Local charities worry ‘fiscal cliff’ may jeopardize donations

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

With the fiscal cliff looming over America, leaders with local nonprofits worry how automatic spending cuts and tax increases could affect their agencies.

And the time is growing shorter before the deadline to avert the fiscal cliff, which experts describe as a combination of expiring Bush-era tax cuts and automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that are the result of prior failures of Congress and President Obama to make a budget deal.

Marylyn DeFeo, volunteer executive director of the Samaritan Center, said she tries not to think about the possibility of the fiscal cliff, but it’s difficult not to do so.

“People are concerned about what’s going to happen,” DeFeo said. “We all are. We don’t know what the future is going to hold.”

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GrumpyGus 5 months, 2 weeks ago

They should be worried. When the feds say voluntary charity is no longer viable, we are now making charity mandatory through confiscatory taxes, fines, and penalties...true charity will dry up. There is only so much to go around, and I can't see myself increasing charitable giving, or even keeping it at the same rate if the government is going to take it from me anyway and hand it out to whomever they wish.