Welcome to the Jill on Money Podcast. It's a bonus episode and you know what December

means? It's not just shopping, it's also charitable giving season.

How can you make sure that your dollars are sent to the right places?

How can you maximize the tax efficiency of giving?

That's what I discussed on CBS this morning.

This morning's Aye on Money. Today is Giving Tuesday, meant to encourage charitable donations during the holidays.

The global generosity movement started seven years ago.

Americans including companies and foundations gave an estimated

427 billion dollars to U.S. Charities last year.

I'll do some quick math.

That's an average of more than a billion dollars a day.

How about that?

CBSU has been this business.

Analysts Jill's Lessengers here with how to make the most of your charitable giving this holiday season.

Jill, how do we make sure it's, first of all, that the charity we're giving to is legit?

First step, you go to the IRS website, IRS.gov and they actually have a tool and you can pop the name in of the charity and you

can see is this a charity recognized by the IRS, does it have an identification number?

And I think this is incredibly important.

You just don't want to willy-nilly start sending money in because there are a huge uptick,

there has been a huge uptick in charitable scams.

What kind of scams?

Well, this ranges from something kind of insidious.

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