By The Charitable Giving Coalition
November 20th’s “Protect Giving Day” was an exciting day of action in D.C., seeing over 200 frontline representatives from the nonprofit and charitable sectors meet face-to-face with congressional members and staff to urge them to protect the nation’s 100-year-old charitable tax deduction.
As members of the Charitable Giving Coalition met with more than 150 congressional offices to share the impact of charitable giving in communities across America, the effort to protect giving won important bi-partisan support from Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The senators — both members of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees tax policy — wrote a letter [PDF] to their fellow members of Congress stressing the importance of the charitable deduction as a lifeline for the most vulnerable, not a loophole for the wealthy.
“Analysis has repeatedly shown that proposals to cut, cap, or limit the charitable deduction could cause charitable donations to decline by billions of dollars annually,” the letter said. “Worse yet, weakening the charitable deduction would most hurt the adults and children who receive vital charitable services from organizations like soup kitchens, after-school programs, and medical research projects, just to name a few.”
The letter is an encouraging indication of progress in the effort to safeguard the nation’s vital nonprofit organizations, but the fight to preserve the charitable deduction is not over. In order to build on the momentum of Protect Giving Day, we need your help! You can easily get involved by contacting your senators to urge them to help protect giving by signing on to Sens. Thune and Wyden’s letter. Members of Congress need to hear from their constituents about the disastrous consequences of making harmful changes to the deduction.
You can also make your voice heard by signing our petition to the White House and Congress. Sharing your story of how charitable giving is important to your community is a powerful way to show lawmakers the human impact of charitable giving in their communities.