To donate to charity, pick an organization whose work you can describe in one sentence, confirm it is a registered 501(c)(3), decide how much and in what form, give through the organization’s own donate page or by check, and keep the receipt. That is the whole process. The detail underneath it is where nearly all the mistakes happen.
Decide What You Want the Money to Do
Most people start with an organization and work backwards. It is easier to start with the outcome. Do you want to move money to a place, a problem, or a person’s memory? Those lead to different answers, and knowing which one you are doing keeps you from giving to whatever asks you most persistently.
Two decisions follow quickly. The first is local or national. A national organization has scale, professional staff and published research behind it. A local one puts the money somewhere you can drive to and check on, and your gift is a larger share of a smaller budget. Neither is better; they answer different questions.
The second is restricted or unrestricted. Restricting a gift to a specific program feels responsible, and sometimes it is essential. But unrestricted money is the hardest kind for a nonprofit to raise and the most useful kind to receive, because it pays for the rent, the software and the person who answers the phone. If you trust an organization enough to give it money, consider trusting it enough to decide where the money goes.
It is also usually better to give more to fewer organizations. Ten small gifts spread across ten charities generate ten sets of thank-you letters, ten mailing-list entries and ten sets of processing fees, and change very little anywhere.
Check the Organization Before You Give
Checking a charity takes about ten minutes and almost nobody does it. Here is the short version.
- Confirm the legal name and status. The IRS runs a free Tax Exempt Organization Search that tells you whether an organization is currently tax-exempt and whether contributions to it are deductible. Search the exact legal name, and note the EIN. Names that sit one word away from a famous charity are the oldest trick in charitable fraud.
- Read the Form 990. Most tax-exempt organizations file one every year and it is a public document. Part III describes what the organization actually did, in its own words, and the financial pages show what it spent. You can pull filings from the IRS, from Candid, or from ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
- Look for a rating, but do not require one. Charity Navigator, CharityWatch and the BBB Wise Giving Alliance assess larger nonprofits. Small local organizations usually fall below the threshold to be rated at all, which says nothing about their quality.
- Ask the organization directly. What would this gift pay for? What happens if you raise more than you need? Who decides? Anyone real will answer, and the answer tells you more than a ratio does.
- Watch for the pressure signals. A deadline you cannot verify, no street address, a phone solicitation that will not send you anything in writing, or a donate link arriving in an unsolicited message. Type the organization’s address into your browser yourself rather than following a link somebody sent you.
The Ways You Can Actually Give
Money is the obvious route and not the only one. What suits you depends on what you hold and how much administration you are willing to do.
| How you give | What it suits | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Card payment on the charity’s own site | Almost any gift, any size | Give on the organization’s own domain, not through a forwarded link |
| Check by mail | Larger gifts, and organizations that would rather avoid card fees | Write the payee exactly as the organization asks, and use the memo line for a specific fund |
| A recurring gift | Steady support for ongoing programs | Set a yearly review date so it does not outlive your interest |
| Employer matching gift | Doubling a gift you were making anyway | Many employers match and most employees never claim it; ask your HR team |
| Appreciated stock or securities | Long-held investments that have gained value | Transfer the shares rather than selling them first; the charity must be set up to receive them |
| A distribution from a retirement account | Donors over the qualifying age with an IRA | It has to go directly from the account to the charity |
| A donor-advised fund | Giving to many organizations from one pot | The gift is complete when it enters the fund, not when it leaves |
| A gift in a will or trust | Anything larger than you can give now | Name the organization by its exact legal name and its EIN |
| Goods and in-kind gifts | Equipment, supplies, professional services | Ask first; unwanted goods cost a charity money to dispose of |
| Time and skills | Anyone with more hours than money | Commit to a schedule you can keep, which is worth more than a big one you cannot |
Two of those rows deserve a sentence rather than a paragraph here, because they have their own guides. If you give regularly to several causes and want one place to run it all from, read the comparison of a donor-advised fund against giving directly. If the gift you have in mind is large, or is meant to outlive you, that is planned giving, and charitable gift planning covers how those arrangements are built.
The frequency question deserves its own thought too. A monthly gift and a single larger gift do different work for the organization receiving them, and most donors are better off doing some of both. If you are weighing the two, monthly donation vs one-time gift works through how to choose.
What Happens After You Give
Keep a bank or card record of every charitable gift you make. For any single gift of $250 or more, the IRS also expects a contemporaneous written acknowledgment from the charity, stating the amount and whether you received anything in return. Ask for it if it does not arrive; a real organization sends one without being chased.
Whether any of that reduces your tax bill is a separate question, and it depends on whether you itemize rather than on how generous you were. How donating to charity affects your taxes walks through it. Check with your own tax advisor before you count on a deduction.
Expect to be contacted. A first gift usually puts you on a mailing list, and one gift often produces several appeals. You can control this: ask to be contacted once a year, ask for email only, and ask that your details are not shared or exchanged with other organizations. Most charities will honor all three, and a charity that will not is telling you something.
You can also give anonymously at almost any organization, though somebody in the finance office still has to know who you are for the receipt. If you want your name off the annual report and out of the newsletter, say so at the time of the gift rather than afterwards.
The Mistakes People Make
- Giving to a name they half-remember rather than the organization they meant.
- Clicking a donate link inside an unsolicited email or text instead of going to the site directly.
- Restricting a gift so tightly that nobody can spend it without breaking the restriction.
- Dropping off goods a charity never asked for, and leaving it with the disposal cost.
- Missing an employer match worth as much as the gift itself.
- Assuming a gift is deductible, and finding out at filing time that the standard deduction made it irrelevant.
- Giving once, meaning to do it again, and never getting round to it. A repeating gift you barely notice beats a generous one you keep postponing.
Giving to a Nonprofit Fund in Miami County
If the local option is the one you want, here is what it looks like in practice at one community foundation. The Miami County Community Foundation has been a 501(c)(3) since November 2007 and works from Paola, Kansas. It holds charitable funds for individuals, families, businesses and churches, and pays the money out to the causes those funds were set up for.
There are two ways to give to a fund. The first is the Donate Now button on the Foundation’s site, which opens a drop-down of the funds that can take money online; giving runs through PayPal or a debit or credit card. The second is a check made payable to the Miami County Community Foundation, with the fund name written in the memo line, mailed to 702 Baptiste Dr, Paola, KS 66071. The memo line is what routes the money, so the fund name has to be on it.
What the funds do is specific rather than general. Several are named scholarships attached to particular high schools in Paola, Osawatomie, Louisburg and Prairie View, with awards that are mostly between $500 and $3,000. Others pay for suicide-prevention work in schools across Miami and Linn counties. One, the Avelyn SonShine Journey, gives away children’s bibles to churches and youth groups and does not award money at all. The list of funds tells you which is which.
Scholarship money leaves by a route that surprises most donors: students apply through their own high-school counselor, not through the Foundation. “On every one of the scholarships, they apply through their high school with their counselors,” says Executive Director Tammy Booe. “They don’t come directly to our website.” If you are funding a scholarship, that is the pipeline your money travels down.
You can also start a fund rather than give to one. An endowed fund begins at $10,000 and stays permanently invested, with only the earnings spent under a 5% spending policy. An expendable fund begins at $1,000 and can be spent down to nothing. Either takes seven to ten business days to set up, and the Foundation charges a 2% fee, made up of a 1% administrative fee and a 1% community support fee. The ways to give page sets out all seven routes the Foundation publishes, from a straight cash gift to a bequest.
Your Next Step
Pick one organization, spend ten minutes checking it, decide on an amount you will not resent, and give it this week. Giving well is mostly a matter of doing it deliberately rather than reactively, and the deliberate version takes less time than most people expect.
If that organization is going to be a Miami County cause, the funds page will tell you what already exists and what each one supports, and a check with the right name in the memo line will get there.
