Say it ain't so. Businessweek examines competition among donor advised funds, community foundations, and [post-Buffetmania] private foundations:

With so much at stake—literally, tens of billions of dollars flowing annually into private foundations, community foundations, and donor-advised funds—it should come as no surprise that competition for control of those dollars should exist. The competition among commercial donor-advised funds is quite pervasive and very public. Yet a more subtle form of competition exists among community foundations in their struggle for charitable assets.

Faced with the rapid growth of commercial donor-advised funds and the powerful appeal of family foundations, community foundations have been struggling to preserve their donor base and increase their assets. For answers, community foundations have turned to a cadre of consultants and advisers, retuned their marketing messages, and gone on the offensive. Often, the target of their antipathy is the private foundation, for reasons that are not altogether clear—except, perhaps, that private foundations continue to dwarf community foundations in both number and amount of total charitable assets, and thus represent the largest potential source of new donors and new assets.

The community foundation vs. donor advised fund discussion has been happening for quite awhile. The idea that private foundations may offer a third option for would-be philanthropists is no doubt a nightmarish scenario for your average community foundation CEO. I await the announcement of the opening of the Ford Foundation's development office.