Financial institutions now require charities to hand over personal information about their employees before they'll release bequests from deceased donors. The banks want to know who works there. They want documentation. They want to verify identities before cutting a check that someone already died to authorize.
This is grief compliance theater.
A person spends their entire life accumulating wealth. They decide in their final act of agency to give it to a nonprofit. They die. The will goes through probate. Everyone agrees the charity gets the money. But Wells Fargo needs Karen from donor relations to provide her Social Security number first because terrorism or money laundering or some risk management PowerPoint from 2019.
The deceased can't money-launder. They're dead. The charity isn't a shell company. It has a website with stock photos of diverse hands holding seedlings. The financial institution is just making everyone's life harder because that's what financial institutions do when they're not charging you $35 for insufficient funds.
Nonprofits are pushing back. They're saying this is invasive and unnecessary and slows down their operations. The banks are saying it's policy. Policy is the word corporations use when they mean "we don't care and you can't make us."
Imagine dying and thinking you did something good. You left money to a charity. You're helping. Then your final gift sits in escrow for six months because JPMorgan Chase needs a notarized copy of someone's driver's license and a utility bill and maybe a blood sample. Your last wish is being processed by the same people who bought Bear Stearns for $2 a share.
The banks will eventually release the funds. They always do. But not before extracting maximum friction and making everyone involved wish they'd just stuck the cash in a mattress and set the mattress on fire.
At least fire doesn't require two forms of ID.
Photo by Youssef Mubarak on Unsplash
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