Stephanie Karol, a financial economist at the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, presented work on Schedule B of Form 990 that challenges assumptions about who funds major charities. Giving USA attributes roughly 60% of U.S. charitable contributions to individuals, but her data on the largest donors differs sharply.

“Among the major donors, we’re finding that only about 6% of those gifts come directly from individuals,” she said. Roughly a third of large gifts instead come from foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs), and about 15% from corporations. That pattern, she argued, should push policymakers to “think more deeply” about the rules governing intermediaries, such as excise taxes and foundation payout requirements, not just the individual deduction.

Adam Tucker, a PhD student at the University of Maryland who studies giving by high-income households, called reliance on those intermediaries “an interesting policy problem”: a donor claims a tax benefit today, but the charity that receives the money can be chosen years later. Private foundations face an annual payout requirement, while DAFs carry no federal minimum distribution.

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