Charities will suffer in 2018

I've written my usual tax-deductible checks to nonprofits in the past couple of weeks, knowing that 2017 may be the last year that nonprofit charities will see a year-end windfall from taxpayers hoping to do some good while reducing their own tax liability.

The recently passed Republican tax bill raises the standard deduction to a level ($12,200 for single filers and $24,400 for joint filers) that will be higher than the vast majority of taxpayer/donors will have in itemized deductions. (A family with an annual income of $100,000 would need charitable deductions of nearly 25 percent of gross incomes to make it worthwhile to deduct.) Thus, few taxpayers will submit itemized deductions.

Advocates of the tax bill think that's a good thing: Taxes will be simpler for most people. Identifying and documenting every charitable donation we make over a year is challenging. The church provides us an itemized list, but other donations to favorite charities or memorial gifts to churches and other charities can be harder to track down. So, yes, tax preparation will be somewhat simpler for 2018.

For charities, however, the simplification of the tax bill will bring a great cost. Without the incentive of a tax deduction, many small donors (giving $25 or $100 or even $1,000 to a charity) will decide not to bother. For nonprofits (a field that employed me the past eight years), small donations are lifeblood. Without those small donations, nonprofit budgets will be decimated. All the good things that nonprofits do in the community will be jeopardized. Nonprofits struggle as it is to attract enough revenue in donations, grants or other resources just to continue their work. Take away tax deductible charitable donations, and many nonprofits will shrink or close up shop.

And that would be a death blow to the moral fiber of communities as poverty, homelessness and hunger swamp society without the dike of charitable donations.

Job search might clash with involvement

This morning, I'm headed out for a meeting of a local charitable organization. Next week, I'll have a lunch meeting with another charity and an evening meeting of a church committee. In between, I'll be job hunting and filling out applications for any openings I might find. Although I am submitting applications for jobs within a 50-mile radius of Wilson, I am concerned about what a job in another city and a long commute would mean to my civic involvement.

Soon after I was laid off last fall, my wife and I concluded that we would stay in Wilson, meaning I would search for jobs only within Wilson or within a reasonable commuting distance. But commuting to another city or taking a job that allowed no flexibility would mean that I could no longer be involved in the charitable organizations to which I've given my time over the past several years.

When I first entered journalism, ethics and behavior codes were as prevalent in discussions as layoffs are now. At the time, conduct codes prevented a reporter from accepting a rose from the garden of a man she was interviewing. Newspaper editors were urged to seal themselves off from civic involvement so as to prevent any bias, actual or perceived, in news coverage. So I refrained from joining charitable organizations' boards or even civic clubs. Over the years, I and some of the navel-gazing philosophers of the business concluded that sealing oneself off from the community made it made it difficult to cover the news of that community. I eased into involvement in a few charities, such as Red Cross and United Way. More recently, I have been involved in other charities.

When I left the newspaper business, thinking I'd never return, I realized that I might have no more restrictions on being involved in the charities and nonprofits I  believed in. But as my job search has faltered, I now realize that a new job might mean the end of my involvement in all those organizations that meet at lunch or anytime during the normal work day.

Although I'll regret giving up that involvement, that contribution to the community to which I've hitched my future, a job is a job, and a job is increasingly hard to find.