First Citizens Wealth™
Hank Dunbar, Manager of Philanthropic and Charitable Services
Making strategic choices about how you can give can help you make the most of your contributions, and it can boost your tax savings.
5 Ways to Maximize Your Charitable Giving
We've put together five strategies that can help individuals take their personal giving to the next level.
1 Establish goals
The first one is to establish goals. Identify the causes you care most about, identifying charities that focus on your priorities by talking to your friends or by talking to your family members, and then doing some research on your own.
2 Conduct research
Go to Charity Navigator or GuideStar. Nonprofits are very public entities, so you can look at a 990 or a 990 PF return on foundations, nonprofit organizations in general, and see how they use the money that's given them.
3 Create a giving plan
So once you've identified your favorite causes, the things that you really are passionate about, you want to create a giving plan. Choose one or two charities—don't try to shotgun it at first, but really give it a focused approach—that align with your values, and consider what you want to achieve when you are working with those charities. Decide how your donations are going to be used. Decide how much you want to contribute. And think about how often you want to give.
4 Consult your advisors
This is something you really need to have a serious conversation with your advisor on. Your financial advisor, the person who helps you understand what your assets are—the nature of your assets and the value of your assets. And the other person is your tax planner, your CPA. You and those two people together form the team that decides how much to give and what to give. They can help you find a level of giving that's appropriate for your circumstances and that you can be comfortable with, and they can also help you plan for the future in other ways.
5 Engage your family
It's also a great time to engage your children, especially when they're young, in the giving process. That whole concept is just a really good way of establishing a legacy of philanthropy in your family.
For more, visit FirstCitizens.com/Wealth.
First Citizens Wealth™
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