Donors Don't Know About the Non-Itemizer Deduction
Nonprofits are facing a challenge in effectively communicating new tax benefits and diverse giving options to their donors. There's a lack of awareness and adoption of strategies like promoting non-itemizer deductions and exploring options like corporate matching and planned giving, hindering fundraising efforts. This highlights a need for better outreach and education within the sector.
SOURCES (60)
“You can request statements at year end or any time from the charity for an accounting of your donations. You could ask them to send you the statement at a regular interval via email or mail. Ask if they have an online portal to view…”
“Ya some of it is in a DAF to do something like what you said. But I also prefer to not leave the practical good of generosity fully to the future for the sake of increasing the amount or decreasing the drain. I feel quite blessed and am happy to give back.”
“Correct. If you are in the 22% bracket, a $500 donation will save you $110 in direct taxes. If you have an ACA plan, with a subsidy, then lowering your AGI by $500 probably saves you another $50.”
“I've looked through several other posts and didn't come across this specific scenario. I work at a small nonprofit handling all of the finances. We use QB, classes, and fund accounting to track restricted donations, grants, and their associated expenses. The ED mentioned wanting to see the restricted donations/expenses on more than just the class report so that in a few years when looking back at the standard financial reports it doesn't look like the organization went significantly”
“Yes, it is called a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD). Here is a pretty good description of the requirements, benefits, and limitations, prepared by Schwab .”
“one suggestion of what not to do— send donors labels or other printed “gifts”…. seems so wasteful. I stopped donating to charities that do this. I hate cold calls and ignore snail mail, but I will respond to emails, particularly around giving Tuesday and holidays/ end of year.”
“I do think snail mail thank you cards - especially with hand written messages - are still welcome.”
“Xennial here, and all the channels are flooded: email, snail mail, text, direct messages, insta, FB, BlueSky, etc. IMHO we are all craving connection and less hype. I suggest asking key volunteers and donors to host dinner parties, pancake breakfasts. luncheons, etc for small groups. Invite one staffer to attend, and depending on the charity, one beneficiary. And do a short Q&A to explain where the charity is now, and what is needed going forward. Let everyone ask questions. Keep it frank an”
“When you make a donation and receive something in return, you are supposed to deduct the value of the gift. The remaining is what's eligible to deduct. If the gift is contingent on a donation, it is a transaction.”
“GenX with money to donate, and I text all day but never will I ever click on a link to donate.”
“Send a quarterly newsletter that lets them know what you have achieved on your mission and thank them for their contributions for making it happen. Tell them how you want to do more and would love their ongoing support to do so.”
“I’m so happy to see everyone commenting this ❤️ nonprofits that are still run by boomers need to see this too”
“THIS! Just commented this. I’ve given over $100,000 to a trash-pickup nonprofit over the last few years and I’m close with the Director. He can text me and say, hey we’re looking for some donations, any chance we can count on you? And I’ll say heck yeah I’ll email you and confirm the donation”
“I’m a millenial and frequent donor to nonprofits due to a family business which gives me distributions. I do not respond to snail mail asks for donations - every nonprofit needs to know that millennials don’t fuck with snail mail. I tell my contacts at the nonprofit to text me and schedule a call. I think many nonprofits worry that texting is too informal, but I actually ONLY respond to texts. A voicemail will make me murder someone . Just send an email to your donor, individually, and ask if th”
“If you want money, you have to call. And try to get recurring donations. Good luck.”
“Reach out to each donor 7 times a year. Only once (ok, maybe twice) ask for a donation. EVERY time tell them how their donation is making a difference. If you can tailor letters to your biggest donors literally say, "you gave X $$ last year/month. That allowed us to do YZ." If you call peorple, just say thank you. That's not threatening at all. They will wait for an ask, and when it doesn't come they will be surprised you took the time to thank them. They will remember that the”
“Think you could get a local celebrity to record the voicemail? Like a news anchor or beloved weatherman? Or you know the app Cameo, where celebrities make personalized recordings for money? Maybe there's a celebrity from your area on the app that you could hire to make the recording. Phone speakers have terrible fidelity, so an iPhone recording is probably fine.”
“I work at a small nonprofit. We’re raising money for a local project. It’s important. It matters. But we’re struggling to get the word out Emails get ignored. We send updates. We send reminders. Very few people open them. The ones who do sometimes forget to donate. Life gets busy. I get it… We don’t want to call donors too often. People are busy. Nobody likes a pushy charity. We don’t want to guilt people into giving. We want them to give because they care A volunteer suggested ringless voicemai”
“Tech world here, and 37 years old, and I positioned myself as a technical vendor for nonprofits. When reaching out to donors, what do you use?”
“As others have said, it's a deduction and so reduces your taxable income directly and your tax by your marginal rate. Give to charity because you want to give to charity, and then enjoy the deduction at tax time. Do not give to charity as a tax strategy. It is not one.”
“If you’re donating from an IRA and have your investment company, send a check directly to your charity, that is called a qualified charity deduction and will reduce your income. It doesn’t matter if you itemize.”
“I'm excited to use the above-the-line standard deduction-friendly charity incentive to give a bit more this year than I'd otherwise be able to...but I don't understand how much money it actually frees up for donations. If I donate $500 in cash to the Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good , does my tax bill go down by a straight $500, or only by the amountI would have otherwise been taxed on $500 of additional income? (I make enough that I do pay taxes.) submitted by /u/”
“Does anyone from the nonprofit side have thoughts on it? I tried looking on reddit and most posts seemed to be from applicants. My staff keeps sending it to me to apply, but I am ambivalent about it - I don't feel like we have a full year's worth of needs that two full time "Claude experts" with no relevant work experience will be able to address. I'm reasonably good with Claude myself, and we have a dedicated tech team with AI/Claude workflow specialists, too. Am I looking”
“You may want to check with your local universities to see if they have a program or department that offers consulting to nonprofits. We have at least one that matches professionals with nonprofits for specific projects. The volunteers are mostly retired or not working full time but I imagine they’d accept someone who works also.”
“What would make this easier to say yes to is a clear menu and almost no administrative work for the business. I would offer three options: a fixed donation tied to a specific school need, sponsorship of an item or activity, or a percentage of sales during a defined two-hour window with a reasonable cap. The PTO should provide the flyer, tracking code or redemption method, expected attendance, and one contact person. Afterward, send the result and a receipt promptly and thank the business publicl”
“I think if the funder can see that the org is struggling then even connecting them w the right people or offering some technical support can go a long way. but yeah there's a difference between supporting the non profit and trying to run it for them”
“Remember that for the 2026 tax year, non-itemizers can deduct up to $1,000 ($2,000 for joint filers) in cash donations. I saved all the email receipts together in a single PDF and generated a summary: # Order # Date & Time Amount ($) Payment Method Charity Name 1 1733 09/07/2026 8:25PM $10.00 Paze St. Jude Children's Research Hospital 2 1731 09/07/2026 8:24PM $10.00 Paze St. Jude Children's Research Hospital 3 1722 09/07/2026 8:23PM $10.00 Paze St. Jude Children's Research Hospit”
“I often find that there is an abundance of people who want to offer coaching, training, guidance, etc. From board connections to our own constituency with expertise to funders. We are under no shortage of wonderful insights and ideas. But what we need is often execution. We see the inefficiencies too. We don’t have the funds to hire technicians to do the work for us, and we’re so inundated with our work actually instituting our programs that we can’t do the extra work either. I often say that it”
“Getting it right often decides whether someone gives again, so I'm curious what other nonprofits' process looks like. What I've seen work well is keeping everything in one place, so giving history and follow up notes live together and it's easy to see at a glance who's been thanked, how, and when. That way nothing slips through when a gift comes in during a busy week. Is there a small touch you add that donors really seem to notice? submitted by /u/Zoe_At_Neon_One”
“$250k is the minimum for an individually managed fund at my local Community Foundation (and the same at a few other DAF sponsors I represent, one that I represent has a $1M minimum), so that’s obviously going to be very sponsor dependent.”
“A great side benefit is the ability to give anonymously. Love the charities but not the mailbox stuffing that can follow. I use Daffy as the DAF platform. It has all sorts of wizbang features to gameify giving which can be ignored. The core donation function is fine.”
“Is your church a 501c3? They should have information on their website about this, including their tax ID.”
“Same. I did the math, and estimated that half of the fund was coming from me and half from the government”
“Affiliation disclosure: I help run a newly formed pediatric cause nonprofit. I've anonymized this sample (removed all names, photos, dates, contact info, EIN) because I only want feedback on the design and messaging, not to promote anything. This is a 3-page prospectus we'd send to local businesses for auction donations and sponsorships. It's our first year, so I'd really value outside eyes before we finalize. Specific questions: Does page 1 establish trust quickly for a brand-ne”
“Last year (2025) was the final year to write off the entire amount of contributions to your DAF. This year its contributions above .05 of AGI.”
“Besides the upfront tax break, the best part of a DAF is that your donations, aka grants can be completely anonymous. No more junk mail from every org you have ever donated to…🙂”
“It really depends. You can only deduct charitable gifts that exceed 0.5% of your Adjusted Gross Income so that number sets the floor.”
“Yeah I like the flexibility of being able to contribute when it makes sense financially, while still having time to be thoughtful about which organizations I actually want to support.”
“There is no fees to set up the account, only an AUM fee. That is why I use it as a conduit. How much is a function of (1) desired annual giving, (2) tax situation, and (3) portfolio situation. I also tend to fund in December, and make gifts in December and January (next tax year) to clean out the account as much as possible.”
“Yes you can do that. Bunching is one strategy. Another is to donate stock with a low cost basis. You can use the fund to dole the money out to many charities... Over time if you like. You do have to donate a minimum to charities every year though (something like 5% of the value of the fund).”
“Yes I have one. Started it once I had millions but looking back on it I could have done it sooner. If you have a taxable brokerage and donate to multiple charities every year, it's a no brainer to use a DAF, because you can increase your cost basis while donating to charities and minimizing your paperwork.”
“Same here. We tend to fund it around the time we’re calculating taxes owed, and it’s so much nicer to then take your time issuing donations. Sometimes a charity that really appeals to you will pop up and it’s nice to be able to support them independently from the tax math. Also I think the total we donate has increased because of it. Win-win.”
“Yep! Schwab, because they let you make smaller donations than some. Best thing we ever did financially. It makes me much more generous since the money is already gone.”
“what conditions do charities find tolerable and what restrictions are considered an overstep? Different nonprofits have different perspectives. There is never one-size-fits-all. There are a few nonprofits that have enough staffing and expertise to be able to handle, "Hi, our group of employees want to volunteer on Saturday, from 9 to 1 p.m., doing something really physical!" Most can't. Also, as the article says, "saying no risks the funding relationship." So nonprofits g”
“Good to know this, I will also donate via Dominos to St. Jude, good to donate for the needed as well. Do you know if I could do multiple of these transactions on a single day at Dominos to St. Jude's or are there any restrictions per day? Since I have about 13 cards in total that I could this for, I can try multiple times on different cards.”
“This one's actually on the realistic list, because the data already supports it. Every profile already shows which organizations gave and how much, so flipping it around (one org, every politician they gave to, individually and total) is the same data from the other side. Same for industries. One honest pushback though: I won't frame it as "owned by." Not being precious about it, it's just that the data genuinely can't show ownership. It shows who gave money to whom. Pl”
“Fair question. It works well for a large sums. You can take a tax deduction on a $100k deduction right away, and disburse the money over 10 years. Giving $10kper year likely wouldn’t help you with your taxes. (This is in the US, where tax deduction of charitable giving requires not taking the standard deduction.)”
“That’s fair. It may not always be the best strategy, but that’s why they do it. If someone wants to give $100k because they got a big windfall and want to decrease taxes that year, a DAF solves that problem. They get the immediate tax break. If you gave $10k over 10 years it would mean no tax break as compared to the standard deduction, outside of capital gains not being paid. Or if they want to support 20 different charities. It’s much easier to do one stock transfer to a DAF and then direct th”
“skill based volunteering would help. you can directly reach out to nonprofits and ask what they need, they can be helped with marketing, data or bookkeeping etc etc”
“its about continuing that conversation beyond the donation process and making people feel connected to their mission”
“Hello! I work at a very small nonprofit, and neither I (development person, among other hats) nor our ED have much formal experience building a donor program or stewarding donors in any formal way. My experience is more on the grants side. Without getting into the details, I believe we are nicely set up to build a much more substantial annual giving and possibly major gifts program. We're working on building that side out, including a stewardship plan. But both myself and ED are hazy on what”
“Does anybody have some legal-tested tax benefit language to promote the additional $1,000 benefit over the standard deduction that you’ve used? The majority of our donors are likely taking the standard deduction. Also how did you promote the tax benefit? submitted by /u/runningblaze35 [link] [comments]”
“One thing that can make a real difference is building credibility before asking for support. Clear goals, transparent impact, consistent communication, and partnerships all help. For organisations with a genuine charitable purpose, formal UK charity registration can also strengthen credibility and open doors to funding and partnerships. Getting the structure and charitable purposes right from the beginning is important.”