Charity questions

[Stormy Kromer]

I have no experience with DAF.

I do know that donations that exceed a certain dollar amount on any one day require documentation from the recipient to be considered for tax deduction purposes. Cancelled checks were not sufficient proof, the form has to state that you received nothing of value for your contribution. It used to be $250 or so, I'll be looking into it again come tax time when my CPA sends out the forms asking for the documents we need to provide.

 

[Original Wally]

we have the option to be between 0%-100% anonymous.

How do you become, say, 52% anonymous? Just curious.

 

[Bruno]

I could make a Roth contribution this year for 2025, but I'm not sure how that's related to charity.

Was only hoping it would be the same as how a Roth works. I am now 73 this year so not sure all teh ins and outs of the RMD and how they work. Thanks for the reply!!

 

[Midpack]

We have 4 favorite charities, we give to roughly equally. I don't see a need to give anonymously, I need tax documentation anyway so I can't withhold my name that I know of? No one else knows.

As for being hounded, none of our 4 are that bad, though 1 got so out of hand years ago that we quit giving. Told them that was our reason. When we started giving to them again, they must have noted my complaint as they NEVER hound us now.

Now that I am using QCDs exclusively for large donations, I give in Jan, so I don't have to think about it the rest of the year. Of course small donations come up during the year, we just give from taxable for those.

I will say our donations have gotten larger now that we can use QCDs, where it was all taxable funds before. It feels like making donations that don't cost anything, since we want our tIRAs to slowly decrease - QCDs just help that along.

 

[Lewis Clark]

You don't need them until the IRS asks for them. Then you generally have about 20 days to round them up. If the amounts are small, say under $5K you probably will never hear from the IRS

If I am not claiming a tax deduction for a particular donation, the IRS will never ask me for a receipt to prove it.

 

[jebmke]

If I am not claiming a tax deduction for a particular donation, the IRS will never ask me for a receipt to prove it.

That is very true. I have many taxaide clients who do not itemize yet donate a significant portion of their income -- especially tithes.

 

[Aerides]

I know we all know how to toss junk mail, but I'd prefer charities send less of it. It's not free, and it feels wasteful a lot of the time.

So, in the OP's shoes, if he wants to avoid the hounding, I'd make that clear with the donation. "This gift comes with a request that you not send follow ups, or "free" tchotchkes, or other mailings. If you can comply with this request, I may be able to consider future donations, but if you cannot, then I will not."

And then if they fail, next year, move on to the next one on the list.

 

[Sunset]

How do you become, say, 52% anonymous? Just curious.

Make 52% of donations anonymous and 48% ask for a donation receipt.

 

[Sunset]

That is very true. I have many taxaide clients who do not itemize yet donate a significant portion of their income -- especially tithes.

Good news for them is in 2026, I believe a person can claim $1,000 ($2,000 for couple) without receipts if they don't itemize.

 

[pb4uski]

I've had some charities nag me for more money to an extent that i suspect that they didn't end up with much from my donation after the costs of nagging me.

In fact one year, back when we mailed checks for donations each December, I included with the checks a note asking them to not solicit me but that a single reminder in November would be ok but more than that would risk them not receiving any future donations. Some charities respeced that and others didn't and those that didn't got crossed off the list.

For those who make significant donations to public radio, a fun way to do it is to become one of the matching donors when they do a fund drive. My uncle is a long-time regular listener to classic public radio so I encouraged him to do this last year with a QCD and he got a kick out of it. He preferred to remain anonymous so they referred to him on air as "a long-time listener from {his town]".

 

[Lewis Clark]

For those who make significant donations to public radio, a fun way to do it is to become one of the matching donors when they do a fund drive. My uncle is a long-time regular listener to classic public radio so I encouraged him to do this last year with a QCD and he got a kick out of it. He preferred to remain anonymous so they referred to him on air as "a long-time listener from {his town]".

I know of other charities that have donors offer to match other donations. It's not only public radio stations.

It's a great idea for those who are so inclined!

 

[pacergal]

1-- I Give to three charities equally
2,3--No
4--Don't think you can, unless anonymous donation done
5--Thank you for supporting your chosen charities! Giving back was a strong tenet from my folks.

 

[fognostic]

We spread it around between a few favorites, but not so widely as to dilute the donations below impactful amounts.

We do not give anonymously. Most causes we are passionate about don't spam us with junk mail or e-mail, or have good opt-out options. I would like to think charities interested in continued support would honor such requests, but recognize that is not always the case.

We don't do anything different with large donations.

See above w.r.t. avoiding being hounded - "ask" is my best advice here. It's been my experience that secular charitable organizations tend not to hound aggressively. We've occasionally received personal hand written thank you notes from organization leaders, but that is not hounding, it is being gracious.

Not useful to most on this forum, but we learned over the years to give separate from MegaCorp matching gift programs - even ones that included our preferred charities - and instead file the match paperwork separately. We discoverd at one point that there was a whole lot of interest skimming going on somewhere in the chain from pay check deduction to actually transferring the gift to the charity many months later (in one case many months in current year plus more into the following year, which created a tax year ambiguity). So we took action to not play that game any more. This also avoided having to explain things like "yes, we really do mean for that much to go to that charity at one time" when some automatic check or other would flag such situations as problematic for anyone (everyone assumed) living paycheck to paycheck.

 

[Spock]

Re: junk mail/request for donations
When I was treasurer for a local homeless shelter, each receipt/thank you letter sent for a donation included a "please give more" at the bottom of the letter. The board asked about stopping that. We were told that in order to maintain our bulk mailing status we had to include a "gimme" request in each mailing.
It's been a long time... no idea if that rule was from USPS or with the company that managed the mailings (Blackbaud?). Probably the latter.

 

[pb4uski]

.... I'm not yet eligible for QCDs, don't want to involve a DAF...

4. How do you avoid getting hounded for subsequent donations?...

From what I'm reading here, it sounds like a DAF may be your best way to avoid being hounded for subsequent donations. Just know that contributions to a DAF do not qualify for the new $1,000 per taxpayer deduction for non-itemizers... only cash, check or credit card donations to only 501(c)(3) charities.

 

[TheWizard]

...For those who make significant donations to public radio, a fun way to do it is to become one of the matching donors when they do a fund drive. My uncle is a long-time regular listener to classic public radio so I encouraged him to do this last year with a QCD and he got a kick out of it. He preferred to remain anonymous so they referred to him on air as "a long-time listener from {his town]".

When I do a QCD from my Vanguard tIRA, the check has my name and maybe my address on it.
So I can't be truly anonymous.
I suppose I could request not to be identified by name in any published list of donors...

 

[Stormy Kromer]

A couple weeks before Christmas I was visiting our son's church a couple states away. The Pastor said he was taking a week to visit the shut ins and others in the community and help them out. I slipped him some cash on the way out and told him "use it as you see fit" Later he told me that he used it to buy groceries for 4 families over Christmas. No overhead, no tax deduction, no recognition. I'll keep doing this instead of sending checks to large charities.

 

[TheWizard]

A couple weeks before Christmas I was visiting our son's church a couple states away. The Pastor said he was taking a week to visit the shut ins and others in the community and help them out. I slipped him some cash on the way out and told him "use it as you see fit" Later he told me that he used it to buy groceries for 4 families over Christmas. No overhead, no tax deduction, no recognition. I'll keep doing this instead of sending checks to large charities.

I'm also not a big fan of most "large charities", especially the ones that advertise on TV.

But once you're old enough, giving a $1000 QCD check every few months might be a decent idea...

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I'm also not a big fan of most "large charities", especially the ones that advertise on TV.

But once you're old enough, giving a $1000 QCD check every few months might be a decent idea...

I'm not there yet. 13 years to go. When I am there I will figure out who to give it to and it is all going to feed local people. In the local charity's name so the recipients know who helped them.

I was an orphan and local charities helped me.

 

[rk911]

How do you become, say, 52% anonymous? Just curious.

LOL, The name we chose for our DAF is (Our first & Last Names) i.e, The Dick & Sally Jones Charitable Fund. When we issue a grant we can choose several options in the "From" field. Among them are:

100% anonymous;
Dick & Sally Jones;
The Dick & Sally Jones Charitable Fund;
The Dick & Sally Jones Charitable Fund and Dick & Sally Jones
Just our mailing address;
The Dick & Sally Jones Charitable Fund + our complete addess;

If we had chosen a name for our fund that didn't include our names we could be a lot more anonymous than we are. We usually use The Dick & Sally Jones Charitable Fund as the 'from' when we issue a grant. But we've been donating to our charities for many years before we established our DAF so there's little to be gained by being anonymous. We'd get the pleas for $ anyway.

 

[rk911]

That is very true. I have many taxaide clients who do not itemize yet donate a significant portion of their income -- especially tithes.

Good on them! We would contine to donate at or above our current levels regardless of the deductibility of our donations.

 

[pb4uski]

When I do a QCD from my Vanguard tIRA, the check has my name and maybe my address on it.
So I can't be truly anonymous.
I suppose I could request not to be identified by name in any published list of donors...

I never stated that QCDs were anonymous. While the public radio station the received his QCD knew his name, he just didn't want it broadcast on air.

 

[Koolau]

I donate "large" amounts to single charities sometimes and sometimes split the large amount among several charities. In most cases, the "large" donations go to charities that are operated by people I know personally - Heads/administrators/chief charity leaders that have been in my home and may have even stayed with me for several days. Thus I have no concern that they will sell my info to charity mailing lists.

I never send anonymously and I always seek to make the donation tax-deductible. YMMV

 

[audreyh1]

If you are granting to organizations through your DAF you don’t need any paperwork for your taxes. You already took care of that when you donated funds to your DAF. That’s why complete anonymity is possible.

 

[timbervest]

1. Spread it around.

2. All through a DAF either anonymously or just the name of the fund

3. Again make all donations to the DAF and then dole out the funds as I see fit in various amounts. Alot of my charities get an annual check

4. Once I started giving through the DAF with no identifiable address, the solicitations dropped off. A few are stubbornly persistent (for some reason ASPCA is doggedly regularly in their mailing )

5. DAF allows me to separate the tax implications from the giving act.