Giving Compass' Take:

• Martin Morse Wooster, writing for Philanthropy Daily, highlights the impact of limited life spans for foundations, and how donor intent should focus on charitable giving that they can control. 

• What are the benefits of limited life spans for foundations? 

• Read more about how to sunset a foundation. 

One problem historians have in writing about donor intent is that many donors do a very poor job in expressing their ideas.

The Atlantic Philanthropies has also prepared a series of monographs by Tony Proscio and Benjamin Soskis on various aspects of the foundation’s history and Chuck Feeney’s ideas. Their most recent monograph, by Wall Street Journal critic Heidi Waleson and Forbes Media senior editor Steven Bertoni, is half a look at Feeney’s philosophy of giving and half a look at other donors who have created limited-life foundations.

What is abundantly clear from Waleson and Bertoni’s report is that the rising generation of donors decisively rejects the notion that a perpetual foundation spending relatively tiny parts of their endowment as “patient capital” is the best way to give. They realize that philanthropic best practices include strong donor control and ensuring that the foundation you create has limited life.

Feeney’s choice to give all his money away during his lifetime,” the authors conclude, “no longer looks like an outlier, oddball decision, but a remarkably prescient forerunner to the activities of today’s billionaire philanthropists.”

Read the full article about donor intent by Martin Morse Wooster at Philanthropy Daily