Give now, give smart, give beyond

Giving feels good. Whether it’s buying cookies when someone knocks on your door, putting a few extra dollars in the offering plate or supporting a friend doing a fundraising 10K, it’s natural to say yes.

“But if you tally up all your spontaneous giving throughout the course of a year, those $5 to $10 donations could add up to $100, $500 or more,” says Vann Doubleday, Thrivent financial consultant with Coastal Financial Consultants in Savannah, Georgia. “What if you had that money back again and could be more intentional with your giving? Would you do it?”

Eric and Mary Beene did exactly that. The Windsor, California, couple always has been generous, frequently giving more in hands-on time than money. In their 23-year marriage, the budget often was lean, and they simply did the best they could with what they had.

“I always felt like I wanted to be able to give more,” Mary says. “My dream was to be able to give a $1,000 gift.” With an intentional plan, her dream and the couple’s desire to give more has come true.

Likewise, Skip and Charity Holley are lifelong givers of time and money. Married 47 years, the Mount Sterling, Kentucky, couple made tithing their first priority from day one.

“We lived paycheck to paycheck, and normally it didn’t last paycheck to paycheck,” Skip says. “But we made it a point to give the church 10%, no matter how little we had. We really believe God has blessed us.” Today, the couple isn’t just writing checks; they’re asking how they can use what they’ve been entrusted with to create the greatest impact.

These clients highlight an important aspect of generosity: You don’t need significant wealth to be a giver. It’s about aligning your dollars with your values and taking action. Whether you want to be a spontaneous, intentional or legacy giver, or a combination of all three, it’s possible. Find out how you can craft a plan that will help you become a more purposeful giver.

Spontaneous giving is likely the most recognizable form of giving we do. After all, who hasn’t written out a check, donated to a GoFundMe when a natural disaster hits the news or thrown a few bucks into a donation jar at a store?

“When we do spontaneous or impulsive giving, it’s like there’s something pulling at our heartstrings, and we want to meet that need immediately,” says Brittany Lawson, Thrivent wealth advisor with Inspired Wealth Advisors in Lexington, Kentucky. “So, having assets earmarked for that spontaneous giving is important.”

How do we do that? Start by defining your giving budget for the year. How much do you plan to give to your church, nonprofits or other needs? Then, from that amount, you can earmark a specific percentage that can go toward spontaneous needs, Lawson says.

Then, find the right place to stash that cash you’ve designated. One popular option is to use an envelope system, which is physical cash set aside in an envelope designated for giving.

Another option is to use your bank’s features to set aside generosity funds—like Thrivent Money^™ with Savings Pockets^™ from Thrivent Bank. Create a pocket to set aside your generosity funds and grow it with automatic transfers.

“And if you have money in a generosity account, give it,” Doubleday says. “You’ve given yourself permission to be generous with it.”

A third option is to establish a donor-advised fund (DAF) through Thrivent Charitable® to hold dollars for giving—both spontaneous and planned. It’s free to start one. A consideration is that the dollars in a DAF must go to an IRS-qualified, 501(c)(3) public charity.

“We love our donor-advised fund,” Skip says. “You don’t have to think about writing a check every month. You just set it up, and it happens automatically. And if something comes up that you want to donate to, you can go in there and create a grant to send money to it.”

Eric and Mary Beene were both Presbyterian pastors when they started their DAF. They didn’t have much money and didn’t believe they were in a position to give this way when Doubleday, their Thrivent financial advisor, first raised the idea.

“Finding out that you can start [a donor-advised fund] with nothing, or very little, and build from there was hugely encouraging,” Eric says. “It opened up a new way of giving for us.”

Once giving becomes intentional, the next question is how to make it go further. And, according to Lawson, that’s where a charitable giving strategy makes a bigger difference than the amount of money.

“Strategic giving may mean I know that I’m going to give regularly, a dedicated amount, to my favorite organizations,” Lawson says. “But I still may be writing checks, and that may not be the most tax-efficient.”

The following options can help you give intentionally and tax-efficiently. Be sure to speak with your financial and tax professionals on what may work best for your situation.

• Gifts of appreciated stock: Instead of selling the stock and gifting the value, gift the stock, Doubleday recommends. Selling first means you pay the capital gains tax; gifting it directly means the full value goes to the cause, and it can be tax-free to you.
• Charitable bunching: This strategy involves combining multiple years of planned donations into a single tax year. By doing charitable bunching, you may surpass the standard deduction threshold to itemize deductions for that year. You would then take the standard deduction in alternate years.
• Non-itemized charitable deduction: Beginning in 2026, taxpayers who take the standard deduction may still be eligible for a federal charitable deduction for qualifying cash gifts to public charities. Married couples filing jointly may deduct up to $2,000, while most other filers may deduct up to $1,000, even if they do not itemize deductions. You’ll want to talk with your tax professional about this; DAF do not qualify.
• Qualified charitable distributions (QCDs): Once you turn 70½, you can start making tax-free donations to charity directly from your IRA. QCDs can even satisfy required minimum distributions (RMDs), which you need to start taking at age 73 or 75, depending on the year you were born.
• Donor-advised funds (DAF): A DAF provides one receipt at tax time instead of multiple. It can hold appreciated assets, house charitable-stacking strategies and grow over time, since the dollars are invested. While it carries fees, and contributions are irrevocable, a DAF can simplify your giving.

For Skip and Charity, the planning they’ve done has helped them realize they can be more generous than they thought. It was when they were converting some traditional IRA dollars to a Roth that they learned about the DAF as a tax strategy. “Plus, because that money’s already set aside in the fund, we feel like we can be more intentional about where and when we donate,” Charity says.

And with Skip being 70, he’s planning to look more closely at QCDs. “Everything is easier with a plan,” he says. “If you don’t have a plan, you have tunnel vision. But with a plan, you can see the big picture, and it allows you to be more generous, as well as take care of your own finances and needs.”

As Lawson, who works with the Holleys, says, “Planned giving doesn’t have to be complicated; it’s simply about putting purpose behind your dollars.”

Legacy giving outlasts your own life. “We spend a lifetime accumulating our wealth, our stuff, our things,” says Lawson. “And when we leave this earth, our money and our things generally go to one of three places: to the people we love, to the causes we care about or to our favorite Uncle Sam.”

Planning is even more essential right now. Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion in private wealth will change hands by 2048, with $18 trillion of it potentially going to charity.

With some intentionality, you can reduce, or in some cases eliminate, the government from your plan. That starts with ensuring your beneficiaries are up to date on retirement accounts, life insurance policies and other assets.

“You can name a church, charity or donor-advised fund as a full or partial beneficiary,” Doubleday says. “It’s literally just a pen stroke and you can change your plan for free. It’s the easiest low-hanging fruit of planning.”

Those dollars to your favorite causes don’t have to be in lump sums either, says Doubleday. Consider providing an income stream over multiple years instead. He recently helped a client who wanted to leave money to a funeral home. Instead of a one-time bequest, the funeral home will receive $5,000 a year until the money runs out.

“From the fundraising perspective, a gift over multiple seasons instead of a one-time gift provides more stability for the long-term,” says Mary, who serves as a stewardship officer for the Western region of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

For the Beenes, legacy planning meant including their 19-year-old son Isaac as a co-advisor on the family’s DAF. “This is part of what we’re teaching Isaac and also giving to him to carry forward,” Eric says. “This is part of our legacy; it will outlive us.”

Eric and Mary started their DAF with minimal funds, but found it was a tax-efficient place to put some of the inheritances they later received from their parents. They have talked as a family about what the giving legacy means today and into the future.

“Legacy for me is looking at the world through the eyes of abundance,” Mary says. “We do not believe in a God who is stingy. There are ways to give of money, time and energy that are appropriate for where you are in your life and world.”

You don’t need to be wealthy to have a giving plan—you just need to start. That might mean tithing before you’re ready, like the Holleys did. It might mean setting a goal for the size of the gift you want to make later, like the Beenes.

Once you start, it can be tempting to watch that money grow. However, as Mary is quick to point out: “This is money that’s set aside to give away. It doesn’t need to grow; it needs to go out into the world to do the work.”

No matter what your income level or kind of giver you want to be—spontaneous, intentional, legacy-minded or a combination of all three—there are tools to help you.

“Generosity is fun,” Doubleday says. “It’s a learned behavior, but it’s also very addictive. It becomes an exciting part of your identity.”

As Lawson puts it: “No one person can do everything. But everybody can do something. Together, we can change the world.”

Donna Hein is senior editor of Thrivent Magazine.