a nice way to help others... make a meal

While helping a very sick family member, I was very impressed by the help their neighbors and community provided.

Often people wonder, how can I help? The family has someone ill, can we do something?

The first inclination is often transportation or errands - these are always excellent things to offer.

The second inclination is a question of money or resources, however, if the family is well insured or financially comfortable, money is not always a big need - at least right away.

The third offering, which I hadn't seen much before is help with meals. This is clearly one of the nicest and most helpful things friends and families can offer. Families caring for sick relatives find it difficult to prepare home cooked meals. The meals friends bring over restore a great degree of the normal every day routine that the family so desperately wishes to return to.

The fourth offering is money again. What can a fund raiser(s) do? If the family is financially comfortable, establishing a foundation to give money to others or to support medical research can be a great thing. Otherwise, money may be helpful in paying for expensive medical treatments that are not covered by insurance. Frequently, families know little about what is needed right away, but as things progress, treatment strategies become more clear, as do their associated expenses and insurance coverage.

Regards, makingourway

Charity... knowing who you're giving to

Recently I had a scary experience. A disabled veterans organization called offering to pick-up donations from my house. Since I hadn't heard of their name, I asked who they were. I also asked if they were a non-profit. I was utterly shocked to learn that they were not a charity, but a for profit company!

What deceptive fraudulent marketing. Although they claimed they gave a certain percentage to disabled veterans it smelt and felt like a scam.

While looking for new charity's to donate to, I began searching the web, Charity Navigator is a very nice website that looks at a charity's tax filings to determine it's efficiency. For example, do you really feel comfortable giving charity to an organization that spends most of its money on administrative costs?

I examined several charity's through it and found to my dismay that a national cancer charity was very inefficient, giving more money to its operations than to cancer patients.

You might want to check it out.

Also, here's a great article from consumer reports.

Regards, makingourway

More work to do before year's end

I've talked with my accountant who let me know that I had a moderate sum of money owed to the Federal government - about $5k.

There are a few approaches to reducing this debt, since I have to preserve cash, cash donations to charity and appreciated assets (aren't any any more) don't make sense.

As a result, I'm looking at charitable material donations. We're immense pack rats and really do have alot to give ranging from furniture to appliances.

So far we've donated about $6,900 in cash and material to various charities, that will give us approximately $2,600 in tax benefit.

I'm going to identify another $2,500 worth of donations for one charity and see if i can't find another $4,000 to another.

Philosophically, we prefer to spread our donations over several charities, averaging about $4,500 each.

Apparently donations over $5,000 to a single charity require excessive documentation.

Also, any expensive item donated valued over $5,000 requires appraisal and validation - something that could be costly and time consuming. Better to do this early in the year.

Other options have already been exhausted, such as maxing out retirement contributions, etc....

I'm confident I'll make the $2,500 by year end - it'll require some time and effort, but it will be very rewarding.

Regards, makingourway