Friday, September 8, 2017

Multiple Charitable Giving And Your Personal Finances

By Jose Kennedy


It's likely you've found yourself wanting to give to a particular organization but all of your resources were spoken for. Perhaps there are several causes you care about but can only afford a gift to one or two. Lately, disposable income is hard to come by and time for volunteering, even more so. If there were a way to engage in Multiple charitable Giving without the financial concern, you would probably do it.

A simple way to meet your charitable goals is to contribute to a Donor Advised Fund (DAF). A DAF is like a holding account created by a sponsoring charity that holds contributions from various donors and manages the charitable donations. The DAF will send you a quarterly statement of your contributions, along with a gift receipt for tax purposes. These contributions can then be distributed to qualifying charities at some point in the future.

Most people find that writing a check is the easiest route to go, as long as they have the money, and that makes giving money the most common means of donating. Particularly for people who are not especially interested in how the funds will be utilized, a financial donation saves time and effort that can form a part of other types of donations.

Once the gift is made, you can recommend how the donation is invested, through asset allocation strategies. You can name successors to the account, who then can manage the fund and make grant recommendations. This provides for a legacy of giving that can last for many generations.

You can support multiple charities by creating more than one page or changing the default charity in your profile. The average donation is about 4% of the price of purchase. The latest US Census Bureau reports that in 2008, e-commerce retail sales reached $142 billion (I suspect it's more by now). If those purchases were made through the retailers affiliated with Homepage Heroes, they would generate $5.68 billion for charity.

To sum it up, charitable donations can come in all forms. How people decide to donate are as varied as the sums and items they provide to others. It's not that important what the donation is or how it is given. The main thing is that donations do take place and that everyone takes part in them. Sharing with those who are in need is a key component of how we function as a society.

If the organization you want to donate to is not in the HH database, you can submit one using the form provided. There is a short approval process, during which site administrators must verify the organization's 501(c)3 status. Once their registration has been established, the charity will be added to the Charities page and is available for donation accrual.

More and more of us are using the internet to make charity donations. If you decide to do this, make sure that the website is a secure site. Look for "https" in the domain URL or a lock icon on your browser's status bar.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment