Interesting op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal:  Caveat Benefactor, by Arthur C. Brooks:

Few of us will give away billions of dollars, but many will have plenty of capacity to give in the coming years. Disposable income among American professionals is higher than it has ever been, and scholars estimate that more than $50 trillion will be bequeathed by mid-century. The confidence we have in the way our money is used will determine how much of it we will give away to charities, as opposed to spending it on our own consumption or leaving it to our heirs.

Charities can give us this confidence by doing what retail firms have done for decades: offering money-back guarantees. For donations that are spent outright by nonprofits, these guarantees should hold for a reasonable but limited time; for gifts that go towards endowments, there should be periodic donor review and an option to redirect the money toward other causes. Major donors can protect their own interests by stipulating that all their money be spent within a designated period after their deaths — a period short enough that their stated intent is not hopelessly obscured.

These are just two ideas; many other ways to protect donor intent — and thus unlock our generosity — are waiting to be found by enterprising charities, givers and financial intermediaries. America’s dynamic economy is delivering the potential for us to enter into the nation’s greatest age of philanthropy ever — not just because of mega-givers like Warren Buffett, but because the rest of us can share our growing prosperity as well. This will only happen if we find ways to make "donor beware" a thing of the past.