A charitable update
The charitable sector is still full of worries about the tax cut’s impact. David Thompson of the National Council of Nonprofits said his group is hearing plenty of anecdotal evidence that charitable giving has stayed strong for larger nonprofits, but that smaller organizations are having trouble with their donor base.
“To us, the bottom line is that giving hasn’t caught up to 2017, adjusted for inflation, and certainly hasn’t shown the surge predicted by supporters of the TCJA,” Thompson said, saying that celebrating the latest Giving USA data amounted to prematurely spiking the football.
And in perhaps a more pressing concern, Thompson noted that separate data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project found that donations tumbled about 6 percent during this year’s first quarter, only the tail end of which was really affected by the virus. Nonprofit advocates are pushing to expand the charitable deduction in a next Covid-19 relief bill, though it’s hard to say how those negotiations will play out.