Charitable Giving - there IS room in the budget

Last week's horrible earthquake in Haiti has me thinking about an effective approach to charitable giving. DH and I have used a few strategies since we've been married - bi-weekly payroll deductions to United Way, random donations here and there, larger lump sum donations to local institutions at the end of the calendar year when we felt like we hadn't been doing/giving enough. None of these methods really seemed to work for us. It felt disorganized and detached, and honestly, a little half-a**ed.

Now that we're living on one income, I've had a bit of time to work on this issue. Here is what we do now: We kept the bi-weekly payroll deductions - they're easy, and we trust the organization. We also give a pre-determined amount to our alma-mater's general fund and to our church. Finally, we keep a small reserve amount for "charitable emergencies" like last week's earthquake and to sponsor friends who are running in marathons, etc. Since we've been doing this, there's always been an emergency - so this money has never not been used, but assuming we didn't use it - we'd send it to either American Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders at the end of the year. We work these amounts into our monthly budget, and then make the payments via electronic bill-pay. (As I said, we're living on one income, so all of these dollar amounts are pretty small - but every little bit helps!!)

We picked ARC and Doctors Without Borders because they are both institutions with a long, reliable track-record and because their overhead costs are relatively low, so most of our donation goes to people in need. For Haiti, we did Doctors Without Borders because they have an existing presence on the ground there, and because my cousin has done nursing volunteer work in Haiti for a couple of years and speaks well of the organization. I put a Doctors Without Borders button on the side right hand side of this page. If you'd like to donate, please click through.

There are some tax benefits to charitable donations, so be sure to save receipts (you need to have them if you itemize deductions).