May 20, 2026
Barron’s: These Charitable Funds Have Limits on Giving. What to Know About Restrictions to Donor-Advised Funds.
Donors may have been surprised to learn recently that they can’t give to any organization they want through their donor-advised fund.
That fact became news after some of the largest DAF sponsors in the country— Fidelity Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, and DAFGiving360 (a Charles Schwab-affiliated sponsor)—said they are suspending their clients’ requests to grant funds to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC was criminally indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice in April; the center has countered the charges are “provably wrong.”
[…] The SPLC has a record around civil rights that is “contrary to the [Trump] administration,” which has used the Justice Department as a political tool, Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation said in an interview. The foundation is a DAF sponsor.
“To think that [the administration] could bring this indictment and then [SPLC’s] funding would be cut off feels like making decisions on the philanthropic side that advance the objectives of the administration,” Blackwell says.
