They take in money and give it to the athletes, not to charities. The athletes have to earn it by providing valued services to vetted charities, like going to fund raisers, filming tv spots for them, helping the charity in person for a while, or whatever. I assume FUND considers the value of those to balance out minus some admin costs, so the foundation is mostly "funding charitable efforts" and thus staying within the IRS 501(c)(3) deductable boundaries. From their description, they don't give money directly to charities. The athletes get to pick their charity, although I'm sure they are limits on which ones FUND will work with.

It sucks that this allows for the deduction of NIL payments, tho, because this group and donors aren't doing this for the charities really, but rather to pay players to come to ND, IMO.