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By Sarah Matthews, Director of Individual Giving Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? How many have you broken already? I decided a few years ago that I was better off not making resolutions per se, but to set forth goals for myself over the next 12 months. I keep them to a maximum of three, and I make them very specific. This year, one of them is to learn to speak Spanish. I am traveling to Spain later this year, and I want to be able to get around easily, so I have taken steps to learn the language.

Uncertainty and opportunity. No one has a crystal ball on what changes will come to health care in 2017. (If someone does have a crystal ball, please send me the winning lottery ticket numbers for next Saturday. I prefer the Powerball.) If you have been on planet Earth for the past few months, you know that beginning January 21, 2017 we will have a new President with a new agenda. In addition to having a Republican in the White House, both houses of Congress have a Republican majority. We do not need a crystal ball to know that there will be changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) often referred to as ObamaCare. We can assume that some changes will be good and some will be not-so-good. That is how policy works.

Matching gift programs are extensions of corporate giving designed to provide a means in which businesses can support employee charitable giving. Like free money for nonprofit organizations, these programs increase the impact of your donor’s contributions. Companies of all sizes match gifts, and some donations can be tripled. Matching gift programs are often available for specific types of nonprofit organizations, including:

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) uses a five-star quality rating system to measure Medicare beneficiaries’ experience with their healthcare provider. This rating system evaluates the overall performance of the type of services a provider would offer and shows the rating in an easy-to-follow format available online at Home Health Compare.

If you’re thinking about making a donation to a non-profit organization, you may want to look through your portfolio before writing that check. That donation might be deducted on your federal income tax return as an itemized deduction. Many donors prefer a stock gift to outright cash because of the tax benefits. This is because some of those stocks may have substantial unrealized gains.