How to Be Charitable This Holiday Season

It’s the time of year to spread good cheer. If you’ve had a great year, or even if you haven’t, get into the spirit of the season by donating your time or money to one of your favorite non-profit organizations. You’ll feel great knowing you’ve done something to help the less fortunate or provide financial support to a needed service, and you may receive some valuable tax deductions. Here are a few things you can do to be charitable.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A generous nature

1. Make a financial contribution directly to the organization. Whatever your favorite cause, it is easy to get involved online. Most organizations have websites where you can directly make a monetary contribution. Some organizations will give you a gift of some kind as a thank you for your contribution, like a t-shirt or coffee mug. Choose to not receive it if you want to be able to deduct the entire portion of your contribution on your taxes. Otherwise you must deduct the fair market value of the item from your contribution and claim that amount.
2. Donate your used car. Many non-profits also accept used cars as donations that are then auctioned off. This is a great way to get rid of an old beater that may not be worth the hassle of selling or trading in, and you can deduct the amount of the auction price from your taxes. Contact the charity directly to find out if they accept car donations.
3. Raise money for an organization yourself using widgets and blogs. widgets are an application you can add to a blog or your social networking site profile that acts as a fundraising tool. Basically, it is a paste-able piece of code that you put on your blog or website to provide content or a service.
4. All non-profits use a volunteer work-force of some kind to help keep their costs down. Your skills can be put to work in a variety of ways, whether office skills, phone skills, or more advanced skills like web design and accounting. Contact your local non-profit and ask how they can put you to work. You’ll meet new friends and feel great!
5. If you do not know which organization to donate your services or contribution to, you can find referral sites online, such as Give and VolunteerMatch. Another great Web site is Adoptaclassroom. Here you can give money to your child’s teacher for specific projects, or to any school in the country.