Is it possible to give to charities anonymously?

Question

Several years ago, I gave a small donation of $20 to a charity. Every few months, I've received mailings from them with news about the work they are doing and an encouragement to give more. I've never given them more and I'm pretty sure that the total cost of the mailings including postage has now exceeded the $20 I donated.

While I still think this particular charity is doing good work and I realize that mailings are a necessary evil for many charities, I'd rather that my donations not go towards mailings back to me. I realize that it's probably too late to do anything about this particular charity, but I'd like to know for future reference: is there a way to give to a charity anonymously?

To be clear, these are charities where donations are typically handled by check or credit card, not by donation boxes. At this point in my life, my donations are relatively small: $20 to $100 on an irregular basis, probably totaling $1000 a year. I realize I probably don't give anywhere near enough in all to worry about tax deductions. All I'm interested in is not having the charities spend my donation on more mailings to me, or really have any more contact unless I choose to give again, so I'd like to give anonymously.

Answer 1

The simplest way to handle this would be to buy money orders, make them out to the charities, and leave your name off them. Money orders don't require you to put your name on them, just the name of whoever they're being paid to. You can mail them with no return address as well if you're sure you have the charity's proper mailing address. This way you can still feel good about giving and leave no trace of who you are for anyone to use for future marketing.

I hope this helps.

Good luck!

Answer 2

I know your pain oh, so much. I literally have a 14 gallon rubbermaid container FULL of solicitations I have received.

Even worse, for-profit fundraising companies send most of those mailings! They take the money, and deduct their "expenses", rigged to consume almosts all your gift. Some companies have been caught passing as little as 9% to the charity.

First let's talk about a few issues.

Authentication. Is that outfit really a tax deductible 501c3 charity?

Address. Is this their genuine address, or is it the dropbox of a scammer or one of those evil for-profit fundraising companies?

Acknowledgement. For gifts over a certain size, you need a thank-you letter from them to show the IRS that you really donated. Will you get it? The limit is $250 (no letter, deduction rejected) but as a practical thing, it helps in an audit to show as many donation letters as possible. Charities cannot issue them retroactively, but can issue you second copies of ones they sent previously. If the charity drops the ball, you lose.

Plain old money orders

Obviously enough, you go to the post office and spend $1 on a money order.

This does not authenticate them as a charity. It does not assure it goes to their real address. You can do both these things yourself, by checking their data on the IRS website or on guidestar.org.

You don't get an acknowledgement.

Donor Advised Fund

I mention these because donation websites work much the same way. DAFs require a higher one-time commitment but are much simpler and more efficient after that.

If you are planning to give $5000 in a single year, save it up and open a Donor Advised Fund account. A DAF is itself a charity. You donate to the DAF, and take the tax deduction for charitable contributons. Then, you tell the DAF to donate it to other charities on your behalf, or anonymously.

Their concept is, you use the DAF as a "buffer" so you can easily make the tax-deductible donation when you need to for tax purposes, then at your leisure research charities and support them.

However, I asked my DAF - most people donate and then immediately re-donate the money, leaving the fund at zero balance. My DAF doesn't mind that at all, and they charge zero fees for this.

(Its expenses are paid by those of us who leave money sitting around in the DAF. Mine charges 0.6% a year. This money can be invested sort of like in a 401K, and each investment also has an expense ratio, such as 0.18% a year in my chosen index fund.)

• The DAF lets you choose to gift anonymously, so the charity sees the DAF's address instead of yours.
• the DAF staff authenticates that the charity is genuine.
• They only send the check to the charity's official address in Guidestar or IRS data.
• The acknowledgement letter comes from the DAF itself. Since you have an account, the system will give you electronic copies of your acknowledgement letters anytime you want.

Donation websites (mini-DAF)

Websites like "justgive.org" will take any amount of your money and re-donate it to the charity you select. They deduct 3-5% for their expenses (notably paper, stamps, and the 2-3% it costs them to process your credit card).

• Anonymity, authentication and address work the same as a DAF.
• Acknowlegement letters work the same as a DAF. However they don't require you to "set up an account", and if you don't, they won't archive your acknowledgement letters for you.

Answer 3

You could always put cash in an envelope and mail it, with no return address on the envelope.

Any form of anonymous donation that I can think of has the risk that if the money is intercepted and stolen, you'll never know. Also, you won't get a receipt that you can use for tax purposes.

You could try sending this organization a note saying, "I think you're doing great work, but this donation was a one-time gift. Please take me off your mailing list." I don't know if it would work, but it's worth a try.

By the way, the problem is worse than you think: charities share mailing lists. Once one charity has your name, they'll often share it with other related charities. For example, I give to the Catholic Family Association even though I am a Protestant -- I think they're doing good work that Catholics, Protestants, and people of many other faiths could support. But over the years I started getting fundraising letters from other Catholic charities, and then from groups trying to spread Catholicism, and now I'm getting mailings from groups whose stated purpose is to oppose Protestants. I laugh and throw away the letters, but I know some people get really bothered by this sort of thing.

"I'm pretty sure that the total cost of the mailings including postage has now exceeded the $20 I donated." I've occassionally thought of sending some trivial donation, $5 or $10, to some political or activist group that I totally oppose, just so they'll spend way more than that over the course of the next few years asking me for more money. :-) Plus, they'll send me letters that will tell me what the opposition is up to.

Answer 4

The easiest solution is to avoid giving your real address/phone number/email to the charity. Create a separate email account such as Thunderforge.charities@gmail.com for any donations that you make and use a fake address/phone number if they ask for one. That way you can still be sure your donation has reached its recepient, but at the same time you give them no real options for contacting you in the future.

As for charitable deductions, the current standard deductible is $24k in the US, so you might as well skip mentioning it on your declaration if you're only contributing a few thousand dollars per year and don't have a lot of itemized deductions.

The same tactics works for any other organization - always give out fake contact details if you don't benefit from the company in question having them on their file.