Valley charities taking a hit during giving season saturated with need
Some charities in the valley say they’re taking a hit this giving season.
“We haven’t seen a loss of donations but we’re also not seeing an influx of them,” said Richard Balocco, president and CEO of non-profit Desert Arc.
With many people donating all they can to causes like California fire victims, local GoFundMe pages, or one of the more than 800 non-profit organizations in the Coachella Valley, some charities are worried people’s wallets might be stretched thin this year.
“It’s hard to know why — I think maybe people are just oversaturated with request,” Balocco said.
“When you have so many different things going on in the country, it does tend to divert funds from one thing to the other,” said Patti Park, executive director of non-profit Angel View.
News Channel 3’s own Thanksgiving food drive charity event, Fill the Bus, received 400 lbs. of food less this year compared to last.
Also contributing: new tax laws that took effect at the start of 2018.
” I think (people) are going to have less discretionary income,” said certified public accountant Adam Ochoa with The Practice CPA in Palm Desert. “Due to that — having less income and more tax — that they wouldn’t have the ability to contribute to the nonprofits like they normally do in the past.”
“You only can deduct $10,000 between your property taxes, your local taxes, and the state income tax. And most people are probably are already over that,” Balocco said. “So I think they’re going to say, ‘Oh, I used to be able to deduct those and now I’m going to have more reportable income and therefore I’m gonna have higher tax liability.'”
Park urged people to give what they can.
“Just do what you feel you can comfortably do,” she said, “Everybody needs to recognize that they have a family to take care of.”
“If you see your CPA and talk to them, they’ll be able to help out and minimize the taxes as best they can and still be able to contribute to the non-profits,” Ochoa said.
Reporter Jake Ingrassia has a full report on what this means for non-profits and how you can help — coming up tonight on News Channel 3 at 6 p.m.
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