Because the standard deduction has been raised to over $12,000 for individuals and over $24,000 for married couples filing jointly, some people may lose the advantage of deducting charitable donations, since their itemized deductions won’t exceed those amounts.

So for donors who are over 72 years old, they may want to use the charitable IRA rollover. The charitable IRA rollover is a distribution from an individual retirement account directly to a charity, such as The Vegetarian Resource Group. The distribution from the plan administrator directly to the charity counts toward the donor’s required minimum distribution for the year, but the charitable donation is not included in the donor’s adjusted gross income.

Others may use a donor-advised fund. Donor-advised funds (DAFs) are accounts where the donors can advise on where and when to distribute funds. Donors claim the charitable deduction in the year the money is transferred to the DAF even though the funds have not been given to the final specific charities. This allows donors to consolidate several years of charitable gifts into one year for their income tax returns. For example, married donors who usually give $3,000 per year to their favorite charitable organization can create a Donor-Advised fund, deposit $21,000 in it for a current year tax deduction, and then distribute $3,000 per year as annual gifts in future years. For example, here is information about a few Donor Advised Funds.

https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/philanthropy/what-is-a-donor-advised-fund.shtml
https://www.schwabcharitable.org/public/charitable/donor_advised_funds
http://programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/home.jsp

This is not legal or tax advice. You should speak to your legal or tax advisor.

To donate directly to The Vegetarian Resource Group, go to www.vrg.org/donate