Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect that Oklahoma state lawmakers introduced the Safeguarding Endowment Gifts Act in the Oklahoma Senate in 2025. On October 7, 2026, Philanthropy Roundtable’s Joanne Florino will testify at the Oklahoma Senate Joint Committee on Judiciary’s hearing that is exploring this topic further.
A number of years ago, an Oklahoma man donated $500,000 to a hospital, and the hospital agreed to name part of its women’s care center after his mother. When the hospital later refused to uphold its end of the bargain, he sued and won. A jury ordered the hospital to return the $500,000 and pay another $500,000 in punitive damages.
This is not a typical story at all. Donor intent violations rarely end up in court, because in most states, donors do not have legal standing to go to court. Sometimes, however, a judge will make an exception. In this case, the donor’s name was Garth Brooks. Yours probably isn’t as well known, but that shouldn’t matter. All donors should have the expectation that charities will honor written gift agreements and have access to a legal remedy when they don’t.
Former Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly has looked into this issue extensively for Philanthropy Roundtable in a newly published report, “The Safeguarding Endowment Gifts Act: The Tao of Enforcing Donor Intent.” He highlighted 22 cases from around the country from just the past 10 years that show how complicated this issue is and how difficult it can be to enforce donor intent.
Every state is different. Usually, only the attorney general, and not the individual donor, has the legal standing to challenge charities on donor intent violations. In Oklahoma, that job falls to the attorney general’s Charity Enforcement Unit, which reviews complaints, investigates and decides whether to take legal action. That’s not always the attorney general’s top priority, but you can bet it’s a top priority for the individual donor whose gift agreement was violated. That individual probably won’t want to donate to charity again if they can’t even have their day in court. Because of that, finding a better way to resolve donor intent violations is important to both donors and charities.
Oklahoma has already seen what happens when donors have no seat at the table. In 2018, OETA, the state’s public television network, and the foundation that had raised tens of millions of dollars on its behalf went to court over who controlled that money. The people who wrote the checks were not parties to the case, and some major donors withheld their support while it played out. The dispute ended in 2019 when the foundation dissolved and more than $40 million in donor-funded assets went to a new nonprofit created by the network. The donors were bystanders to a fight over their own generosity.
Philanthropy Roundtable identified this problem years ago when it developed and began promoting the Safeguarding Endowment Gifts Act (SEGA). It provides a legal pathway for donors to address donor intent violations in a way that mutually benefits the donor and the charity in question. It gives judges plenty of flexibility on how to resolve these disputes, and it strongly encourages compromise.
Ideally, the charity will agree to restore and spend the gift in a way that matches the donor’s original intent as closely as possible. Under no circumstances can the donor simply recover their gift and go home. Kelly’s report explains why SEGA is the best solution to the problem of how to balance donor intent with the realities of tax law and the legal structure surrounding charitable organizations.
So far, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky and Montana have adopted a version of the legislation. In 2025, Oklahoma state lawmakers Senator Christie Gillespie and Representative Toni Hasenbeck introduced Philanthropy Roundtable’s model legislation. Lawmakers will be studying the issue closely during an interim committee hearing this fall to determine the best path forward. Hopefully, that path leads to a future where anyone who gives to charity has a reasonable expectation that their written gift agreement will be honored – even if their name isn’t Garth Brooks.
