Boston Professor in Spotlight for Criticism of Foundations

Online magazine Ozy profiles Ray Madoff, the Boston College law professor who has become a controversial figure in the philanthropic world with her views on charitable foundations and donor-advised funds.

In public comments and published commentaries, Ms. Madoff, a former practicing tax lawyer who now teaches estate law, has questioned how foundations and endowments use their assets and zeroed in on tax benefits accrued by philanthropies and big donors on hundreds of millions of dollars in charity funds that can go unspent for years. She has called for legislation to require donor-advised funds to put more money more quickly into charitable causes. “It is important that we revisit the rules to see if they are producing the result we want,” she says.

Read a Chronicle of Philanthropy column by Ray Madoff on payout rules for donor-advised funds.