Jim Niedelman:
Time for a holiday edition of 4 Your Money. We’re joined by Nate Kreinbrink, financial advisor of NelsonCorp Wealth Management. Great to see you, Nate.

Nate Kreinbrink:
Thanks again, Jim, for having me.

Jim Niedelman:
The timing is Christmas, a couple of days away now. I know you’d like to discuss on of NelsonCorp’s favorite topics this time of year, that is charitable giving. So what does that landscape actually look like in 2020?

Nate Kreinbrink:
Well, as was the case with pretty much everything else this past year, charitable giving has had an interesting path over the past 12 months. And I think we’ve got a little chart here to go over some of these data points, but it’s probably no surprise that charitable gifting in the first quarter, actually declined by roughly 6% on a year-over-year basis. Obviously, the pandemic began to take hold and individuals were looking at seeing how they were actually going to be impacted, individually, from that standpoint. Now, from that point on, we actually saw about a 12% gain into the second quarter. Financial markets began to kind of stabilize a little bit, people had a little bit better idea, as far as how they were going to be impacted. We also saw the number of donors in the second quarter actually increase by over 7%. The amount that was being gifted, as well as the number of people that were actually giving to charity, continued to rise over that second quarter.

Nate Kreinbrink:
Another interesting point of long as that timeframe is, we actually saw a whopping 20% increase in gifts that were under $250. So as the need continued to go grow, we saw a lot of people continue to step up to the plate.

Jim Niedelman:
So the volume there. Are there still opportunities for giving this year?

Nate Kreinbrink:
Absolutely. Since 2017, the tax code has changed, most notably the way charitable gifts have been handled than we were in the past. Now, this most notable change had to do with the increase in the standard deduction, which actually made most people no longer eligible to itemize their deductions. Now, however, as part of the CARES Act this year, that was passed by Congress back in March, you are actually able to deduct up to $300 of charitable contributions, even if you are not itemizing your tax deductions. There’s still time in the year yet for individuals to take advantage of that. Also, for those individuals that are 70 and a half or older, we can still take advantage of a qualified charitable distribution. Essentially, what we are doing is, directing money from our individual retirement accounts, directly to a charity.

Nate Kreinbrink:
Most of the time distributions from these individual retirement accounts are taxable to you. However, if that money goes directly to a charity, it does not show up on your tax return. So again, even though we don’t have to take money out of our individual retirement accounts this year, as part of that CARES Act, by doing so and directing it to charity, we may be able to reduce the amount that we have to take about next year and then the coming years to come.

Jim Niedelman:
What final thoughts do you want to share before we let you go?

Nate Kreinbrink:
Well obviously, there’s been a lot of hardships this year and the need to support organizations and individuals has continued to increase throughout the year. I would just like to encourage anyone that hasn’t, and if you’re able to, to look to help to support these individuals, and those who have been generous throughout the year. Just give a big thank you. As a business, we’ve been able to facilitate numerous charitable initiatives throughout the year. And the support has just been overwhelmingly generous from people. It’s very encouraging to see an individual stepping up to the plate, knowing there’s a need, knowing that a lot of people have had some hardships this year, and being able to help them out in any way that they can.

Jim Niedelman:
Nate Kreinbrink, thank you so much for your insight. And if you missed any of our discussion, we’ve got that available for you on ourquadcities.com.