Set a Number Before You Set a Cause

Decide the fraction of income you intend to give before you decide where it goes. Doing it in that order is the whole discipline: a budget set in advance is a commitment you can plan a tax year around, while giving decided appeal by appeal is neither generous enough to matter nor structured enough to deduct well. It also solves the social problem. A stated policy — a percentage, a small number of causes, a rule about unsolicited requests — lets you say no to everything else without argument or guilt, which is a real benefit that nobody puts in the tax literature.

Then vet the recipients. Confirm exempt status in the Tax Exempt Organization Search, and look at how the organization actually spends: Form 990 is public for every charity of size, and program expense versus fundraising and administration is the number that tells you whether your money does what you intended.

Track contributions as you make them rather than reconstructing them in April. The records are the deduction — an undocumented gift is not merely hard to prove, it is disallowed — and the running total is what tells you in November whether you are on pace to clear the standard deduction and the 0.5% floor this year or should push the balance into next (section “Bunch Your Giving”).