I think Ray Madoff”s concerns stand up while considering the urgency of need, whether in areas of unemployment, food, health care or housing (for both the historic needy as well as the “newly needy”) now daily, for more American families who are experiencing hard times. She also rightly points to some of the structural advantages that accrue to donors and to the funds that they support, all defensibly and genuinely intended in design to be generous but not always playing out that way, such as the absence of a payout requirement for donor – advised funds under current law. One would – should – ask, with everything right and good about donor advised funds, why this particular exception?

The PACF is exactly the kind of intelligent organization to analyze both local and mega matters of our times, including the escalating pressures now descending upon private sources to support national scale human needs while government’s investment and function for these are reduced and deconstructed, often with the assent of the very people who support private charity.
With respect to “private and public” it cannot be an “either/ or”, it must be a “both.”

We transferred our agency’s investment funds from Securities America to PACF earlier this year because PACF speaks both non profit and human needs fluently.

Mark Lamar, MBA, LCSW
Executive Director
Family Guidance Center Corporation