It’s Time to Start Talking About How OBBB will Affect Charitable Giving

04 Aug It’s Time to Start Talking About How OBBB will Affect Charitable Giving

5 August 2025

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

First of all, I am not an attorney. I am not a tax professional. I am not qualified to give legal or financial advice, Hell, I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time.

So, don’t take any part of this post as tax advice.

But DO pay attention to the implications of the One Big Beautiful Bill on charitable giving.

Here are two resources to share:

YouTube Vlog post from Sean Mullaney

Article from Fidelity on OBBB’s Impact on Charitable Giving

Here’s what I get out of reading and listening to these two and other posts:

• Beginning in 2026, any donors can deduct up to $1,000 ($2,000 per couple) from their taxable income even if they don’t itemize their taxes.
• Beginning in 2026, for donors who DO itemize, the first 0.5% of their Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) will not be deductible if they give it to a charity. In other words, a donor who makes $1,000,000 will have to give away $5,000 before any donation is deductible.
• The 0.5% floor does not apply to Qualified Charitable Distributions, so gifts directly from retirement funds will become just that much more valuable.
• Many donors, on advice from their attorneys and financial planners may be bunching contributions now, in 2025, in anticipation of the tax law changes to come next year. Those comfortable making commitments now may give several years of donations in 2025. Those perhaps a little less comfortable, might make contributions into a Donor Advised Fund and delay the final distribution until later.

What does all this mean for you and your land trust? It means that if there was ever a year to start a $1,000 donor circle, this might be it.

It means that you might want to consider talking to some donors about bunching several years of contributions into a package this year. For example, someone giving $10,000 a year might be interested in making a $30,000 gift this year and calling it good for 2026 and 2027 as well.

It means that you can bet that we won’t be the only ones studying all this. Ask your Board members to pay attention to the mail they get from their colleges and universities and even some other charities they might support. If that mail includes end-of-year tax advice, it might be worth cribbing and using for your mailings.

It means that a special appeal insert that lists the benefits of making QCDs directly from retirement accounts might be usable for the next several years.

It means that asking a qualified nonprofit tax attorney (i.e. not me) to write an article for your newsletter might be a good idea. For release around Thanksgiving?

What are you hearing? What are you studying? And how are you adjusting your sails for this fall? Love to hear about it in the comments section, below.

Meanwhile I’m still not an attorney, and you still shouldn’t take my tax advice.

Cheers, and have a great week!

-da

PS:  Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Sergio Cerrato – Italia courtesy Pixabay