Factually! with Adam Conover - Billionaires are Lying About Giving Away Their Wealth, with Glen Galaich

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Philanthropy is broken. Or maybe it’s not—after all, the funds that billionaires set up are deliberately cumbersome tax havens rather than any genuine attempt at giving. The real surprise is in learning how deep the hole truly goes. Today, Adam is joined by Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation and author of CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Find a copy of Glen's book at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hey there, welcome to Faxley. I'm Adam Codover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, for many years on this podcast on my YouTube channel, on television, I've talked about how philanthropy from rich people is largely bullshit. You know, the fantastically wealthy, oh, they just love to donate a ton of money and issue a press release about how great and generous they are,

when in the reality they have donated the money to themselves in the form of a foundation that they solely control. and used to slowly dribb and drab the money out to peons like us. This is a trend that began with Andrew Carnegie about 100 years ago and continues to the present day through the Patagonia guy and Bill Gates and many others. Our fucked up economic and political system allows the very wealthy to unfairly amass absurd piles of cash and then get a tax benefit by slowly eking it out, back out of the society they siphon the money from.

And again, they do not pay taxes when they're. they do so. This is, in my opinion, a rather dumb way to organize our society and our economy. But unfortunately, this system in which charities and nonprofits direct an enormous share of our society's wealth undemocratically in ways that they choose is not getting weaker. This is only heating up. IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are set to make an entirely new generation of rich fucks even wealthier. And those rich fucks will be spending that money to influence society in ways that they choose and to receive enormous tax benefits for doing so. So we have to ask not only what is going on inside the world of philanthropy, but what can be

done about it. Well, today on the show, we have the perfect guest to answer this question. He has worked inside of the ultra-wealthy philanthropy system for decades, four decades, one of these very family foundations and has been trying to change how this industry works from the inside. He also has a fantastic new book out that is a fascinating account of what goes wrong inside of wealthy philanthropy and considers what we can do about it. His name is Glenn Gallich. He is the CEO of the Stubbsky Foundation and he's the author of Control Why Big Giving Falls Short. This is by far the best interview I have ever done on this topic. I know you're going to love it Before we get into it, I just want to remind you if you want to support this show and all of the conversations we bring you week in, week out, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. We would love to have you there. And now let's get to this week's interview with Glenn Gallage.

Glenn, thank you so much for being on the show today, man. Yeah, it's great to be here. Looking forward to the conversation. So am I. And the conversation begins now. What is the problem with philanthropy in America? People think it's good. You say it's bad. Why? I say it's bad too, but I want to know why you say it's bad. Well, what's bad about it? Let's define terms very quickly. Philanthropy in America, because we, you know, this is my own fault. We use this word philanthropy when we're really referencing the big givers. Usually.

So in America, and we just got the latest report, Americans generally speaking give about 600 plus billion in philanthropy every year. Which is a lot of money. And half of it goes to religious institutions. The other half goes to social causes outside of religious institutions. And so of that 300 billion, there's about 100 billion that is what we call big giving that comes from foundations or what we technically call donor advised funds, which are just kind of bake accounts sitting at Schwab and Fidelity and places. like that. And so that $100 billion is what I'm focusing on here in this book. And the problem with it, as I see, is that it's not moving. That amount of money continues to pile up. And we now have in these bank accounts, what we call foundations and donor advised funds, we have $2 trillion pile up. Two trillion.

The argument is, well, that's good, because the more it grows than the more the 5% minimum that foundations give away goes up in absolute terms. But no one wants to touch the corpus. And the reason for that, we can talk about. But that to me is the big problem. We have major challenges. This money is intended to be for charitable causes. And it's sitting mostly in hedge funds and private equity. So that's one sixth of all money that you define as philanthropy, which is what, is, is that anything that's tax, tax free giving. Big time. Big time. And so you include donations to religious institutions in those, which is, I mean, you

can do an entirely different critique over, you know, issues with tax exempt status of religious organizations. That's an entirely different ball of wax. We're focusing specifically on the big giving foundations. Why aren't they moving the money? My argument is the people that are heading it up, the people that sit on the boards of these foundations have a lot of complex alternative priorities that they want to meet beyond giving the money. So one is they want to have a long legacy. So they want their institution to live forever. So you can think of some of the biggest brands. Even if you don't know a lot about the foundation world, there are some brands that are going to pop right out in your head. There's going to be the Gates Foundation

or the Soros Foundation or the MacArthur Foundation here in the Bay Area where I live, live, there are a couple of big ones. There's the Zuckerberg Foundation. There's the Hulets and the Packards and they all want to be around forever. Yeah. And that we, in, in, in the world that I operate in, that is the driving force behind a foundation. The most important thing is what, what is the word that's flung around all the time, perpetuity. We talk about living in perpetuity. And they come up with all kinds of reasons as to why you need to have foundations forever. Mostly, they argue, it's the best one they've got, that you need to live forever because we're always going to have problems that need to be addressed. So they want to be

around to address the problems. I know. I wish more people laughed at that. Not enough to do. Yeah, there's going to be problems forever. That's life. That's the world. We're not going to be problem free. That's not a justification for a particular, I mean, let's put a fine point on this. When, for instance, a university has an endowment, right? You can make the argument that, you know, this particular college serves a particular sort of person. It has a particular sort of culture. It has a history. It has an institutional knowledge. It is, you know, whether it's Harvard, whether it's a small liberal art school out in the countryside, right? This is a, this is like an organization that has done something and, you know, has physical infrastructure,

right? You know, say it's a music conservatory in Kansas City. Well, we want there to be a music conservatory in Kansas City for a long time. So that music conservatory should have $100 million in the bank so that every year they spend the 5% of interest, the $5 million to keep it running. Sure. This argument makes sense for perpetuity. Absolutely.

But if I'm, if we're talking about Bill Gates and Bill Gates has a billion dollars and he Donates it to charity quotation marks, which is what these people say they do and actually He donates it to a charity that is a foundation That he solely controls and his family controls. Yep. And his descendants will control. Yes. Why should that exist in perpetuity? Well, there's no There's no dorm buildings. There's no particular person being educated. You know, it's it didn't didn't exist 10 years ago. So why should it need to exist in perpetuity? Simply because why should Bill's money stay in a pile for eternity and my money does not? If I said, hey, I'm Adam Conover. I'm going to donate $5,000 to a foundation. But the $5,000 needs to stay in a bank account forever.

Right. Because it's Adam's $5,000. Why? Who gives this shit? You're being far too rational, Adam and that's the problem. I think the this whole system we've designed that donors play into, that practitioners play into, that grantees and grant seekers play into is irrational. And that's the point of my book. Like how do we break down the irrationality of it? How do we get more people doing what you just did who work in the sector? Or you're like, why does this make any sense? Because the fact of the matter is to just play on what you just said,

ideally when you make a donation to something, you want it working in the place that you're concerned about. And what you just, I'm just restating your very nice work through there. Why would you leave it in a warehouse

ready to be used at some point in the future, especially while things are burning down around us right now? Yeah. It doesn't. make any sense. But it does if at the heart of what you're trying to do as a donor is please yourself. If what you're trying to do is say, I really want to my legacy, my legacy, you know, even though I may have designed an operating system that's on everybody's computer worldwide, I want my legacy to be that I solved malaria. Or I want my legacy to be that when you come to Seattle, you see a building

with my name on it or you or whatever it might be. I want to be known as the guy that did really good things. I want to be invited still to all the parties where people are trying to do good things for the world. And for whatever reason, that equates to them as perpetuity. It doesn't equate to like, hey, I moved $57 billion over my lifetime and it's gone. Now, to credit Bill Gates, to be fair to him, we're picking on him a little bit here, but he is one of the rare donors and foundations that actually is spending it out. His intention is to move all of it in the next 20 years, all of it out. So to his credit, and that was a decision he made early on when he was married to Melinda,

he kind of expedited it after their divorce. So he wants there to be no Gates Foundation 20 years from now. It's going to be liquidated and all donated. Okay. That's correct. So that's a good one. But that's just a piece of the two trillion, which, by the way, just to play this out, at the current trajectory we're on, there will be 18,

trillion dollars sitting in these accounts in just 10 to 20 years. Wow. And then at that point, you're talking two budget cycles for America. You know, you're talking about serious, serious money. You're talking about, you know, if Americans got agitated enough and wanted to take it all back, because it is tax, it's all tax-exempt money. It's money that we are subsidizing to be in these foundations. If we decide to take it back because, say, our debt is at 50 or 60? trillion might be a good way to cut it down a little bit. I know that's a very simplistic way of thinking. But that those are the things that I think are going to start putting pressure on donors to use the money as opposed to warehouse it. Well, that's the weird thing that these people have

already received the tax donation, right? Again, very rational point. They got their benefit. Yeah. And nobody else yet has the benefit. I want to stay on, there's so many different angles on this and I'm making a list in my head, but I want to stay on the foundations for a second. Because I know there are some foundations that, you know, the Gates Foundation is new. There's plenty of other new ones. There's some foundations that have been around for a long time. Yeah. The Ford Foundation as an example is one that I know.

I don't know that much about it. I read a New Yorker article like 10 years ago. But it was one of these family foundations and now the people who started it are dead, right? Yeah. And it is now, I assume the Ford family has involvement, but it is, it is in perpetuity. it has a life of its own. Yes. And it's a grant-making organization, right?

If I am a, if I have a nonprofit, if I'm a, God knows a composer, if I'm trying to save the world, I can make an application to the Ford Foundation and they have some sort of complex process by which maybe at the other end I get some money or my organization gets money, right? And that's, my understanding is that's what the organization does. That's what most foundations do. Yes. It's picking and choosing, and they have, what, probably maybe a couple hundred employees trying to figure out? They are, oh, boy, off the top of my head.

I'm going to say they're probably in the 500 zone. 500 employees for the Ford Foundation. I believe so. And their entire job is the Ford family put a big pile of money together. Yep. And these people are employed in perpetuity to figure out how to spend the money. They're at $17 billion right now. $17 billion.

Okay. Right. So is there any benefit to having all of those people working to figure out how to spend the money? I assume they would contend that there is. What is their contention and what is your response to it? I know many of them. They're great people. They're, you know, many come from all aspects of the social sector, from academia to ground level practitioners, right? They're from all over. You know, I struggle with this one. I work in a foundation. I've worked in the foundation sector one way or another for 25 years. At the end of the day, so I'll just cut right to the chase. I'm just not even sure there's a need for these structures at all. So therefore, is there, you know, just following from that, is there a need for the people who work at them? There's a need for all the people who work at foundations to be out in the field, delivering impact in communities that need. need them. You know, having them at the foundation making grant decisions is just to me, it's a layer out. Now, we in the sector, the people who work in the sector, we have designed all kinds of reasons for why we should be there. You know, one is we get a 30,000 foot view of the landscape and can, you know, help organizations that are, you know, tied into the ground level to see the

bigger picture. Do you need a foundation to do that? I don't know. Can you get a good consulting firm that could help, probably. You know, we argue that we're important for helping organizations develop their own capacity to deliver the services they want to deliver. I don't know. Again, could you get someone else to help with that? I mean, you don't, there aren't a lot of, I mean, I guess it's kind of playing off of the venture capital model that exists, you know, very prevalent here in the Silicon

Valley area in San Francisco, South Bay, that, you know, these investors come in. super smart about business and they're going to help you grow your startup into this outstanding IPO exit strategy sort of thing. Again, that's great for business. Does it work in the social sector? I don't know. So the short answer on this one without, you know, slapping my friend's hands who are working in the sector, I'm just not sure how much we do offer beyond just, again, if the simplest thing a donor can do is to write a check to an organization. organization and have them use the money for their purposes. Right.

What's the benefit of having something in between, a filter that catches 95% of the assets, puts it into private equity and hedge funds? And then that other additional 5% is what goes out every year, which we haven't talked about yet, which is really the other crazy part of this. Let's get into that part of it in a second, but let's just stay on this for a moment. Sure, sure. Because, yeah, I could imagine the Ord Foundation or the Whatever Foundation, arguing, well, we've been around for 100 years.

We have developed expertise. We have written papers and studies. And we are now the best in the business at figuring out how to help an organization spend the money we give them. So we're a force multiplier, right? And I can sort of see that argument. but then the rejoinder would be, well, what if you just gave the money to the ACLU or whatever organization? Or, you know, the local, the group in Kansas City that's trying, I'm going to keep using Kansas City because it's a wonderful city, one of my favorites.

Also very philanthropic one. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great place. You know, you give it to the organization in Kansas City that's trying to fight poverty. And maybe they develop the capacity. And they're the ones who are figuring it out, right? Or the, you give it to the, you know, rather than helping the scientist fight malaria, you give the money to the scientist who's helping fight malaria.

And I think it plays into a very common trap that the rich fall into. And I've noticed this, the more I've been around rich people is rich people tend to equate having money with being smart. They think that because they have money, they have skills. And I know this because I used to work with a guy who started a company, sold it, continued to run the company.

I worked there. And this guy thought he was the smartest man to ever live. And I watched every single idea the guy ever had afterwards crash and burn because actually he got lucky one time in a frothy environment, sold the company. Nothing wrong with that.

That was a great thing to do. You know, like great achievement. But like after that, failed upwards, right? But that one cash out, I'm a genius. Everything I do must be smart. And people are telling me I'm smart because I got all the fucking money. Yeah, that's right.

And they want some of it. Well, guess what? There's a guy named Carnegie who believed that very thing. And that is the operating system on which we all still run. That guy wrote a book called I think it was Origins of Wealth or something around. I forget it off the top of my head. I reference it in the book. And he, what's more important is what he thought.

And he basically thought in a world where you have people that succeed in an economic system, they are the smartest people and everybody else needs them to help them. So the most important thing you can do as a wealthy person who is smarter than everyone else is to provide assets to them in a world that they don't understand as well. And on the one hand, hugely patronizing problematic on many levels, much like you just described. On the other hand, thank goodness, his decision was you should share the wealth. That's not so common these days with our wealthy people who have gotten very, very lucky. I mean, there's a whole lineup of people that were sitting behind the president at the inauguration who just got very, very lucky. But now attribute that luck to enormous skill and strength. and they don't, those same people are not really being philanthropic.

Carnegie said, it's your obligation to give that money away. So I hear you in that you're right, I believe, to point the finger at the people who believe themselves to be these intelligent individuals. But we also have to point the finger at ourselves for never-endingly reinforcing that stuff. It goes on and on. in our tax laws, in the way we, you know, in our entertainment, in how we, who gets to be on what panels and committees and who gets to put their name on what, we constantly reinforce again and again and again that if you have succeeded in our economic system, you're special and we really

have to, you know, bend a knee. What's funny is we reinforce this over and over again despite the fact that it's an obvious lie. I mean, think about, if you're listening, think about your boss or think about the person who runs your company or think about the richest guy in your town. Is this the smartest guy you know? Is this a brilliant individual or is it the son of a of a rich fuck and, you know, is this person actually dumb as rocks and has failed upwards? You know which one it is. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to put myself in all those categories, but I'm not going to sure my staff thinks has those questions all the time.

Well, and the fact that you display some humility, right, is, is necessary. Like the best thing that someone in that position can say is like, look, guys, I got fucking lucky. My, you know, my dad was a rich guy. And I'm trying to make the best I can of that and do some good with it and live a nice life as we all would like to, you know, if I got so lucky. I sort of believe if you get lucky in life, don't squander it. you know, make the best of it, you know, and try to do some good.

But then also be like, I don't fucking know. Like, I'm not that, I'm not that smart, you know. Adam, you've actually hit the point of the book right there. The point of control why big giving falls short is to say, I'm not saying to people, because you have the money, you should, and you should step aside. Yeah. I'm saying you need to take a good look in the mirror and ask, why are you controlling it the way that you are?

Yeah. Why, when you say you want to get positive social, impact for the world in some place because you put yourself into the chair position of a public entity called a foundation that is intended to give away money. You put yourself there. You're not giving away enough of the money. What's going on? And I think a lot of what's going on is the person in the chair receives benefit from running the nonprofit, right? Because they get flown around. They're treated very importantly. They get very fancy food and fancy dinners.

People, you know, bow and scrape. Yep. And, you know, there's also the opportunity. They don't make as much money probably as somebody in a for-profit enterprise, but you can make plenty of money doing this. These people are paid well enough and can, you know, probably write a book or do a consultancy or whatever. And I think the thing I'd point out, if I'm having my hypothetical argument with the people

from the whatever foundation, but all the expertise they have. even if I grant, hey, maybe they have the best practices. They actually have really good research. They really are directing the money in an optimal way. Think about all of the waste caused by this layer of middle person. Bingo. Because I feel like I've encountered this a little bit too much. I'm almost doing too much of this interview for you, Glenn, and I apologize.

I think people encounter it a lot and they don't think about it this way. I have in the past couple years, you know, encountered some various foundations that I actually think are sort of on the right side of history. They're doing, you know, good stuff in the tech space, pro-democracy, truly progressive organizations, right? Founded by progressive rich people. And I've gone to events that they've put on. I've enjoyed the events. I've spoken at some of them, you know? And it's like, okay, you do some networking, et cetera.

and then I find myself in these rooms with, you know, a bunch of rich people, some of whom work for the foundation. And I go, man, you know, there's a new project I want to do on my YouTube channel, but, you know, I could really use 100 grand to like hire a bunch of people up front, right? If I could, if I could just get some money, then I could, you know, hire some writers and hire some researchers and we could, oh, maybe we do a cool documentary, right? I have an idea for a cool creative project. And so I found, find myself, okay, maybe who should I talk to here? And I talk to someone there and, and, uh, I tell about my idea and they go, oh, wow, that's a really good idea. Like we should, we should meet up.

You know, we all, let's have a conversation. Let's have a Zoom meeting. I'm like, oh my God, I might actually get some money for my cool thing. Right. And then I have a Zoom meeting and they, oh, you should really meet Ben who works for this organization. I go meet Ben. And then I'm, and then this goes on and on.

And a couple months later, I realized all I've been doing is. is having Zoom meetings and going to coffees with my little bowl out, with my little beggar bowl out, going, could someone drop some money in my bowl? And I never seem to get to the person who actually is going to put the money in the bowl. And then as I go to those events, right, hey, we're doing a little of get together. And I'll let you know, why don't you come to this? All right, if I go to this, maybe it'll help me get closer to the money. I realize there's 20 other motherfuckers.

They're also with their little bowl out. And we're all. And they're all cool people. Oh, here's a director. here's a scholar, here's a journalist. Yep. And everybody, and I'm like, look at how we're spending our time, you know? Not even me.

Look at the other people at this event. We're all spending time just eating canopays and drinking wine in a nice environment, having a nice conversation. It's a party. Whatever. A lot of that's benign. Just social life. Right.

But like, what if we just had the money last year? Right. And the documentary was already out or the journalism project was out. Or we had already spent it. That's right. This is waste. This is. this is a light bulb burning and generating heat when when no one's in the room,

you know, and just like waste heat into the environment. Well, I mean, you can, to your point about the staff, just the staff alone, you know, I am very expensive. The people who work for me are very expensive. We do very expensive things like you just described. We fly around the country going to conferences. We fly around the country going to look at our grantees and what they're doing. We have to have, we have convenings in our offices.

we have really nice offices. I mean, the amount of money that goes into the operation, as you said at the outset of what you were saying, you said, look, we should just move the money straight into you making the documentary. The real cost of that grant, at the end of the day, let's say you got your $100,000. The real cost of that grant was probably with staff time, canopays, and everything in,

probably more like $2,300, $400,000. When you think about it, you said it took, let's say it takes a year to get to the point that you're paying. Well, that's a year's worth of salaries, a year's worth of events. The cost to you is very high. You probably had to write something up to do this. You probably had to meet with all your team where there's a big opportunity for us. It's this together. Good proposal.

Hey, why don't we make a video? That'd be cool. They'd really love a video. All of this just to get a check. Right. That could have been cut from the beginning by the donor. and all of that is cut out of the picture. You're totally right.

I mean, your level of waste is there. So the question, going back to your original question, which is what about the people that work at these places? What do they offer? I'm not denying that we offer something, but is it at a value that the American people expect for the tax dollars that they have transferred into these foundations? Right.

And that's what it comes back to. I'll just tell one more anecdote, because literally yesterday, was hanging out with someone who works in the foundation world in LA. I told them about this interview that we were about to do. And by the way, I've done this topic before on videos I've done. So, you know, we were able to have a conversation about it. And they do their credit. We're like, oh, yeah, you know, I work in this foundation space. And this stuff is real. But there's a lot of work that's being done. And I actually work for an organization that helps these foundations

try to spend the money better. Right. And I'm like, okay, that's great. You're a good person. and the people you're working with are good people. But think about what we're saying. We have one organization that's a nonprofit helping the other organizations that are nonprofits that are thinking they're the ones who know how to help people spend money better. There's another, a meta organization helping them spend the money better. That's also a nonprofit. So the levels of we're helping each other spend money is going so deep.

Think about how much we're wasting. Incredible numbers. And at some point, it doesn't become incumbent upon the people at the foundations because, yes, they're all just humans doing their best in a fucked up system. It comes to the rest of us who are allowing the system to exist. It comes to our society saying, hold on a second. Are we getting a good value for our dollar? And the dollar that we are spending on this as a society is our tax subsidy that we're giving them.

We are giving them. We're saying, hey, we don't need 30% of your money, Bill Gates, or 40 or 50% whatever it is. You can keep that 40%. We're not going to spend it on roads and bridges and schools. Instead, you're going to get to spend it. And are we getting a good value on that? So let's talk about that piece of it. Let's talk about the tax part of it specifically.

What's your critique there? Well, you know, I think the best book on this, by the way, just came out this year, is by Ray Madoff called The Second Estate, where she goes through all of the various ways that billionaires don't pay taxes. At the end of the day, they don't pay taxes. And one of the ways they avoid it is through foundations. So the foundation is actually of all the tax opportunities, the tax avoidant opportunities that exist for billionaires.

It's the least attractive, but it is still part of a portfolio that prevents taxation until you die. And now we've gotten rid of estate taxes to the point where none of this money ever really gets taxed. Yeah. And so what the foundation offers for the money that you end, up putting forward for charity as they define it, 70% tax benefit. Therefore, you know, I don't, you'd have to look at the full suite of how someone is arranging their taxes, but that is going to bring down their asset obligation to the point that they don't, it's going to help to bring it down to the point where they don't have to pay an annual tax

of any kind. Wow. And so, so that's the payoff. That's the win. Some, some now are moving away from the foundation model because it actually ends up having to create an organization that they have to therefore somehow they think have to be involved. They don't have to be involved in it, but they typically do, as we've already talked about. A lot of them now just put it into these donor advised funds, which are accounts that I talked about earlier. And with that, you get the, in the case of a foundation, you're going to roll your tax benefit over time. In the case of a donor advised fund, you get it all up front. You're literally making a donation. to a separate nonprofit entity.

Most of the time, community foundations too play a role in this. And they ultimately have, the community foundation owns the assets now. But they're making a wink-wink deal with you, the donor, that you can decide what to do with that money. They'll stay out of it. So all of this plays into an overall tax strategy. So what I say in the book and what I'll say now is, If you meet someone who set up a private foundation or set up a foundation and you ask them, did you do it for charitable reasons?

And if they say yes, they're lying to you because the truth is they did it because they didn't do it because that organization you talked about earlier of people that are there to help foundations do good work. They didn't go to them first and say, hey, how do I set up something that will really help the public? Right. They went to their estate planner. they went to their investment advisor or they went to their accountant or they went to all three

and they said what tax structure should I set up to get the most benefit for me in my tax strategy and it so happens that they also get to give some of that money away on an annual basis with their family if they want to. Folks, I got to come clean. I know that I seem like a suave, cool super athlete who spends all day Duncan, but I cannot touch the rim, okay? I have never known the pleasure of slamming the great orange orb. down the court's hoop-shaped gullet,

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we could characterize this as like evil on their part, The fact is our tax law pushes them to do this. Totally. So I'll bring it to my own example. I think we've talked about donor advised funds sometimes on this show. Okay. I think what people don't realize is how available these are simply to the consumer, like the consumer investor.

I have, you know, I have a Vanguard account, right? That is of, you know, Fidelity Schwab. Then there's Vanguard. Like millions and millions and millions of Americans. I have a Vanguard account. I put all the money I ever made in TV into this retirement fund. Some of it is taxable, right? Some of it's not in a 401k or whatever.

Some of it's just in a regular old taxable account. Right. And it's growing and growing because it's just in an index fund, right? If I ever want to access this money, I got to pay taxes on it. I got to pay capital gains as well I should because it's new income to me, right? Like just like income taxes. Right. This is money that's coming into me.

I pay some of it to the government. and not such a big deal because, hey, guess what? I'm going to be taxed less than I am earning. So no big deal, right? But here's what Vanguard allows me to do. Say I have a, well, I'll say what the vehicle is first. They've set up a consumer version of a donor advised fund. It's called Vanguard Charitable.

You go on the website, you click a couple buttons. They spin up, maybe they have someone, some associate doing it somewhere. Maybe they do it all electronically. They spin up a mini 501c3 for me called the Adam. overfund. Yep. And then they let me, sounds nice, right?

And then they let me transfer my money into it. Yep. And then I get, I transfer not my real money. I transfer that index fund, right? The money that I can't touch because I don't want to pay taxes on it. Right. The money that I don't even think about as being mine because I'm not 65 yet. Right.

I can transfer that in. I transfer the stocks in. I get an immediate tax benefit for doing so. If I put in 20 grand, immediately this year, 20, 26, I get to write off 20 grand in taxes, right? Where does that money go? It goes into a fund, goes into the Adam Conover fund. The Adam Conover fund, it can just sit there. I literally don't have to do anything with it.

They have some small requirement. You got to donate 5% of it or whatever. But it can sit there and literally it's still in an index fund when it's in the charity. So it keeps growing. So my 20 grand, if I've done that this year, next year it might be 25, the year after that it might be 30. I could, and I can recommend what they do with it. I can say, well, you know, could you please liquidate it all this year?

They'll do that for me. Or please just give $100 a month to the ACLU. And that's totally legal. But even though I'm only giving way $100 a month, I've already received $20,000 of tax benefit in 2026. And guess what? I might, if I die, that money might still be there. A lot of rich people die.

Most people don't spend all their money before they die, right? Right. So what have I done? I've gotten a tax benefit right now to defray some big tax bill for doing literally nothing to help anybody else. And I'm telling you, this is like a normal accountant if you called them. And you were like, hey, man, I got a big windfall this year. I'm going to be looking at a tax bill. What should I do?

You know, somebody died or whatever it is. You know, what do I do? They will be like, open up one of these donor advice funds and do this thing. And I'm looking at this just because I am a nerd about this. stuff I like to, you know, poke around the website, see what's available. When I understood this, I was like, this is insane that I'm allowed to do this as a normal guy. Like, it just seems, this isn't how charity is supposed to work. I'm recognizing this myself. Now imagine you're a billionaire. And instead of just like vanguard.com and a regular old accountant, you've got a special

investment product at a special bank and you've got 10, you've got 100 accountants who are all focused on helping you avoid taxes. That's what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about. And our tax law is all of everything I just described was set up because our laws have various loopholes and allowances that cause it to happen. You know, it's like natural. It's like water flowing downhill. This is what money's going to do, right?

Well, and I, you know, to go to the macro, macro level for a second, because you've got, you did a great job there. One of the best I've heard, actually, of really. explaining how how this plays out at small levels and large levels. Because it all, like you said, it all goes into the same stream. The Rand Corporation, their research wing, came out with a study about four years ago and they revised it this year. Since 1975, because of all these tax schemes, because of inflation, because of wages, since 1975, $2.2 trillion, $2.2 trillion, per year has been transferred from the working class to the 1%.

Wow. Over 50 years, that translates to, or over the period they've studied, it translates to about $80 trillion has transferred to the 1% from the working class. So when you think about all that we are dealing with in our country right now, pick a topic from polypricer, from, you know, from hyper-partisanship, from hyper-ideological, polarity, struggles, suffering, poverty, homelessness. You think about all this. Imagine what the world would be like if all these schemes did not exist and that $80

trillion stayed in working class hands. What a different country we'd be today. And instead, now, we're at a place where, because of this, you know, some aspect, most of that money, most of the money that got transferred is in the hands still of the very wealthy. Yeah. Some of it is sitting in these foundations under the control of the very wealthy or sitting in donor-advised funds intended to address this extraction that's taking place. It's very extreme.

And I don't think we talk enough about this topic. Like we cover a lot of stuff in the news. This report comes out, came out like two years ago, came out again. I don't remember anyone saying, hey, this is kind of a huge problem. Yeah. And one way that we can somewhat address it is by getting some of that pocket change that sits in these accounts back out to people that really need it. And even there, we can't get that money moved. So that's at the heart to me of what this entire effort is about that the Stubbsky Foundation, where I work, we put a lot of effort to try to bring greater awareness to this problem. We're doing everything we can to shift the mindsets of people who work in it. to go from like, how do I hold onto it to how do I move it? Right.

And you're up against, we are up against a lot of historic, traditional narratives that say, you should keep it and grow it and give it away at 5% a year. But I'd love to talk about that because you made a great point. In a donor-advised fund, you're not, you don't have to give it away, which is weird, right? This is a charitable account. you don't have to give it away. You said something interesting, and that is that they require you to give away 5%. They may as a policy, they may as a policy require that, but it's not legally required.

Like they're not going to be in any trouble and you're not going to be any trouble if you don't give away the 5%. With a foundation, you are. You have to pay out at least 5%. Now, that 5% is not just grants. It's also your operations can get in there. And if you're moving any of your endowment as a loan, which we call a PRI, if that money goes out in a loan, you can also tag that to the 5%.

So at the end of the day, how much money is literally being given away out of these foundations is just minuscule compared to what they're sitting on. And what they're sitting on has to earn more than 5% every year so that they can live in perpetuity. So just to go through it again very quickly, the government requires since 1969 that foundations give away 5%. Minimum. That, of course, for most foundations, is the maximum they're going to give away. Why? Because they want to live forever. In order to live forever, you have to earn more than that 5%. Where can you get a good guarantee that you're going to earn more than 5% a year? Hedge funds, private equity, real estate speculation, Bitcoin, all the stuff. that is undermining the very populations that you're trying to help. Right. Because let's talk about what all of that money is doing. Right.

I'm, I'm, I'm Mr. Big Billionaire. Right. I've signed Warren Buffett's giving pledge. I've said, I'm going to donate all of my money to charity. Or half. Yes. I donate it to, or half, yes, in the case that giving pledge. So I donate half of my money to the Big billionaire foundation.

Right. My name's Mr. Big. Right. From, from Sex in the City. I got very wealthy. And I'm distracting myself with horrible comedy. I donate all the money to the Big Billionaire Foundation. I say, I've done a good job.

This money is no longer going to profit. It's no longer profiting me. Right. It is even if I only spend 5% a year, this is all earmarked to help other people. But what is that billion dollars doing, apart from the 5%? It is literally being invested in the for-profit economy, right? Exactly.

It's like literally going to hedge funds. Even if I put it in a fucking index fund, that money is being distributed among Google and Apple and Amazon and Bank of America. And now SpaceX. Hugely. SpaceX is on index funds now. Right. Yeah.

So like how is that money? How is that money for charity when it's like literally being invested in for profit. And by the way, probably is being run by investment managers who are being paid a healthy fee. and they probably also manage, you know, plenty of for-profit investors. Like, it's just part of the fucking Wall Street. Well, in fact, if you look at if you, so the tax form that all foundations have to put out every year. So the stuff, a lot of this is very transparent. It's not, it's actually not as hidden as you might think.

You look at the top five salaries at a foundation. If they have an investment team at the foundation, most subcontract that out to Goldman or whomever. But if you have one inside, the highest paid person at the foundation is going to be the CIO. It's going to be the investment officer, not the CEO. Of course. And, you know, like I remember when I was working at the Hewlett Foundation, I might have my numbers off a little bit here. I was only there for about a year. But the guy who ran the investment was doing like 1.7 million annually. And the CEO is making 900,000 a year. It was like a very dramatic difference. Yeah. And it just goes to show you, like, where are the, it says everything about where the priorities are for the foundation, right? You want to

have someone who's going to just power earn on these assets. And again, when you go to the boardroom and you're all sitting around, high-fiving each other on the success of the foundation, when the investment team comes in and says, hey, we earned X percent this year on our endowment, everyone's going to be excited because you're going to say to each other, well, that's great. Because next year, when we give away our 5%, it's going to equal this much more in millions. Right. You're not going to say anything. No one is going to say, by the way, it turns out we invested a lot of money in a private equity firm that unhoused a bunch of people in mobile home parks across the country. But we don't need to worry about that because we're going to put 5% into homelessness issues.

So excellent work, everybody. There's no discussion about this. There's only a discussion. The investment stuff happens on the side. It's all based on growth numbers. It's nothing about mission, nothing about damage, nothing about harm. And then you scrutinize the shit out of the 5% that you're giving away to the point that you've got a guy running around with a bucket in his hand trying to get $100,000 for a documentary over a year's period. You know, it's insane how that plays out.

But as I said from the start, Adam, you and I are having a rational, reasonable conversation. We have twisted the world of the foundation sector to a place where we are justifying. stuff to ourself that is just completely outside of reason. Now let's bring in yet another piece of this. Great. Because let's say that, you know, the foundation, as we've established, the whole purpose of the foundation is just to putatively decide where the money goes. Well, why should these people be the ones in charge of deciding where the money goes?

like when they're helping needy people. Why can't the needy people help? Great question. One of the things we say about charity, oh, charity goes to help people. Well, first of all,

there's a lot of ways to spend charitable dollars that doesn't help anybody. That donor advised fund hypothetically that I start just as a consumer, right? And I put 20 grand in it this year grows to 100 grand, you know, 20 years later.

Hey, what if like 20 years from now my daughter wants to go to a fancy college? And I'm like, hey, guess what? Here's $100,000, right? By the way, my daughter's applying to the college. Sure.

Now, that's nobody's profiting from it. It's better than giving it to Walmart. But like, this is not charity, right? This is benefit. Like, I'm directing it to benefit my interests really directly. Or at the, now, let's say, slightly more benign version. Let's say I do that and I'm very old. And I donate it to the Metropolitan Opera because I'm an opera fan.

Well, okay. Like, yeah, the opera's good. and it relies on donations. I happen to actually be an opera fan. And the opera does exist largely because of donations. But is that really the best place for it? Is that the neediest group in America? Is the Metropolitan Opera?

Of course not, right? And oh, by the way, did I get my name on the wall? And do I get a bunch of extra free tickets to events and stuff like that? Free tickets, what about the special gala is, behind the scenes? We used to Joyce Stepski, who I worked for for for years. She was a big fan of the ballet. she would give them privately. She didn't do it through the foundation.

On her own account, she would give them $50K a year. She was invited to come down to the practice. Yeah. Pretty good deal. Yeah, the opera singers or the ballet, people, they'll give you a hug. Joy, so good to see you. Oh, my God, thank you. Oh, and you look beautiful and you're so smart and talented and charming.

She was told that many times. Yeah, absolutely. So that's all, you know, the obvious self-serving thing that a single rich person can But then if you even diffuse that out even more, it's like the question is the biases and the predilections of the wealthy are going to inform the priorities of these foundations. And that is like in this deep systemic way that is not connected to what people actually need. Do you have examples of this happening? Listen, Adam, you're outstanding at this. Like, you're hitting topics.

These are topics I love getting into that I just never get questions about. So really good. This happens to be an area of focus of mine as it turns out. Well, it pays off. So I, for me, at least. So let's talk about this one thing. You just got into something I think is so important that we do not pay attention to. So let's start with what sounds like this like huge thing that happens every two years in our country that we are way,

focused on and it's called campaign finance. So at the federal level, and coming up in 2028, so I know we're in the midst, we're in the closing moments of a cycle right now. So we're going to come out of this midterm cycle and we're going to go into a general cycle for the federal government. President, some senators, two third or one third, and all of the House, right? That's going to cost $15 billion over two years. And everyone's going to lose their mind over that number. 15 billion dollars. That's a lot of influence. That's a lot of corporate interests. That's a lot of individuals. That's a lot of da-da-da-da-da. Over two years, that's $7.5 billion a year going into federal politics. Sounds a lot smaller than some of the other numbers you've been saying so far today. At the same time, philanthropy, specifically foundations, are going to put out $100 billion against that seven, doing the things that you're talking about. Now, it's all for good. So let's be careful. People get really riled up when you start questioning people doing things that are for good. But I do wonder, and it's just an observation. It's not a judgment. I do wonder if we would have opera anymore. What art would we have if opera wasn't the choice of the very wealthy? What art would exist if you took that same money and put it there? What museums might look like if the truly community-based folks were deciding what a, what a

museum need to look at and look like and what would be in it. Not a judgment. Maybe you'd be the same. But you're right in saying the influence is extraordinary. Like what universities we get, how universities operate. What do they teach? What do they research? In many ways, has to do with what individual donors and families want. So you were doing kind of a version of something we had in the book for a while, which is, I think often about when the, pretty much every day, if you go on the chronicle of philanthropy, we actually have our own newspaper in the sector. If you go on the chronicle of philanthropy every day, there's a picture of usually two very nicely dressed white people with a headline that says, these white people gave $10 million to this university

for this program, almost every day. There's a, some multiple millions given to a university. And I've always wondered, like, it'd be interesting if the journal. journalist went out to communities that are truly marginalized and in need of assets and said, hey, when you think about the stuff your community could really need, like if you could get $10 million, what would you want to see the donor give it to? Do you think they'd say Harvard? I mean, I don't think they would say Harvard. And that's where a lot of the money goes. So just like you were saying. No, but the Harvard program is to help people like you.

It's to help them, right? It's like some percentage of it might end up in a scholarship. some percentage of, but most of it's going to end up in Cambridge Associates managing their endowment. That's where it's going to end up. And so overall, the influence factor of this money, which is completely unchecked, there is no check on this. We have, I mean, a lot of the committees and administrative agencies have been gutted pretty badly by this administration. But if they're working as they're supposed to, then we have something called the federal, election commission for that campaign finance. There is no such thing as the Federal Foundation Commission. Nothing is watching. And this is a lot of money. It's not, it's not, you know,

$7 billion. It's $100 billion transferring hands into stuff that a very elite group wants to see happen. So it should, I believe there should be some limited amount of regulation. I think there should be some oversight of some of this stuff. I think we should really check and make sure that the public interest is being met, given how much public money we're putting into these institutions. Right, because that's the way we should look at it. We are declining to tax this money. Right. This is money that when Bill Gates or Avonchanard or anybody else, when they made the money, they did it. Let's remember using public roads that the rest of us paid for with employees that were educated in the public education system,

went to public universities, that was the water, the power, all the other things that the public provides went into the money these people made. They could not have made it without the public infrastructure that all of us pay taxes into. And so the idea is they should all have to pay back into it. They have received an exemption where they don't have to do this.

Why should we not monitor it a little bit more? Because, hey, if, I mean, the flip side of the argument is, well, why don't we look at it as taxpayers and say, okay, hold on a second. These people are getting, you know, an extra 30 cents on the dollar to get a tax. As high as 70. As high as 70 percent of the dollar. Yeah, that is not going to the public coffers. And they get to get a tax deduction many dozens of years before they ever spend the money. They get to spend it on whatever.

they like. A lot of that is going to be on stuff that's self-serving. There's a huge amount of waste given all of the middleman, you know, people that have to be paid, etc., etc., all these things that make the money do less and less good stuff. And the decisions are made by, you know, billionaires or people employed by billionaires. If we were to design an alternate system, what if the people who are actually in need were the ones deciding how the money, could be spent, perhaps through some large distributed system of decision making, like maybe once every couple years people go into a little booth and they choose someone to decide how the money is going to be spent based on their interest. Oh, oh, I know what that's called. That's called taxes and

democracy. That's called democracy, yes. So, but we're saying we don't want the money to be spent that way. We are happy to let these people decide, well, maybe we should regulate it a little bit better. I think so. I think so. Of course, the challenge there, and I've seen this with my peers, and it even happened last year when the big beautiful bill came out, there was a piece of it that said, and it was politically motivated. So I'm not going to take that out of the picture, but left and right are interested in getting their hands on some of this money. So in this case, it was the right, wanted to tax all the large foundations on the earning. of their endowment. They didn't even want to tax the endowments. They just wanted to tax the earnings. Like, how much are they earning on the endowment? And the industry went crazy.

They mo- because it's the one time, according to the 1969 Tax Act, we are not allowed to mess around in politics. We're not allowed to put money into campaigns. We're not allowed to go and meet with or promote any single candidates or legislation of any kind, except if we are under threat. So this was a threat.

There's an exemption in the act that you can... Wow. That would be a breach of First Amendment rights. Like, if we can't even defend ourselves when we're under attack, that would be unconstitutional. Well, and I mean, corporations have First Amendment rights. Why shouldn't pay the foundations, right? And they're allowed to talk to...

You're allowed to get involved in campaigns all they want. And money is speech, as we know. So go on. So the industry went nuts. And all the presidents got together with all their staff, and we lobbied hard to prevent anyone taking our earnings, our endowments. And it got pulled. And so if you want to reform this sector in any way, you have to believe that that two trillion that's sitting there, that's going to get used against you. So it's a very challenging environment to, that's why when I wrote control, I wrote it with really a focus on culture and individual mindset because it's probably more efficient for me to focus on that and just, you know, because people contact me all the time now and say, hey, how do we do what you did at the Stepski Foundation? Like, how do we shift our

mindset from the donor being at the center of everything to the community being at the center of everything? How do we do that? So, you know, as a result, we estimate that we've had an impact Now, just in the four months the book has been out, that we've had an impact on somewhere between $2 and $15 billion in assets that would have probably sat there in a more donor-centered way that's now getting out. I don't know if I could have gotten legislation passed any time in my lifetime that would have had that kind of impact. And if the book has a long tail, we'll see. I'm not, you know, I'm not anybody famous, which is what's really important to selling books these days. But if you, if the book gets out to enough people and enough

people are talking about it in the sector, who knows? Maybe we influence 50, 60, 100 billion, and it ends up really getting into the hands of communities and the way it needs to. The spend-out model that we've used, so we are going out of business in 2029. We'll be done with all of our grant-making assets at the end of next year. Wow. We've moved it all. So just to give you a sense of how this- This is what you're doing at the Stubbski Foundation, which is one of these family foundations that we have been talking about. That's right. So just to give you a sense of what happens when you break out a 5% and you actually move the money. If we had stayed 5% since I've run the foundation for over 10 years, in that time, we have

given away and will have given away $600 million. If we had stayed a 5% foundation, meaning we only gave 5% every year, we would have given away 160 million. So 600 million versus 160 million. So we are a relatively small foundation. If you think about the really big ones. Imagine how much money they would move versus their 5% payout. Right. And that goes back to the very beginning of our conversation when I said, they're talking about wanting to address problems in the future. So my question for them is, why would we want you addressing problems in the future when you aren't even addressing the ones today? They're not even trying. I mean, imagine we're big sports fans.

up here in the Bay Area. We don't have any teams right now that are doing well. But back in the day when they were, like Steph Curry, for example, on the Warriors, can you imagine if he showed up at a press conference at the beginning of the playoffs and said, listen, the team has gotten together and we've decided we're only going to do 5% for this round of the playoffs? Because we're going to save our energy for the next round of the playoffs. Right. That would be grounds for firing, even the greatest basketball player potentially ever. You're out if you play at 5%. Well, why in the world do we say the same thing is acceptable for these dollars that we have put into the hands? So that is what we're doing. We're spending it out.

And there are more and more foundations that are saying, hey, this is serious. We're either going to spend a big chunk down. Marguerite Casey Foundation up in Seattle announced just two weeks ago that they're going to go from a billion to roughly 400 million over the next 10 years. If every foundation took that, so they still want to be around in perpetuity, so that's great. But they're saying we're going to go from here to here and we're going to live on that for the rest of our time. And that's, that in itself, if you were to calculate that across the entire sector, if everybody brought their amount down to say 40% of where they are today, the amount of

capital that would go out for social change, whether it's policy work or service delivery, would be extraordinary. You'd definitely get that documentary made. I know that. I mean, I understand a little bit of the perverse psychology that these organizations have, right?

Because it's like, if I spend all the money now, it won't solve all the problems. And then what will I do? But there's also a perverseness on the other side, right? Like, because imagine you're like, running a soup kitchen and you're handed out soup. This is my version of your Steph Curry metaphor. You're handing out soup and a hungry guy comes up with his bowl.

And you're like, I can't give you any soup. And he's like, why? He's like, well, there might be another guy who wants soup later. I'm saving the soup for him. But I need the soup right now. And you can see it. You can see the soup right there. It's right there.

Yeah. Now that's fucked up from his perspective, right? But I understand from the person with the ladle's perspective, if I give you soup, there is a long line of other people. and I'm going to run out of soup there won't be anymore and I'll feel sad and bad and I'm like, what was I doing giving out this soup? Because there's still hungry people out there, right?

I understand if you're, sometimes I do have that thought is like, man, if I die on my deathbed and I've got, you know, a million dollars and I donate it all out, well, it's not going to solve every problem. It's just going to go among all these other different nonprofits. Some will go to Kansas City, some will go to Stockton, California, whatever it is, right?

And there'll still be misery in the world, what was it all for, right? Why did I do all this in the first place? And I think what that shows is a lack of ability to grapple with the fact that, like, reality will always have misery and suffering. Sure. And your job is not actually to solve all of it throughout time

or, you know, to create some, because that creates a goal that you'll never reach. Like Elon Musk saying we should be a spacefaring, you know, species. Well, no, there's people suffering right now and maybe the best you can do. is try to assuage as much suffering as you can at the moment or make the world as much better as you can at the moment. And I guess what if we all did that?

Maybe things would actually be better in the future. It's like this extreme chauvinism and narcissism to say, I want to preserve my ability to help. Well, why is your ability to help important? Great point. Isn't the person being helped the important. if you can't help anymore because you have no more resources, who gives a fuck? Exactly.

You spend all your money. Now go volunteer at a soup kitchen. Like, whatever. I don't care if other people have gotten the money. Right. And back to your point about the soup kitchen. That story, of course, assumes that there aren't any other soup kitchens and there's no more soup. Right.

And that's the point. We started this conversation and I said, And it is going to be the case next year. It's going to be the case the year after this, that Americans are going to give away $600 billion in philanthropy. And some portion of that is called the big giving sector, $100 billion. There's still going to be, if you took away all the foundations, so someone asked me the other day, they said, it sounds like you're saying that you want to get rid of foundations. And I said, well, yeah, and by and large, that is true. Well, then what's going to happen to philanthropy if there aren't foundations? And I said, well, there'll be another $500 billion that

will come in other forms. And the $100 billion, if there aren't foundations, will just go to taxes, which will end up serving that purpose. It'll go to the central United States treasury versus the Treasury of Mr. Big. That's all that's going to change. It's still going to be, there's still going to be a lot of philanthropy. And we expect that we're going to still see a lot of people making money, and there are going to be a lot of people trying to dodge taxes, and it's all going to turn into some more of this current system. But to me, the biggest questions we really need to think about when it comes to this work is that macro question of where this money, where this money originated and where it has ended up and how we're going to deal with that. And this system I'm talking about is contributing currently to the transfer from the working class to the wealthiest people.

This system of philanthropy foundation sector is contributing to that problem. And I think we need to get our heads around that issue. And pull away from the feel good warmness of, hey, these are people all trying to do good stuff. It's true. Some people really are trying to certainly the people who work at foundations. You're not going to meet a person at a foundation who's like, you know, screw the poor. I just want to get my cut. It's not, you're not going to run across that.

they really do care. These are good people trying to do good things. The question that we need to ask ourselves is, are we doing as good as we can? And even posing that question, I can tell you, I get my hand slapped all the time. Anytime you question whether we're doing this as good as we can

or as well as we can, people see that as, hey, you're questioning me. You're saying I'm doing something bad. And there's just a fragility there in this world that I work in. Like this conversation we're having right now, for a lot of people I work with or a lot of people I've been in conference rooms with, their jaw would be on the table. They'd be like, how can you possibly question these things like you are?

Yeah. And it's too bad because these are very smart people. And the more people reflect upon how they operate these structures and how this money is getting out and the level of impact they're not getting. If they started thinking more about that, we'd have a better system. overnight, but they're not. They're just buying in. It's comfortable. It's cool. It makes everybody look good. But the broader public is paying the price. And that's precisely why I wrote the book and I'm really grateful to have had the time to talk to you about it because you know this stuff. You really do. Thank you. Well, let me ask you one more question. Because you have,

you've said you're trying to encourage the people at foundations to be less self-centered, be less billionaire-centered. And rather than, hey, just do the giving pledge and make a foundation that's going to give away 5%. What if that foundation's goal was to give away all the money? All the money. Yeah. And you are hoping to, by changing culture in your own industry, right, make an incremental

change that's going to make it better. That sounds great. And you raised the problem of money and power, right? That if we were to threaten this system, it would fight back. Right. Well, unfortunately, this is the problem of all of human society. Right. Is power calls the shots money equals power.

Yep. And if half of the ills of the world are caused by the wrong people having power, how do you get the right people to have power when power protects itself, right? This is like literally, you know, let's go. study political science for our entire lives and try to solve this problem. I know how that feels. Sometimes I think this is if I were to go to grad school, it would be about this, right? Because this is like, I got to go fucking go read some 18th century political philosophy

about, you know, I got to go read Thomas Hobbs or whatever the fuck, right? You have to go that far back, but yes, you do have to read. This is a big question of human society, right? Exactly. But so we're not going to solve it. We're not going to, hey, what if we eliminated all charity and came up with the perfect wealth distribution means. So we put it all in Medicare for all.

Right. And we didn't need. Because yes, that would be great. But however, let's say that we could make some incremental progress in our culture in how we think about what if the, what if we get the whole American public to be 10% more skeptical of billionaire charity. And we could diminish the effect of billionaire charity lobbying by 10% and we could get a couple more rules passed, what are the first three to five, you know, policy changes that we could

make or cognitive changes we could make about how we think about these things, right? That would improve the system. Like, because that's our duty as the public, right? It's not just, we can't just hope that the people at the whatever foundation are going to, you know, prevail upon their better angels to do something better. We, we, it's us, the public that needs to say, nah, fuck you. We're going to regulate you. We're going to take some of the money back.

So how could we do that most effectively? I think the number, so we've covered a lot of things you can do from a mindset position. So I don't, I won't go into those. But I think the number one policy change, which I think would be fairly uncontroversial, is that you do not get a tax benefit until a frontline organization receives the money. Yep. That's it. Yep.

So it would disincentivize foundations existing at all. But let's say you have a foundation and you decide, I want to put the money in a way station before I move it because it's just this extraordinary amount of money and I don't know what to do with all of it. So I want to put it somewhere. Same with donor advised funds. You can take the same approach. I want to put it in this nonprofit. And you have a choice when you put it in the nonprofit and set up your own bank account there. You can have a choice. Like I'm going to put it in and I'm going to wait a year and I'm just going to go ahead and just give it to the community foundation. They can just have it. I'll take off my advisory. requirement, then you get your tax cut or your tax benefit. Similarly, you could put the money in a foundation as a way station. You could build your team. They could start operating. They could start studying. What do they want to do? You could do all the things that a normal foundation does. And when the money hits the ground, then you get your tax benefit. And I think if that were truly the case and if wealthy people still wanted to use that instrument, they would move it a lot faster.

it would go a lot faster. The accountants and the investment guys, well, there wouldn't be any investment guys. They wouldn't last long. But the accountant guys, estate planners, those that are focused on the tax side would be saying, how quickly can your team get that money moving? Because you're not getting any benefit until that goes. And that's the pressure to be on. The pressure would go from how do we live forever to how do we get this out.

And to me, that's the number one policy move we could make. And I just don't know what's the counter. argument to it. There would be one. They would try, but it falls completely in line with what this entire endeavor is supposed to be about. And I think you'd get an awful. I mean, we've done some polling. We've done some polling. We did it through one of the Harris poll, one of the regular national pollsters. And they, we found that a lot of Americans are skeptical of this stuff, especially when they find out that when someone makes a contribution to a foundation, they only have to give away 5% of it. They're like, really? So you see our numbers show that Americans would,

if this became a topic, and there's a lot of competition for topics in America these days, but if this became one of them, that policy, I think would be very, very popular. I think it would as well. And I think there's a lot of room, because look, is there some validity to the argument that money has power if you don't give the powerful some tax advantaged vehicle in some way

to divert money, they are just going to they'll be so successful at avoiding taxes you can't possibly tax it so you need to give them an incentive to spend it to the public good. Right. Sadly, that's true. Do I love this argument? No.

Is there, because I would like us to believe we actually can, you know, reign in the powerful and that we should try. But at the same time, do we concede to reality that the powerful have power, right? Yes, to some degree. That being the case, there is still so much that we could do. Like you say, that's a pretty simple tweak that a lot of people in your industry wouldn't like that they might defend against. Right.

But like the public goes, well, yeah, sure. We'll still have foundations. Yep. But the money will be spent more quickly and much better. And like, so you know what we need is. a family foundation that studies how to get this policy put in place and then donates it to organizations that are trying to get the policy put. And then maybe in 10,000 years, we'll have the job done. Right. Yeah. That's why I'm saying. I do think the mindset shift is faster than the

policy, to your point. Yes. But there are. I mean, there are, there are some of us out there that are investing in these changes. Yeah. And there's an organization that I just can't get enough of. I read everything they put out called the Institute for Policy Studies. And these guys are constantly putting out data on where money is going out of philanthropy and the broader argument about, you know, the shifts from working class to 1% wealth. And they have the, they could. They have some power. They have, they are an organization that I think if they had, you know, a few extra million a year could potentially get a policy through.

but it's just not top of mind for people. Like I said, when we're up to $17, $18, $20 trillion sitting in these accounts, people are going to start paying attention then. For now, it's kind of a mysterious world. And even for me, working in it all these years, I got to tell you, when I put this book together, I learned a ton about my sector that I hadn't even noticed. And just sitting there and doing the work of saying like,

okay, I do this every day. does that make sense as I'm writing this book? Because the book has a lot about our experience at Stubbsky. Going back over all the changes we made and thinking back to like what it took just psychologically to think, hey, why are we doing that? It's just not the day-to-day behavior of anyone out there in anything you do. You don't like to say, I don't think people question what they do all that often. And they don't question, I mean, if there's one thing positive, I can say about our presidency currently is that I don't love that they have attacked some of the norms that have protected our country over the years, but they at least are questioning norms. And I think it's a good practice to be in on occasion. I'd rather be someone I agree with doing that, but they do it. And I think that's healthy to some degree that you need to challenge yourself. And this sector more than any, which is just like I said from the start is unaccountable. No one's putting pressure on it. No one pays attention. This is real.

money, real money. And we need to take much greater, much greater reflection on how we're going about not moving this money. And that is the part that, you know, I will be criticized. The way I'm criticized for this book is silence. You know, like my peers, the bigger peers out there, when they talk to me, they tell me, oh, this book doesn't apply to us. And when they, when they, most of the time they don't even want to acknowledge it. They just don't want to acknowledge. And that to me is just the very unhealthy side of our sector. Yeah.

And I think that, look, we all exist within systems, right? We all do things, and I'm included in that, we all, like, exist within and perpetuate systems that do things that are less than ideal or create harms that we don't want to have happen. At the end of the day, all of us can do is be self-critical. Yep. and say, am I really doing the best thing? And is there an improvement I can make?

And plenty of people at plenty of organizations do this. And it is the only way for an organization to get a little bit better. And I'm happy that you're out there encouraging at least some incremental change in this area. I mean, it's been really a delight talking to you, Glenn. Likewise, Adam. The name of the book, once again, is Control Why Big Giving Falls Short. Of course, you can get a copy of the book at our special. or Bookshop. Faxleypod.com slash books. Where else can people find it or you or your work, Glenn?

Well, we've got a podcast as well that we've had for a while. On the topic we just came out of called Break Fake Rules. It's been really popular in the philanthropy sector and very popular amongst nonprofits. And then I have a newsletter that comes out every week called Who Gives, which we're intending to really grow over the next year. So if you haven't heard of it yet, you might because we have some really strong prospects for growing this substack account. So those are the places where you find me. I will be leaving this job around 20, 29. So, you know, if you like what you hear, you like what you read, let me know now because who knows? I might just, I might head to Montana by a cabin and go totally thorough. That's incredible. Warren Buffett, take a note. Glenn, thank you so much for being

here. I really appreciate it. I very much enjoyed it, Adam. What a great show. Thanks so much. Well, thank you again to Glenn Gallage for coming on the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. If you want to pick up a copy of his book control, once again, that URL, factuallypod.com. Every book you buy there supports not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you'd like to support this show directly, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show, ad free. You can join our online community where we have book clubs, a discord, a lot of other fun features

where you can talk to other people who are as smart and interested in our fucked up world as you are. Also, if you put in 15 bucks a month, I'll read your name in the damn credits of the show. This week I want to thank Virginia Beckenbauer, Rebecca Champa, Christina Quaranta, Sarrar, Troy Stifler, and fact, ridden I bragamoff.

Thank you so much for your support. Once again, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. I want to thank my producers, Tony Wilson, and Sam Routman and my engineer, Sam Rogic. Everybody here at Headgun for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum podcast.

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