The Brief

• A California judge banned the recognizable Kars4Kids jingle from state airwaves after ruling that the charity's 30-year-old car-donation advertisement misled donors through the deliberate omission of its true mission.
• An Orange County civil trial revealed that over 60% of Kars4Kids' revenue funds Oorah, a New Jersey-based Jewish outreach nonprofit that finances gap-year trips to Israel, adult matchmaking, and an Israeli building purchase.
• Kars4Kids must pull noncompliant commercials within 30 days or add "an express, audible disclosure" detailing its religious affiliation, funding destinations, and the actual age range of its beneficiaries.

Timeline:

• 2009: Pennsylvania and Oregon fine Kars4Kids for deceptive advertising practices that obscured its ties to Orthodox Jewish outreach.
• 2017: A Minnesota attorney general investigation reveals that less than 1% of state-donated funds benefited local children.
• 2021: California resident Bruce Puterbaugh files a lawsuit against the charity after learning his car donation did not support local, underprivileged children.
• 2022: Oorah spends $16.5 million on an Israeli building purchase and $437,000 on Middle East outreach.
• May 8, 2026: Judge Gassia Apkarian issues the permanent injunction against the noncompliant Kars4Kids jingle in California.
• June 2026 (30 days post-ruling): Deadline for Kars4Kids to remove noncompliant advertisements from California TV and radio airwaves.

https://www.foxla.com/news/california-bans-kars4kids-jingle

From the Need to Know email newsletter from the Chronicle of Philanthropy (this is a FREE newsletter - no charge for subscribing to it. SO worth it). It's by Alex Daniels, a senior editor at the Chron. Most links below are to the Chron web site and, if you don't subscribe, won't not be accessible unless you haven't reached your limit of free articles for the month:

Backlash to Big DAFs' Decision to Cut Off SPLC

Following the federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, major donor-advised fund sponsors capitulated to the demands of the Trump administration, say community foundation and philanthropy leaders.  

On Thursday, 60 leaders and institutions signed a letter decrying the indictment of the civil rights group and chastising the three DAF sponsors, which are associated with Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard, for freezing donations to the embattled nonprofit.  

The pushback is a show of resolve against perceived overreach by the Trump administration and a signal that the signers won’t be intimidated like “financial institutions and other intermediaries critical to charitable work,” as the letter states.  

The episode lays bare a crucial aspect often overlooked about donor-advised funds. When donors give to an account, they may advise where that money ultimately goes, but the sponsoring organization legally controls it. DAFs have attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in recent years and are viewed as a simple way to direct tax-deductible donations to charities. But that premise — that donors can always direct the funds as they see fit – is not guaranteed.   The role of adviser that account holders play is being tested in a court case involving a DAF sponsor that is accused of cutting off access to an account, as my colleague Rasheeda Childress recently reported. Although the circumstances are different, this dust-up over SPLC donations also raises questions about whether DAF sponsors will respect the wishes of donors.  

The SPLC controversy undermines a sacrosanct philanthropic principle, honoring donor intent, a group of community foundation leaders told me this week.   Several of them, including Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, said the pause on donations is not a neutral “wait and see” maneuver. He noted that the Trump administration has aggressively used the Department of Justice to attack political foes. The commercial DAFs’ move to block grants before a legal verdict is reached is essentially siding with the administration, Blackwell said.  

“We need to hold firm and hold consistent to the notion of innocence until proven guilty,” Blackwell said. The three commercially affiliated donor-advised funds, which declined interview requests, may have been looking out for donors by pausing any grants to the SPLC, said Lawson Bader, president of DonorsTrust, a conservative donor-advised fund sponsor. Donors, he said, may want their charitable dollars to go toward the organization’s mission rather than defending a lawsuit.  

Still, Bader said, a wiser move would be to inform donors of the situation, giving them the option to pause gifts to the SPLC.  

Blackwell and other progressive nonprofit leaders posted statements holding the commercial funds to account and inviting people to donate directly to the SPLC or transfer DAFs to their organizations. Brooklyn Org announced that any transfers from a commercially affiliated account would trigger a $718 grant to a Brooklyn nonprofit from its general account.

At least one major institution has decided to move its funds elsewhere. Riverside Church in New York, which was funded primarily by the Rockefeller family, this week moved $12.5 million out of Vanguard-managed funds. The church, which divested from fossil fuel holdings nearly a decade ago, urged other faith-based institutions to review their investment portfolios and platforms to consider whether they align with their commitments to civil rights, democracy, and free speech.  

“Riverside’s position is that this is bigger than one grant recipient: It raises questions about donor intent, intermediary control, and what happens when a charitable platform blocks support before a case is resolved,” the church said in a statement.

May 9 is the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, the nation’s largest one-day annual collection drive for food banks. Leave a bag of non-perishable food — think tuna, peanut butter or canned beans — by your mailbox on Saturday. Food banks like EFAA depend on the food from this drive.