[M T]

BC, I do not believe that, say, Canady would be able to do $1M worth of charity work in her year.

However, I do believe that, in the past and into the future, Stanford athletes have done and will do charitable work (helping out kids groups typically, but also other things, esp. related to Pink Day or other charities).  That was probably done without specific payment, but also was probably voluntary.

Certainly, members of Stanford teams might talk to high schoolers about mental health issues, or help run workshops on the issue of intoxication and sexual abuse.  I would think they could be compensated for their participation.  That would be income to the athletes, but the organization paying it could reasonably say that their payment to the athletes was tax deductible.  That's not a fig leaf.

Do I think that any athletes at Stanford would find charities outside of Lifetime Cardinal Community Fund (presumably funded or managed by Lifetime Cardinal LLC) that would pay the same fees to the athlete as that fund would?  I doubt it.  If you pay $5,000 for each player-day of doing this, a player getting $500K to come to Stanford would have to work 100 days to cover it.

So I believe this arrangement could be done, but I believe it has significant risk of being abused by overpayment.  This in turn could wind up with charges of fraud and tax-evasion for the operators (possibly not the players) and possibly tax issues for donors.

But I'm not the guy giving $5M to such an organization.

[M T]

BC, I do not believe that, say, Canady would be able to do $1M worth of charity work in her year.

However, I do believe that, in the past and into the future, Stanford athletes have done and will do charitable work (helping out kids groups typically, but also other things, esp. related to Pink Day or other charities).  That was probably done without specific payment, but also was probably voluntary.

Certainly, members of Stanford teams might talk to high schoolers about mental health issues, or help run workshops on the issue of intoxication and sexual abuse.  I would think they could be compensated for their participation.  That would be income to the athletes, but the organization paying it could reasonably say that their payment to the athletes was tax deductible.  That's not a fig leaf.

Do I think that any athletes at Stanford would find charities outside of Lifetime Cardinal Community Fund (presumably funded or managed by Lifetime Cardinal LLC) that would pay the same fees to the athlete as that fund would?  I doubt it.  If you pay $5,000 for each player-day of doing this, a player getting $500K to come to Stanford would have to work 100 days to cover it.

So I believe this arrangement could be done, but I believe it has significant risk of being abused by overpayment.  This in turn could wind up with charges of fraud and tax-evasion for the operators (possibly not the players) and possibly tax issues for donors.

But I'm not the guy giving $5M to such an organization.