Friday, June 23, 2006

How Much to Give

How Much to Give

The Stages of Giving by Kenneth N. Dayton
from “The Stages of Giving,” Independent Sector, 1999
Dayton identifies nine stages of giving, based on his personal experiences with philanthropy:
1. Minimal Response: Giving because we were asked and only because we were asked.
2. Involvement and Interest: You believe in the cause and you want to make it better. It becomes
meaningful and purposeful.
3. As Much As Possible: A major transformational breakthrough that requires thinking, a budget and
priorities.
4. Maximum Allowable: The IRS five-year carry-forward provision gave us an opportunity to plan and
to think creatively about our philanthropy. It meant we could initiate projects.
5. Beyond the Max: We ignored the IRS maximum and began to give what we wanted to give. The
second breakthrough, we decided we would no longer let the IRS tell us how much (or how little) we
could give.
6. Percent of Wealth: If one no longer measures giving against income or income tax deductibility, logic
soon leads to using total wealth as a measure. Until we started to measure our giving against our
wealth, we did not fully realize how much we could give away and still live very comfortably.
7. Capping Wealth: How wealthy do we want to be? This means setting a limit on your wealth and
giving away everything you earn beyond that figure.
8. Reducing the Cap: We are not there yet. Whether we will ever have the courage and fortitude and
intelligence to lower the cap as we get older we cannot say. But, we are comfortable discussing the
subject.
9. Bequests: Long ago we decided we had transferred enough of our assets to our heirs. Accordingly,
we are able to leave almost all of our assets to the nonprofit organizations we have selected.

4 comments:

கார்திக்வேலு said...

ஆத்துல போட்டாலும் அளந்து போடுன்னு சொல்லுவாங்க ...ஆனா
அதை எப்படி அளக்குறதுன்னு இதுவரை யாரும் சொன்னதில்லை

Excellent piece of info Bala ...
[with your permission I shall ..put it in my blog too ]

Unknown said...

the more you sow, the more you reap. The more you give, the more you will get back. So keep giving.

Unknown said...

the more you sow, the more you reap. The more you give, the more you will get back. So keep giving.

Anonymous said...

So how much of the millions you have saved so far will be given
to charity :).