Please email team@focus4democracy.org to receive invitations for our Zoom events. In your email, please tell us how you heard about Focus for Democracy.

The Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) rule allows traditional Individual Retirement Account (IRA) owners to deduct their Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) on their tax returns if they give the money to a tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) organization (other than a DAF).

To make a QCD, you must be at least 70½ years old on the date of the distribution. The amount of a QCD cannot exceed $100,000 per year for individual taxpayers or $200,000 per year for married couples filing jointly. You do not have to itemize deductions in order to benefit from a QCD.

To see whether your Retirement Account qualifies for this tax-saving provision, click here.

To learn more, here are some articles that may be helpful:

• Two tax-smart strategies for charitable giving with an IRA

• How to Reduce Your Taxes and AGI by Giving to Charity

We recommend you consult a tax or investment professional to understand how this applies to you.

(1) Please click on the registration link in our invitation email.

(2) Register for the Zoom event. (It’s fine to do this more than once!)

(3) Zoom will send you an email that has a link to the event.

(4) See you there!

Tax-deductible 501(c)(3) organizations are not permitted to support or oppose any candidates. Programs can include registering and turning out voters or educating them about issues or services. While they must remain nonpartisan, these efforts can target a particular demographic of voters.

501(c)(4) and (5) organizations, on the other hand, can spend your contribution to urge voters to support a particular candidate or to work at registering and turning out only people who they believe will vote for their favored candidates. Donations to these entities are not tax-deductible.

F4D is unlike other entities in that we aren't asking for any of the funds we raise to go to us. The only “program” we operate is to evaluate tactics and organizations and to recommend other organizations, like Working America, to support. So if you choose to check services like Charity Navigator, look up our recommended organizations instead. For instance, Working America’s Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) is listed here, and has a score of 97.

For a variety of reasons, we don’t send out recordings of our presentations or our slide decks. This is a very common question and we understand that it is often difficult to clear schedules to attend an event. We try to schedule several events on different days to accommodate different schedules.

Yes! Matching grants play a key part in our fundraising efforts. The stakes in our country are so high that some people are inspired to put up large donations to inspire others to donate, thus doubling the impact of their contributions. Contact us at team@focus4democracy.org if you’re considering a matching grant.

Please use the designated link we provided in the follow-up note so we can track our network's impact! Email team@focus4democracy.org if you need this link and to let us know you’ve donated!

Co-hosting one of our events is as simple as letting us know, and emailing an invitation to your friends and family telling them about the event you are co-hosting. Being a co-host requires little investment of time from you but can multiply your own contribution as your friends contribute and then invite their friends to do the same. And once they attend, we do the rest!

Email team@focus4democracy.org to sign up, get some tips, and see example invitations from other co-hosts.

Our events are led by Aaron Frank and facilitated by Julia Chang Frank. After introductions, Aaron typically provides an analyst briefing relevant to the current electoral cycle. That briefing is followed by the evaluation team’s recommendation, often with a guest speaker representing that organization. The event culminates with attendees pledging their support. Our leaders, including Aaron and Sandy Newman, respond to questions at the end.