Diagnosis: Donation Dilemma
December 9, 2008
Symptoms:
** In the spirit of the holidays you feel moved to finally pull out that pile of charitable donation request letters and contribute.
** You begin to wonder, how much did I give last year, and to whom? Where are my check records? Or if you donated directly via the internet and a credit card, you may have no record at all.
** You realize that locating this information is going to be a pain in the neck.
** Procrastination sets in and the project unfortunately gets put off.
Remedy:
** Create a document on your computer called “charitable donations”.
** Every year, list which organizations received charitable funds and for how much.
** Now you have one universal place to look and it’s only a click away. It’s just that easy!
Space-tacularly,
Erica
www.TheSpacialist.com
Donation tracking – I’ve got all the info with my tax files. I’m going to go back and create my list from there, then keep it current on a computer file. Thanks for the incentive!
BTW – at the end of some years I realized that I donated to a couple of charities twice by mistake. This list will remedy that.
Great ideas! – thanks!
Eva Wallace’s last blog post..Contest – Win a Kitchen Workstaion from Home Styles!
When making donations to charities it’s a good idea to see what percent of your money actually goes to the cause as opposed to “administration” and marketing.
These sites;
http://www.charitywatch.org/
http://www.charityguide.org/volunteer/charityratings.htm
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
among others can help you evaluate which charities you give to get the most bang for the buck.