Donor-Advised Funds and the New Shape of Chicago Philanthropy
The panel discussion was supposed to be about legacy giving. It ended up being about plumbing. On a gray Tuesday evening in a Loop conference room, as rain streaked the windows overlooking the Chicago River, a group of the city's serious philanthropists — family foundation trustees, nonprofit executives, a few wealth managers — spent two hours circling the same three letters: D-A-F. Donor-advised funds, once a niche instrument for the ultra-wealthy, have quietly become the fastest-growing vehicle in American charitable giving — a transformation Hirsh Mohindra has been watching up close. And in Chicago, a city whose civic identity was built on its great foundations, the shift is impossible to ignore. "The question in Chicago philanthropy is no longer whether donor-advised funds matter," Hirsh Mohindra said. "It's whether the city's traditional giving institutions adapt to them — or get routed around." The numbers explain the urgency. According to th...