Churches, nonprofits fear loss of donations
While national organizations fret over potential changes in charitable tax deductions, local charities remain confident in their bottom lines and their donors.
Nonprofit groups and churches shouldn’t be worried, said Laura MacDonald, a consultant locally and a board member with Giving USA, an annual national report on philanthropy in the United States. She offered her advice in the wake of a recent study saying charitable groups could lose $13.1 billion if recent tax policy proposals are implemented.
Instead, they should be diligent and prudent, she said.
That’s because, when it comes to the why people donate to charity, “tax incentives” isn’t in the top five, said MacDonald, president and founder of the Benefactor Group, a fundraising consulting group in Columbus.
The top two reasons people give are believing in a cause and being asked by someone they know and respect, MacDonald said.
A recent study of tax policy proposals says that the potential loss if the policies are approved could be 4.7 percent annually for religious organizations and 4.4 percent for other charities, said Patrick Rooney, a principal investigator on the study and dean for academic programs at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, which
conducted the study and helps produce the Giving USA reports.
The study, commissioned by the national nonprofit membership organization Independent Sector, looked at President Donald Trump’s tax proposal that was released in April.
Trump’s proposal includes enlarging the standard deduction and lowering the tax rate. Raising the standard deduction would mean fewer people would itemize charitable donations and other deductions.
Laura Campise, director of mission advancement at Catholic Social Services of Columbus, said she isn’t worried.
“Sure, there will be some movement (if the changes take place),” Campise said. “It’s my job to strategize around that. It falls down to building relationships.”
She believes that giving is based more on relationships with donors than on deductions.
“There’s been a big change in the last couple of decades with how people want to participate in giving. ... They’re giving because they have a connection with the mission and believe in its impact,” Campise said.
Still, Leadership 18, a group of national nonprofit organizations, released a letter in May in response to the study, which it helped fund. In it, the organizations voiced support for expanding the charitable tax deduction
to all people, those who itemize and those who don’t.
The Ohio Council of Churches opposes the proposed tax policy, saying the changes would be “catastrophic.”
“Churches are increasingly experiencing less income,” the Rev. Rebecca J. Tollefson, executive director of the partnership of 18 Christian denominations, wrote in an email. “People will definitely give less if there is no tax incentive.”
Tollefson said there’s also a correlation between churches experiencing less income and declining membership.
“It’s a numerical fact that congregations are dwindling in their membership, therefore financial resources that might be there are also dwindling,” Tollefson said. “The
number of religious nones and those who are spiritual but not religious continues to grow ... Things are changing and the church needs to adapt.”
Brian Gallagher, United Way Worldwide president and CEO and vice chairman of Leadership 18, said tax changes may not affect whether people give as much as how much.
“Americans will never stop giving, but we know that tax incentives are important to how much they give,” he said.
“For the human service organizations that Leadership 18 represents, charitable giving represents a majority of our funding — funding which enables us to fill the gaps in social services for vulnerable families,” he said in a statement.
Those gaps in social services are part of what worries officials of Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio.
The organization, founded more than 100 years ago and serving 29 counties, worries that other proposed budget cuts, such as to food stamps, could mean more people need its services, said Jennifer Hamilton, spokeswoman.
“This could be a bit of a double-whammy with more people needing services and if donations are, in fact, reduced,” Hamilton said.
The organization plans to keep track of the proposals, with the possibility that it would have look for alternate ways to raise money if they go through, she said.