‘Tis The Season For Charitable Tax Deductions 2022

My husband and I donate 10% of our household net income each year; I’ve been doing so since 2016 as a sort of “secular tithe” and once we got married we both carried along along the tradition. Here are links to my 2017, 2018, and 2019 posts. We continued our donations in 2020 and 2021, but I was lazy and didn’t create posts those years (whoops).

Here are the areas we donated to in 2022

We don’t plan at the beginning of the year how much we’ll donate to each area, but we think this is more or less a decent reflection of our values.

Here are the organizations represented in each bucket:

• Environment. This is split between National Resource Defense Council, Terra Praxis, Clean Air Task Force and Green Wave. I would love to incorporate more direct action and climate change mitigation and resiliency charities in the mix, but not really sure where to start there.
• Social Justice. Local (state) bail fund and two local charities focusing on justice for incarcerated LGTBQ+ folks, women, and families.
• Food Security. This is for the small, local food rescue organization that donates fruits and vegetables to seniors, people with disabilities, and other food programs in our area. This is money I feel “proudest” to donate to each year (see: my deep emotional connection with food).
• International Development. GiveWell, GiveDirectly, Amnesty International. I’d like to give more to this area because of the higher impact-per-dollar, but not really well-versed in what charities are “good” and somewhat wary that the typical EA charities may be over-saturated.
• Immigration. Lots of money to IRC and RAICES. I hate the politics of immigration in this country and I am deeply ashamed for how impotent I feel on this issue. Money doesn’t feel like enough.
• Abortion. Threw a bunch of money at local abortion funds after the Dobbs decision. Tried to divvy up state-by-state to make sure we were covering the areas that had the most need.
• Housing. Sent money to our local mutual aid group to cover someone’s rent while they were in a limbo state trying to get assistance due to sudden onset of disability.
• Technology. This is all for the Electronics Frontier Foundation, because digital privacy is important!

What we didn’t donate to this year:

• Political organizations. This is probably “bad,” but I honestly have gotten fatigued by ActBlue’s emails. I’m happy to donate to races that are close or need funding to push a candidate over the edge, but I was getting so many solicitations from really high-name-recognition candidates (we’re talking Beto, Nancy Pelosi, etc.). It soured my feelings toward political donations quite a bit. We may donate to candidates for our local races next year, but I think we’re suspending how much we give to this category for national races right now.

Here’s how our donations have changed over time

I’ve been playing with the idea of boosting our donation rate to 15%, which I think we’ll start doing in 2024. Well, technically, we did donate 15% of our net income in 2021 and probably closer to 12.5% in 2020 (basically just throwing our stimulus checks into charity). But then we scaled it back to 10% this year because of inflation and layoff fears. Similarly, why not 2023? Well, next year is the year of the newborn and I think there’s a good chance I’ll be unemployed for part of it, so I’m being a little more cautious about our savings at the moment.

In terms of mechanics, we usually route our donations through our Schwab donor advised fund, which allows us to roll over capital gains as well as keep our donations anonymous. We may contribute more or less to our DAF depending on our tax strategy for the year, but we generally make sure distributions are 10%+ of household income. The one exception was 2017/2018 when I front-loaded our charitable contributions into 2017 to account for the Republican tax changes that were happening at the time.

What is your charitable giving philosophy? How much did you donate in 2022 and to what organizations? 

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‘Tis The Season For Charitable Tax Deductions 2019

I’ve donated 10% of my net income each year since 2016. It’s my “secular tithe.” Here are links to my 2017 and 2018 posts.

In 2019 we donated 10% of our joint net income (whereas in previous years, it was just 10% of mine). Because we’ll be subject to the AMT this tax cycle– exercised my ISO’s from previous employer– I considered doubling up our donations and get a head start on 2020 contributions to reduce our tax bill. Also, “prepaying” my balance would be optimal for tax optimization purposes due to the Republican’s new law. However, that’d leave us with little cash on hand, especially after my bout of unemployment, so I decided against it.

In addition to our direct contributions, my new employer has charitable matching up to $2,000, so I got that for one of my environmental picks.

Unlike previous years when I’ve used donation season to cash in on credit card bonuses, my churning days are more or less over: banks pretty much won’t approve me for new cards anymore. Husband is not interested in it either, le sigh. This means we’ll be feeling the effects of donations on our wallets more directly than in the past, but that’s okay too.

Here are the areas we donated to in 2018 and 2019:

We don’t plan at the beginning of the year how much we’ll donate to each area, but we think this is more or less a decent reflection of my values.

Here are the organizations represented in each bucket:

• Food Security. This is for the small, local food rescue organization that donates fruits and vegetables to seniors, people with disabilities, and other food programs in our area. This is money I feel “proudest” to donate to each year (see: my deep emotional connection with food).
• Immigration. Lots of money to RAICES because we as a country continue to jail and torture migrants in droves. Honestly, I don’t understand why the press continues to fuck around about the internal politics of impeachment when people are literally dying under ICE custody. I am deeply ashamed for how impotent I feel on this issue. Money doesn’t feel like enough.
• Environment. This is split between National Resource Defense Council, Rainforest Alliance, Sierra Club, and Green Wave. My interest is turning away from litigation and lobbying initiatives to direct action and climate change mitigation and resiliency. I imagine this to turn more sharply that way in 2020.
• Criminal Justice. Local (state) bail fund and two local charities focusing on justice for incarcerated LGTBQ+ folks, women, and families.
• Civil Rights. This is all going to the ACLU.

What we didn’t donate to this year:

• Political organizations. ActBlue will probably see a lot of donations from us in 2020, though.

What is your charitable giving philosophy? How much did you donate in 2019 and to what organizations? 

‘Tis The Season For Charitable Tax Deductions 2018

Since 2016, I’ve made the commitment to donate 10% of my net income each year. I do 10% because I grew up around very religious folk and felt like, though I’m not religious myself, I wanted to have something akin to a secular tithe. An amount that felt “moral” but not like I was giving away the farm. Something that was just the right amount of painful. Here is a link to my 2017 post.

In 2018 we continued to donate 10% of my net income, but not our joint income (though we will be contributing based on joint in 2019). We donated much more in 2017 than in 2018 because I “prepaid” my balance for tax optimization purposes due to the Republican’s new law. However, we did get our wedding guests to donate a few thousand dollars to our favorite charities rather than buy us expensive presents, which is not reflected in the below numbers.

Here are the areas we donated to in 2017 and 2018:

We don’t plan at the beginning of the year how much we’ll donate to each area, but we think this is more or less a decent reflection of my values. Note that we donated much more in 2017 than in 2018 because I “prepaid” my balance for tax optimization purposes due to the Republican’s new law.

Here are the organizations represented in each bucket:

• Food Security. This is for the small, local food rescue organization that donates fruits and vegetables to seniors, people with disabilities, and other food programs in our area. This is money I feel “proudest” to donate to each year (see: my deep emotional connection with food).
• Immigration. Lots of money to RAICES because we as a country continue to jail and torture migrants in droves. Honestly, I don’t understand why the press continues to fuck around about the internal politics of the administration when children are literally dying under ICE custody. I am deeply ashamed for how impotent I feel on this issue. Money doesn’t feel like enough.
• Environment. I used to divvy this bucket up amongst a lot of different environmental advocacy groups, but nowadays I just dump it all to the National Resource Defense Council.
• Criminal Justice. Local (state) bail fund.
• Civil Rights. Local LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.

What we didn’t donate to this year:

• Brother’s education. He graduated and while I gave him a little money to celebrate that, there are no more tuition/room/board etc payments going forward. Woohoo!
• Political organizations. I feel somewhat guilty about this but, honestly, every time I thought about donating for the 2018 cycle I kept thinking (1) Dems already had landslide levels of funding and (2) the money would be better put to use targeting migrant issues. So that’s what happened there.

What is your charitable giving philosophy? How much did you donate in 2018 and to what organizations?