” (email to me). I don’t know if the “rules” are different for the big bucks, but a donation to a DAF seems legitimately charitable. If there’s a reason to doubt the legitimacy of a DAF donation, I’d be very interested in learning about it.

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    • Thanks, Dan.

      True, the funds committed to Fidelity Charitable or another DAF sponsor cannot come back to the donor for the donor’s personal use. The areas where I challenge the DAF narrative:

      1) Though you say there is no incentive for DAF donors to let the funds sit there, much of DAF money does just that. How much? We can’t say exactly, because there’s no transparency, but there have been glimpses to indicate that in a given year 30% or more of DAFs are completely inactive, and that a great many more give out only a nominal amount.

      2) That lack of transparency is the next area of challenge. Not only don’t we know IF money is going out from a specific fund, but we don’t know to whom. This allows for the charitable sector’s version of dark money, where anonymous grants fund certain organizations, and there’s no way to track down who the funders are.

      3) You may say, “So what? They’re charities! Fully vetted!” Well, the IRS gives out 501c3 designations freely, and the IRS almost never rescind that status. Meanwhile, state-by-state overseers of charities are underfunded and stretched. So this leads to organizations that are essentially partisan political entities, like the America First Policy Institute, which (together with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025) put together the agenda for Donald Trump’s second term. There’s nothing remotely charitable about the America First Policy Institute, but they have the 501c3 designation. America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 were funded largely through anonymous DAF grants. For my part, I’d like to know who is funding (and benefiting from) these policies: essentially, who are the billionaires who just bought the White House. But, because of DAFs’ lack of transparency, we’ll never know. I’ll add that in some cases, the 501c3s are outright racist groups, like VDare, which was finally shut down recently.

      4) You note that the DAF keeps the earnings for future grants. Again, that’s true — if there are every grants to be made. (There’s no requirement that the funds EVER have to go out to charities.) Meanwhile, the DAF sponsor is earning money from the funds that are sitting there. The means, in the case of Fidelity, that a fee is taken by Fidelity Charitable, and another set of fees is taken by Fidelity Investments. If your financial advisor placed your fund at FC, or at a DAF within the financial advisor’s firm, you financial advisor is also making money. For the financial advisor and the DAF sponsor and the affiliated investment corporation, there are incentives to keep those funds bubbling away, unspent, as they all take a fee in the process.

      I really respect your asking these questions, and you may find my answers those of a cynic. I infer that you yourself have a DAF, and I trust that you use yours to make grants to worthy nonprofits on an ongoing and effective way, and that you’re nothing like the people I’m describing above. But as someone who has seen the share of charitable giving going to DAFs rise from 4% to about 30% in the last 35 years, I can tell you that it’s been a disturbing and disruptive and unfortunate trend, and that it’s hurt nonprofits badly.

      Again, thanks for weighing in.

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      • Thanks for the reply, of which I had lost track for a week… For me, FC provides a service that makes it convenient for me to assign grants to charities, so I’m willing to bear a cost for that service. I started using FC for clustering my donations so that I can pass the deductibility threshold. I’ve chosen to make grants to a large number of nonprofits, and I think these nonprofits benefit from my added convenience for donations. I don’t see how they’re hurt. Assigning a new grant is easy for me, and FC did give me evidence that they do verify a charitable purpose beyond the simple 501c3 checkbox. The 0.6% annual fee for managing grants to charities seems reasonable, and in general it seems that the process of collecting and granting is going to cost something no matter how it’s done. (I switched from different DAF which as introduced by a former employer years ago when they were offering an alternative to the ubiquitous United Way/Fund that had become understandably unpopular. They didn’t provide the same convenience and their fees were significantly higher. And I asked a major charity whether they had a preference between DAF or direct, and they said they did not.) The other fee, for managing the balance in my account, would be paid some other way if I kept the money in my own investment accounts and doled out funds myself.
        I don’t doubt that some 503c3s are not legitimately charitable, but people will donate to them if they’ve a mind to do so. I’m choosing my grants with care, exactly as I would do if I made each donation directly. For me, using a DAF doesn’t risk getting money to unworthy organizations that I don’t choose.
        As I understand it, the 0.6% fee for managing grants is simply an annual charge, and I don’t have any incentive to keep the funds idle for long. I am not getting any advice about my grants, and I wouldn’t pay attention to any advice to let the money sit. (Again, the investment/management fees would still be paid if I kept funds in a personal account, and I can see how advisory fees could possibly have bad incentives, especially if you don’t believe in fiduciary relationships.)
        FC is a “middleman,” and in one sense they are standing between me and my charities, but they are providing a useful service for getting me the deduction immediately and letting me assign grants as expeditiously as serves my purpose.
        *I* know to whom my grants go, so for my purposes there’s all the transparency that I need. Are you saying that some people are disguising their connection to questionable charities by going through this middleman? Can’t they do that with specialized foundations anyway? For personal direct donations from individuals to charities, is there full transparency?

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        • Thanks, Dan.

          I don’t doubt that having a DAF at Fidelity works for you. Nor do I question your choice of grant recipients, the ease of taking your tax deduction in the year you need it, or that the fee you pay is well worth it for you. All these reasons, and more, is why DAFs are booming. Donors love them.

          But a few points:

          Fidelity Charitable’s 0.6% charge that you reference, applied to the $55 billion they held at the end of their 2023 fiscal year, adds up to $330 million. That’s a lot of cash for running their operations, which are essentially transactional. (I’ll add that the larger accounts pay a lower percentage on fees than the smaller accounts, so I’m not sure what the average fee is, but 0.6% is a good start.) Meanwhile, Most of that $55 billion is invested in Fidelity Investments mutual funds, which — if the average investment fee is 1.0%, that’s $550 million of income for the corporation. That investment fee is over an above the 0.6% charged by Fidelity Charitable. (The overall investment fee may well be lower than 1.0%– but, regardless, this is a huge source of income for Fidelity Investments.) So — agreed, the fees are a fair amount to take from you, as you point out, but a huge amount when the full extent of the Fidelity Charitable holdings are taken into account.

          Second, you note that the fee is “simply an annual charge.” But that means that it’s in the DAF sponsor’s interest to keep the funds invested, rather than distributed, so they and the underlying corporate partner can draw those fees year after year. So too the individual financial advisors who are often getting a cut of the investment fee — certainly for in-house DAFs at various investment firms, and often at Fidelity. Fidelity Charitable would never say anything to hamper your distributing the funds, and they get so much new money every year that it really doesn’t matter to them how much goes out from one DAF holder or another. But… overall, there’s money to be made for the financial services industry when DAFs do not distribute most of their assets, but keep them invested.

          As for the lack of transparency:

          Private foundations need to list each and every grant distribution. By contrast, DAF sponsors list all their grants, but they don’t say the funds that made them. This is far less transparent than foundations. What many foundations are doing now, in fact, is to make large grants into DAFs, so they can either keep the funds warehoused indefinitely, or make grants to unpopular causes, or both.

          Meanwhile, yes, some people disguise their donations to certain causes by running them through donor-advised funds. Here’s a piece from Mother Jones describing the role that Donors Trust, a conservative DAF sponsor, plays in underwriting right-wing political causes. It’s worth the read, and it demonstrates what Charles Koch (a major player at Donors Trust) calls “the weaponization of philanthropy.” (I got that quote from Jane Mayer’s excellent and depressing book, Dark Money. Well worth the read!)

          Can people give from their personal accounts and have anonymity? Absolutely. But for the large gifts we’re talking about, well, people don’t write $500,000 checks from their personal accounts. Those six- and seven- and eight-figure gifts are inevitably from foundations, DAFs, or both.

          Again, thanks for your thoughts and involvement!

          Reply
  • It’s so sad.
    Charity means that you do something for the community, for example for people who have not been so lucky in life, and many should be able to benefit from it. What is charitable, useful for the community, about a school with 14 students who come from well-off families anyway?
    Just sad.

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  • There must be a parallel between your biased choice of subject and completely biased responses to comments. I chuckle at the faux outrage over how someone spends their money. What is your motivation for this type of article? Is it personal monetary gains or will all proceeds from the expose be donated to a public charity?

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    • I’m not sure “biased” is accurate, but yes, I surely have an opinion, which I share in the piece and in response to comments. And my outrage isn’t “faux” at all — it’s genuine. I really don’t give a rat’s ass how Elon Musk spends his money, other than when he buys access to the White House by dropping a couple of hundred million bucks on a presidential campaign (which happened long after I wrote this piece) or, as in this piece, when he directs “charitable” dollars into utterly self-serving organizations, like his own kids’ tiny private school. I’ll note, too, that the money Musk is spending is not purely “his.” Given that he’s donating appreciated stock to his foundation, his tax deduction is probably running around 65%. So Elon is giving 35%, and we taxpayers are footing the bill for the other 65%.

      If you want to defend Musk’s actions, please do. But you didn’t do that in your comment. Instead, you’re mocking me for choosing to criticize Musk. There is still, I believe, freedom of speech in America, and I choose to use it to call out problems when I see them.

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    • The author explains in detail criticisms of Musk’s “Charity,” fully recognizing it is Musk’s money to do what he wants. It appears you are the one biased in your reply since you offer no real defense of Musk in a way that would counter or even correct what the Author has written. The only message your reply offers is to express your feelings about the article because it criticizes someone you admire.

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    • No one is forcing or directing how someone spends their money. Nor saying that should happen.
      But they are calling out how the super wealthy work the system of how they manage to avoid paying applicable taxes.
      So next time you pay your taxes to utilize the services in your community, your city, your state, your country … understand one of the richest people just sliced out their own obligation of, let’s say, a fire company to save your house.
      Why? So he could pay for an over the top, fancy school, that ~⅓ of the kids are his own are attending.
      There’s nothing wrong with paying for your own school. But it’s at the expense of all the other things YOU pay for.
      That certainly seems fair. Right?

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  • Billions of dollars in charitable donations through his foundation and you say it’s negligible. You’re an idiot.

    Not respectfully.

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  • Thank for the insight.

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  • deborah hinderer
    February 11, 2025 5:41 pm

    Please repost this in as many outlets as possible- Bluesky would be a great start

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    • Thanks, Deborah — I will! But please feel free to link to the story yourself, with a reference to me as @alcantor.bsky.social. I have only a small following on Bluesky. I had many more folks on Twitter back in the day, but I’m done with Twitter/X now.

      Reply
  • Musk’s donations made him the second-biggest donor of 2021, notes the Chronicle of Philanthropy. $55 million to St Jude’s. Like him or not, there is benefit. He’s taking advantage of philanthropy laws. Maybe the laws should be changed. The Clinton Foundation would not like that I’m sure.

    Reply
    • John — Obviously you’re a Musk fan and I’m not. But here’s the deal. Yes, in 2021 he was the second-biggest donor in the nation. He was a) also the single richest man in the world, so that’s not hard. More to the point, if you look at the Chronicle of Philanthropy article, there’s no indication where his $5 billion went that year. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that most of it went into his private foundation and his donor-advised funds. The problems with the foundation I describe in my article: many of his gifts were self-serving, and he fell far short of what his required distribution was. In fact, he was even worse in 2023. According to The New York Times, the Musk Foundation was a full $421 million short of what it needed to give to charity.

      I’m happy he got some money to St. Jude’s. But it’s far less than he was required by law (yes, there’s still a law in this country, not that Elon Musk cares much).

      As for what goes into his donor-advised fund: He can claim it as a deduction when the money goes in, and then we have no idea where it goes afterwards, or if it goes out at all. It’s a black hole.

      Yes, charitable laws should be tightened up for everyone, particularly for the billionaires. Foundations should be required to spend more than 5% — I like 10% myself — and if they fail to distribute grants, like Musk’s foundation did, he should have his charitable deduction clawed back.

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