The donor-advised fund affiliated with Charles Schwab, DAFgiving360, has suspended account holders’ ability to give money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group.
Last week, the Justice Department indicted the group and accused it of financial crimes. This week, the donor-advised funds that bear Fidelity’s and Vanguard’s names also cut the group off.
A spokeswoman for the Schwab-affiliated fund said, “If a governing body of a charity declares an investigation into a charity it oversees, DAFgiving360 may suspend grants to the organization.” She would not provide a list of other organizations that it has suspended.
Donor-advised funds allow individuals to create accounts, donate cash or securities into them and take a tax deduction for the full amount that year. Then they can parcel out donations to charities and other nonprofits over many years.
“Giving to your favorite charity has never been easier” is the language that DAFgiving360 uses on its website. Charles Schwab lists the account balance right next to investment account balances on its own website.
DAFgiving360 is also careful, however, to use specific language that gets to the legal reality of how the funds work. Users can “recommend” grants to “eligible” charities, for example, which means DAFgiving360 controls the money and the account holder is technically just advising.
This is almost never a practical issue for account holders; donor-advised funds generally rubber-stamp donation requests. But in the wake of the criminal indictment, which accused the S.P.L.C. of paying informants money that contributed to the extremism that it opposes, President Trump said he believed that the S.P.L.C. was behind the racist Charlottesville, Va., riots in 2017.
Mr. Trump did not provide evidence for his allegations against the center. And many Fidelity and Vanguard customers are furious about the move against the S.P.L.C.
DAFgiving360 customers are expressing similar sentiments. “This is too safe a position, and they shouldn’t have done it,” Jani Rachelson, a retired labor lawyer in New Jersey who was unable to donate to the S.P.L.C., said of Schwab’s action. “Compliance in advance is the scourge of our life these days.
DAFgiving360 said in its statement that it applies its policies consistently across all charitable organizations, regardless of political viewpoint or orientation. In the past, a Schwab predecessor charitable-fund entity stopped granting money to National Rifle Association-affiliated charities when an active investigation was underway. The N.R.A. does appear in DAFgiving360 search results now for people making grant requests.
Prudent trustees with decision-making authority do consider indictments of charities before approving donations to them.
At Merrill Lynch, however, the donor-advised fund operation relies on the Internal Revenue Service for guidance. Since the agency hasn’t revoked S.P.L.C.’s nonprofit status, Merrill Lynch’s donor-advised funds are allowing donations to go through for now.
Meanwhile, Fidelity’s, Schwab’s and Vanguard’s actions raise complicated questions.
“Why not other charities that have also been attacked by the administration, including many major universities,” said Roger Colinvaux, a nonprofit law expert and professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, via email. “The incident thus raises questions of how DAF sponsors draw the line and whether they are succumbing to political pressure or advancing their mission.”
In March, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against Harvard University, accusing it of civil rights violations and saying it “tolerated antisemitic mobs of students.” As of Friday morning, the “recommend a grant” page of the DAFgiving360 website returned many options from a “Harvard University” search.
