I don’t see how this is nefarious (in itself). The big challenge with donating money is trusting that it will get used “correctly”. Donating to organizations under control of people you know and trust is the easiest way to do this.
If there was some sort of slush-fund thing going on it would be a problem, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. The tax rate on gifts isn’t that high, and so you’d have to be doing really extreme fraud for it to me more profitable than a straight gift.
If there was some sort of slush-fund thing going on it would be a problem, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. The tax rate on gifts isn’t that high, and so you’d have to be doing really extreme fraud for it to me more profitable than a straight gift.