Talk:DonorsTrust

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RfC: Does DonorsTrust "conceal" or "offer anonymity"?

The consensus is to use the alternate wording proposed by Marquardtika: "As a donor advised fund, Donors Trust is not legally required to disclose its donors, and most of its donors remain anonymous."
Cunard (talk) 05:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Looking at the section above; there's a debate about whether DonorsTrust "offers anonymity" to people, or basically "conceals identities".

Which one of these is the most neutral wording?

Current wording - "Like all donor-advised funds, Donors Trust can offer anonymity to its clients who do not wish to make their donations public"

Proposed wording - "Donors Trust conceals the identity of political donors who do not wish to make their donations public."

If you have an alternate wording proposal, let us know! 12:56, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposed wording - As nom; there are a slew of sources that call Donors Trust a "dark money" organization (see Fox, NYT, Yahoo News). Saying a dark money organization "offers anonymity" to people is clearly euphemistic. Dark money organizations exist to conceal peoples identities. NickCT (talk) 13:20, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Neither. To be clear, the organization both "offers anonymity" and "conceals identities." These are just two different ways to describe the same thing. The first is from the perspective of the organization making a pitch to prospective clients, the second is from the perspective of an inquisitive outsider. We should take neither perspective. There are a number of ways to say the same thing without taking sides. For instance, we could say that DT "keeps its client list secret" or "does not disclose its clients' identities." R2 (bleep) 17:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Alternate wording: "As a donor advised fund, Donors Trust is not legally required to disclose its donors, and most of its donors remain anonymous."^[1]^[2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marquardtika (talk • contribs) 17:35, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Neither - (randomly invited by a bot) This is a charged topic and neutrality here is challenging. Avoid words that ascribe motive and intent such as "conceal" or even "wish." I think Marquardtika has the right idea. Jojalozzo (talk) 14:15, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Kroll, Andy (February 5, 2013). "Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
^ Callahan, David (August 23, 2017). "Inside DonorsTrust: What This Mission-Driven DAF Offers Philanthropists on the Right". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved 2 April 2019.

Neither per others though nos sure about wording. Me-123567-Me (talk) 18:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
the Alternate Wording suggested just above by Marquardtika seems a good choice, tho just the insidephilanthropy link is sufficient--the MJ one has a polemical title. DGG ( talk ) 19:34, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Neither Alternate Wording suggested above by Marquardtika seems an appropriate neutral wording. Tchouppy (talk) 16:35, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Neither support Marquardtika's wording instead --DannyS712 (talk) 20:16, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Neither - (randomly invited by a bot) - I support the proposed wording by Marquardtika. If all Donor-advised funds do not disclose their donors, than it seems that this is being slightly redundant, (and to say "offer anonymity" would be inaccurate) though I support redundancy since it would help someone who isn't familiar with Donor-advised funds learn that this is one (standard?) feature of them. (I also liked the InsidePhilanthropy source as neutrally explaining that both liberals and conservatives use these types of funds.)---Avatar317 ^(talk) 22:39, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Threaded discussion

@Marquardtika and DGG: - So here's the problem I have with the "not legally required to" language. It makes it sound as though DT's hiding client's identities is incidental. Hiding its clients isn't incidental, it's DT's raison d'etre. Your wording is akin to saying "A ski mask doesn't have to reveal a bank robber's face. Usually a ski mask keeps robbers' faces hidden"........ That wording makes it sound as though the purpose of the mask is something other than concealment. NickCT (talk) 01:14, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DT is not the only such fund, and, while there are reasons for using such a fund other than anonymity, it is obvious that people who want to remain anonymous will use such a fund. We can make no explicit judgments on why they want to remain anonymous. The rest of the article gives enough information for readers to understand. NPOC means we don't draw conclusions. DGG ( talk ) 07:39, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG:- re "that people who want to remain anonymous will use such a fund" - Well that's sorta my point. While there are other funds that distribute money, you use this fund in particular if you're trying to remain anonymous. It's like off-shore versus regular banks. They both do roughly the same thing, but the reason for putting cash in one is often different than the reason for putting cash in the other.

I feel like the "not legally required to" wording doesn't make this clear. It's similar to saying, "As a happy coincidence, Nick didn't have to pay taxes on his lottery winnings b/c he chose to put the cash into a Cayman islands bank".

As you point out, we can't make "explicit judgements" about Nick's intent. At the same time, we probably shouldn't do anything to imply that avoiding taxes was not Nick's intent. NickCT (talk) 15:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(Summoned by bot) We ran into similar issues on the Panama Papers and related articles. We would up putting in a section on reasons someone might use an offshore account. I agree that "conceal" appears to make a judgement. I am not really sure how to avoid this without being overly euphemistic, because I agree with the happy accident argument above as well. I do not have time to dig into this but there are probably sources that go into the various reasons someone might use such a fund. Perhaps there could be a short industry overview section. Feel free to ping me on further discussion; I am interested even though currently not really available for serious editing Elinruby (talk) 18:10, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: - re "overly euphemistic" - Exactly. A lot of the proposed wordings are overly euphemistic. NickCT (talk) 01:07, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[1] Kroll, Andy (February 5, 2013). "Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2 April 2019.

[2] Callahan, David (August 23, 2017). "Inside DonorsTrust: What This Mission-Driven DAF Offers Philanthropists on the Right". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved 2 April 2019.

[1]

[2]