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Basic Guaranteed Income Programs Are Not A Cure All

October 28, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

I have been reading and writing about Basic Guaranteed Income programs for quite a number of years. I was interested to see that Ireland decided to make their Basic Artist Income program permanent.

But I am also cautiously optimistic based on information I read back in August suggesting that basic guaranteed income programs aren’t as successful at achieving their goals as they may seem.

On The Argument, Kelsey Piper writes that solutions to poverty will require more than just giving people cash.

Multiple large, high-quality randomized studies are finding that guaranteed income transfers do not appear to produce sustained improvements in mental health, stress levels, physical health, child development outcomes or employment. Treated participants do work a little less, but shockingly, this doesn’t correspond with either lower stress levels or higher overall reported life satisfaction.

Source

This was the case regardless of how much people were getting. There have been separate studies conducted on programs where people received $333/month, $500/month, and $1000/month and the outcomes were similar.

In each case, compared to a control group that was getting between $20 and $50 a month, there was little change.

…$1,000 per month for three years, while the control group got $50 per month. They found that participants worked less — but nothing else improved. Not their health, not their sleep, not their jobs, not their education, and not even time spent with their children. They did experience a reduction in stress at the start of the study, but it quickly went away.

Source

To be clear, these studies found that people weren’t spending the extra money on “vice goods,” but rather on things they needed like food and clothing for their kids, paying down debt, etc. Different groups had different issues the money helped them with, and it definitely relieved some pressures but overall people’s lives and well-being didn’t improve.

Piper says that often journalists writing about these programs are cherry-picking those positive results from studies that are openly reporting the problems that have been observed. The promising news about these projects we often hear about are only part of the whole picture.

But the other side of this according to Piper, is that giving people money for very targeted purposes rather than a cure for all that ails a group do show promise. She cites programs giving cash to pregnant women to improve pregnancy outcomes and cash for parolees to prevent recidivism as among those currently under study.

So in that regard, the Irish program which was created to enable working artists to continue to be productive during Covid has been successful. The support has reportedly enabled artists to spend up to an additional 4 hours a week engaging in creative activities.

Advocacy, Finance, Fundraising, Government Relations, Working In The Arts

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More People In The Loop For Arts & Culture Than Business

October 27, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

So a little bit of good news out of Chicago. For a few years now I have been posting data showing how visitation at arts organizations compares to 2019 numbers. Some organization types are approaching those pre-Covid numbers, others are struggling to get there.

However, participation in arts and cultural activities has apparently driven pedestrian traffic in Chicago’s Loop in excess of pre-pandemic levels according to Chicago Loop Alliance as reported by WBEZ.

However, it’s arts and culture programming that’s “driving the bus at the moment,” Edwards said.

[…]

“If anybody hasn’t been Downtown lately, they really ought to come down and check it out, because it’s not what they hear on the national news,” he told the Sun-Times recently. “We have more pedestrian volumes than we had in the past. People are using the district more as a social center than they are using it as a business.”

Past CLA studies show that more people attend arts and culture events than the games of all of the city’s professional sports teams combined. Chicagoans are also attending cultural experiences — like Broadway shows and art exhibitions — at a cadence well above the national average, too.

Source

I was interested to read that people are increasingly using the district socially rather than for business. I imagine that is due to the reduction of people working from offices. It is really encouraging then to think that arts and cultural activities have increased pedestrian traffic beyond what they were at when workers were going to and from their offices.

One assumption I wanted to caution against is assuming attendance at arts and cultural institutions has increased above 2019 levels. Other than a quote from the Goodman Theater, there aren’t any claims to that effect. The definition they are using for arts and cultural activities may be broader than what readers may have in mind. There could be a number of Loop organizations who have not seen a return to 2019 levels.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

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Even The IRS Is Questioning Value of DAFs

October 21, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Last week Alan Harrison did an analysis on Donor Advised Funds (DAF), the relative value of the funds disbursed and some of the loopholes provided by DAFs.

One of the things he notes is that when someone puts money into a donor advised fund, they receive the tax deduction credit for that amount today, but unlike foundations there are no requirements to disburse any of the funds in any particular year.

I have discussed this and other issues in other posts I have made over the years.

Harrison notes that if you assume 3% inflation, by the end of 10 years $100 in a DAF is only worth $78.30 in buying power. On the other hand, the value of that tax deduction will be worth $134.39 in 2034 dollars due to that same inflation.

He also notes that while you can’t use DAF money to lobby, you can direct money to the lobbying arm of a non-profit which can spend up to $1,000.000/year on lobbying. So you are essentially getting a deduction to support lobbying. Generally, non-profit lobbying groups aren’t classified in such a way as to allow a tax deduction.

I have not double checked this suggestion that DAFs are permitted to give to non-profits without tax deductible status, but Harrison cites a piece on Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy includes this among other abuses of DAFs including:

…, “DAF to DAF transfers” offered a particularly rotten result:

“…although they were recorded as grants to charities, charitable organizations did not receive funds as a result of these transfers.”

Other abuses include:

“Private foundations are not allowed to lobby, whereas publicly supported entities can spend up to $1 million per year on lobbying without penalty. If funds flow relatedly from DAFs to a variety of recipients, the donors can greatly expand the $1 million threshold.”

“the funds can remain in the DAF indefinitely because there is no required timeframe for distributions.”

“counting private foundation to DAF distributions as qualifying distributions has become a way for private foundations to circumvent the 5% minimum distribution requirement”

“a small group of donors may have disproportional impacts on charitable giving — including the cause, timing, and amounts.”

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Apparently even the IRS has been having doubts about the value of DAFs according to a link to an IRS publication Harrison provides.

“The IRS is aware of a number of organizations that appeared to have abused the basic concepts underlying donor-advised funds. These organizations, promoted as donor-advised funds, appear to be established for the purpose of generating questionable charitable deductions, and providing impermissible economic benefits to donors and their families (including tax-sheltered investment income for the donors) and management fees for promoters.

impose section 4958 excise taxes on donors or managers of donor advised funds; and/or (d) deny or revoke the charity’s 501(c)(3) exemption.

Examinations of these arrangements may result in the following Service actions in appropriate cases:

disallow deductions for charitable contributions under Internal Revenue Code section 170 for payments to the fund;

impose section 4966 excise taxes on sponsoring organizations and managers of donor-advised funds;

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Finance, Fundraising, Government Relations

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Should There Be More Discussion of Mid & Long Range Collective Advocacy Plans?

October 20, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Oregon Arts Watch (h/t Artsjournal.com) provided some insight into a state advocacy group’s two year plan to propose a redesign of the state’s funding arts model in light of the national political environment.

Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon is soliciting feedback through six in-person and one online forums and a survey of arts and cultural organizations around the state.

What caught my attention was the discussion of their advocacy schedule for 2026 and 20227 based on feedback they had received from the state legislature. I had not really seen a state advocacy group provide as much detail and insight about mid-range plans advocacy plans to its members.

Granted, the states in which I have lived may not have had legislative sessions whose lengths varied so greatly on alternating years as Oregon’s does.

But often communication from advocacy groups is along the lines of needing members to call/write representatives in the next two weeks about a specific bill and to turn out on advocacy day at the legislature. The effort in Oregon outlines what they are doing now and through 2026 in preparation for 2027.

According to Hildick, legislative leaders have said the 2026 session, which is limited to a maximum of 35 days, will not have enough time to consider any comprehensive reforms or programs, no matter how justified. That means the results of The Big/Rethink will be presented in 2027, when the semi-annual “long sessions” can last up to 160 days.

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Advocacy, Fundraising, Government Relations

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