Give Your Charitable Donation Extra Power

If your mailbox seems especially full these days with requests for donations to the local homeless shelter, environmental causes and food banks, you're not dreaming. Many charities flood the mail with their year-end holiday pitches for your charity dollars.

If you're like most Americans, you'll probably pull out your checkbook and send along some money. Every year, nearly 90 percent of households contribute to at least one of more than a million charitable organizations in the country, whether it's a church, school or nonprofit organization. The average annual household contributions among givers totals $1,610.

If you're going to give up some of your cash to charities, you'd probably like to be assured that your donation makes a difference. Whether you give $10 or $10,000, there are ways to increase the impact of your gift -- and you don't have to spend a penny to do it.

Ways to increase the impact of your gift:

• Leverage your donation with a matching gift.
• Buy for your cause.
• Donate airline miles and hotel points.
• Turn time into money.
• Give strategically.
• Find worthy charities.

Leverage your donation with a matching gift.
Many large companies -- and increasingly, smaller businesses -- will match your donation. "Employees give a certain amount of money, and the company matches it, dollar for dollar," says Gregory D'Angelo, vice president and charitable trust officer of the Univest Foundation in Souderton, Pa. So the $50 donation you send to your alma mater could potentially become a $100 donation at no extra cost to you.

Some companies will match at a 2-to-1 or even 3-to-1 ratio, though they might set annual contribution limits. Check with your human resources department to find out what is available.

Buy for your cause.
If you're someone who likes to buy online, Web sites, such as iGive.com, DonationTree.com, BuyforCharity.com and GreaterGood.com, can help you increase your giving. These Web sites partner with merchants who agree to send a percentage of the price of the product -- from less than 1 percent to more than 25 percent -- to a cause you select.

Robert Grosshandler, founder and CEO of Evanston, Ill.-based iGive.com, says that this incremental giving can have a big impact: Average online shoppers can expect $20 to $40 to go to their favorite charity each year, just for buying the things that they would buy anyway. Heavy online shoppers might end up giving hundreds of dollars a year. This year alone, Grosshandler expects iGive members to be responsible for some $500,000 in charitable giving.

"It's a true win-win-win," says Grosshandler. "Nonprofits get much-needed additional funding at no cost to them. People get to help organizations they care about, no matter what the size of the organization. And stores get to help their customers support the cause the customer cares about."

Donate airline miles and hotel points.
If you're a corporate traveler and have thousands of banked miles, you can donate them to many charities, such as the Red Cross, UNICEF or the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Those same organizations and others accept hotel points as well. Check with your favorite charity to see what it will accept. The only downside is that you can't take a tax deduction on these gifts.

Turn time into money.
More than 50 percent of Americans volunteer their time to charity, and in many companies your time can also mean a cash donation to the organization you support. Check with your human resources director to see if your employer has such a plan.

Give strategically.
There are thousands of great causes, and you can't support all of them -- though it may seem like we try. "Sometimes people take a shotgun approach -- $50 here, $100 there, $500 somewhere else," says Dan Yates, a partner in the estate planning and business succession planning group at Bose McKinney & Evans in Indianapolis. "But if people were more strategic, maybe they could give $2,500 to one place and start a scholarship fund." Just thinking through your choices in advance -- before the solicitation letters hit your mailbox -- might mean that your gift will have a bigger impact.

Find worthy charities.
Charity Navigator.org ranks charities based on their IRS forms to show which charities are doing the most good with their money and which are eating through your donation with administrative expenses. Nine out of 10 charitable organizations spend at least 65 percent of their budgets to do good. If the charity you support spends less than that, you should consider if your donation is having the kind of impact you'd like.

You can do a background check on the organization through an Internal Revenue Service Web site. If you can't find your charity on this comprehensive list, it means either you don't have the right name of the organization or it's not eligible for tax-deductible donations -- and could possibly be a scam.

Knowing what an organization may do with your money is especially important for larger gifts. "Make sure you do the research," says D'Angelo. "Don't be afraid to call the development office and have a conversation with someone."

By taking advantage of every opportunity to leverage your donations and give wisely, you can make a difference no matter what the size of your gift. "By thinking about what you want your charitable dollars to do, you can donate to the organizations that will be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish," he says.

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