Canadians are known to be generous when it comes to charity, 84% gave last year according to a recent BMO poll. Giving means you are helping a worthy cause and you can receive a tax receipt for your donation for tax savings. Though recent studies show Canadians don’t donate to charities to benefit from the receipt, reaping some tax savings can help your budget.
Nearly one-quarter of Canadians said they would be more inclined to donate to charity if it was more convenient. A Canadian company may have come up with the solution for making it easy to donate by empowering your small change to make a big difference.
ChangeIt allows users to round up every day purchases and direct the money to their charities of choice. Using the online application, users can control the charities they donate to, how much is donated every month and set a monthly maximum. You can choose any of the charities registered across Canada up to a maximum of five charities at one time. And if your budget gets tight, you can turn off ChangeIt until you are ready to start donating again.
Unlike dropping your loose change in the donation box or being asked at the checkout to make a donation to a charity, every cent donated through ChangeIt is tracked. This means that you’ll receive a tax receipt for every penny you give. And the small amounts on every day transactions may not seem like much but it can add up.
For example, if you spend $2.65 on a coffee and pay for it with a credit card, 35 cents will automatically be rounded up by ChangeIt for the donation. Not that I would recommend spending $2.65 every day on coffee but if you did from Monday through Friday for an entire year, that coffee would add up to $91 a year in donations ($0.35 x 5 x 52). This large sum is easier to give in small increments providing the ability to balance giving without intruding on an existing budget.
ChangeIt is available to a select number of credit unions in Western Canada and recently launched nationally with BMO – the first of the major banks to sign on.
As the holiday season approaches with the promise of stretching your budget, you may want to take advantage of an easy way to make charitable donations just by paying for your everyday transactions. It’ll help charities tremendously, and it’ll save you some taxes when you file your return. With ChangeIt, your small change can make a big difference. For more information, visit https://changeit.com.
Our electric co-op has a “round up” option, where if you let them “round up” your bill to the next nearest dollar, those few cents are put into a special fund the co-op has set up to help people on fixed incomes who are struggling with their electricity bill. It’s not a lot, and not the only way we give, but things like that sure makes giving easy.
Not sure why convenience would be such an issue these days, though, as many charities allow you to set up an automatic monthly donation.
This is a really interesting idea. I personally donate on a monthly basis and just set up recurring payments (so I also find that this is just as easy). But for people who are less inclined to do this, this feature may be a great way to encourage them to donate. It would be interesting to see how this plays out.