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Wondering how to streamline your current giving? Curious about the benefits of a donor advised fund at the Community Foundation? We’ve put together three easy tips designed to help boost your giving IQ and maximize your charitable impact.

Donate Appreciated Stock to Maximize Your Impact

Donating appreciated stock is one of the easiest ways to give to causes you care about. Plus, when you donate stock directly to a donor advised fund, you avoid the capital gains tax and can still deduct the full fair-market value of the asset.

You might think donating stock is a hassle requiring messy paperwork and endless phone calls. Not the case. We work with your broker or advisor and handle all the administrative work for you.

You’ll get the charitable tax deduction in the year you made the donation and, as a fund advisor, you can choose when you want to recommend distributions from the fund to nonprofits and causes you care about.

Utilize the “Bunching” Strategy

Many donors began to utilize a donor advised fund to take advantage of a smart-giving strategy called “bunching” following 2017 tax law changes that brought about higher standard deductions.

Together, these changes pushed many people to take the standard deduction, rather than itemizing their deductions — including their charitable donations — as they did in the past, essentially eliminating their 2018 charitable giving tax benefit.

“Bunching” enables you to group several years’ worth of charitable donations into one contribution, pushing your itemized deductions above the new higher standard deduction amount for that year. Then, over subsequent years, standard deductions can be taken.

Utilize Our Experience to Develop Your Giving Strategy

When we ask donors and financial advisors why they choose to work with the Community Foundation, they often say it’s because we offer technical expertise from a philanthropic planning standpoint — we hold more than 1,000 funds at more than $179 million in assets — and because our Community Investment division has a pulse on the needs and opportunities within our community.