We are thrilled to present you with this year’s edition of The Giving List Santa Barbara. One of the things I love about Santa Barbara County is that it’s small enough to feel manageable, yet big enough to offer a robust and interesting tapestry of people, communities, and causes. In Santa Barbara you can make a difference in people’s lives through good work and innovative programs to tackle challenges that in larger regions seem too overwhelming; you can bring together groups to create invaluable partnerships to solve problems. Nowhere is this reflected more clearly than in Santa Barbara’s nonprofit and [...more...]

Philanthropy, incorporated for the public good, can and should make all its investments accordingly. In 2021, Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a bill to more tightly regulate donor-advised funds, commonly referred to as DAFs. While the Accelerating Charitable Giving (ACE) Act’s reforms were far from sweeping, the bill set off a bitter debate over who controls charitable funds: the donor or the public. The Act’s supporters plausibly argued that wealthy donors could use the increasingly popular philanthropic instruments for personal gain, and that DAFs allow them to hoard and perpetually control what becomes public money once [...more...]