US-Philanthropen transferieren Hunderte Millionen nach Großbritannien, um Trumps Drohungen zu entgehen

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Really?… Are we really doing this?

Archive link is broken, so here:

>US philanthropists are moving hundreds of millions of dollars in charitable funds to UK structures as President Donald Trump’s attacks on non-profit groups stir wealthy donors into precautionary action.

>American donors have been setting up UK entities, or moving money to existing ones, in case the administration pursues those supporting liberal causes more intensively, seven philanthropy and tax advisers told the Financial Times.

>The US president has threatened to strip funding for non-governmental organisations and international bodies that work on diversity, equity and climate as part of his “war on woke”.

>One senior philanthropy adviser said they had spoken to a lawyer setting up a UK charity for a US foundation “to the value of about $200mn” and that they were engaged in the transfer of a similar amount on behalf of another US donor. Other advisers and lawyers reported doing the same for billionaire clients.

>The head of one of the largest US-based charities said such moves were “absolutely” happening among large non-profits.

>They said Britain had been chosen as a haven because of existing banking relationships, similar legal structures and the English language.

>Joe Crome, head of the American Donor Fund team at the Charities Aid Foundation, said this post-Trump movement of money was “quite an unprecedented occurrence and not something we had necessarily seen coming”.

>John Canady, chief executive of the National Philanthropic Trust UK, also said the shifting of money from US to UK charitable structures was “unprecedented”.

>Crome said the American Donor Fund, which administers donations for dual US-UK taxpayers, had grown from £38.5mn in the 2015-16 tax year to nearly £140mn in 2024-25.

>Donations increased by £22.6mn in the two years to 2022-23 but by £31.4mn in the two years to April 2025, showing an increased rate of giving. Trump’s second presidency began in January 2025.

>As well as opening new structures, philanthropists were creating sibling or subsidiary bodies for their existing US charities, lawyers said.

>While giving to UK charities was a long-term trend, moving money to overseas structures on this scale was a recent shift, said one lawyer.

>“Certainly before Trump we didn’t have people saying, ‘The position with the new administration is scary and therefore we’re thinking about this’ — that is obviously novel,” they added.

>US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent recently told the FT that the US government would “follow the money” to see if any US non-profits had funded groups that it accused of supporting political violence.

>Earlier this month, billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Chris Hohn’s charitable foundation stopped giving grants to US-based non-governmental organisations.

>The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, which supports child health, development and solutions to climate change, said it no longer understood the “US policy environment” governing donations.

>Michael Lewis, an accountancy partner at EY, said: “There is a fear . . . that there could be US restrictions put on what funding charities might be able to do overseas, for instance.

>“Isn’t it better to get some of that funding moved out of the States into a foreign entity so it’s protected?”

>Britain’s legal system made cross-border giving more straightforward than in other jurisdictions, according to legal experts. James Maloney, a partner at Farrer & Co, said the UK had advantages such as a “robust regulatory environment”, which bred confidence.

>There have been fears in the charitable sector that Trump wants to revoke the tax-exempt status of some organisations, and the administration has tried this against Harvard University.

>“It does create a landscape that is uncertain and even perhaps chaotic, so organisations are having to manage, assess risk, figure out what is the best way to pursue their exempt purposes,” said Alana Petraske, a partner at Withers in New York.

>The Charity Commission, the UK regulator, said that since the start of the 2025-26 financial year, more than 200 US-based not-for-profit organisations had applied to register as charities. It did not have data for previous years.