A business sale, a block of exercised stock options or a large capital gain can lift a family’s income far above its usual range for a single year. For families who already give, that spike is also when a charitable gift does the most tax work. This year, that window closes in about 10 weeks.
Justin Nelson, a managing director and head of the Asset Management and Financial Principals Coverage Team at J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Connecticut, advises hedge fund, private equity and real estate leaders and their families. He wants clients to treat the calendar as a planning tool.
“The biggest opportunity is usually to plan charitable giving at the same time you’re planning the rest of your financial life rather than treating it as something that happens at the end of the year,” Nelson said.
New Tax Rules Put a Price on Waiting
Timing carries extra weight this year. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, itemizers now absorb a 0.5% of adjusted gross income floor before charitable gifts become deductible, and filers in the top 37% bracket see the value of the deduction capped at 35%. The law was signed in July 2025, and both rules took effect Jan. 1. Existing limits still apply, too: deductions for gifted securities are generally held to 30% of AGI, with unused amounts carried forward for up to five years.
Donors saw the changes coming. More than 3,700 Americans opened charitable accounts at National Philanthropic Trust in the last two months of 2025, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, more than double the roughly 1,700 who did so in the same stretch a year earlier.
Families who missed that rush aren’t out of luck. They’ll need to line the gift up with the income.
Justin Nelson on Matching Gifts to Liquidity Events
“Particularly high-income years, large liquidity events and portfolio transitions can all create opportunities to accelerate charitable giving,” Nelson said.
His preferred tool for those years is the donor-advised fund. A family contributes a large sum when the income arrives, takes the deduction when eligible and recommends grants to specific charities over the years that follow. Most of the paperwork is handled by the sponsoring organization.
“A donor-advised fund lets you make the financial decision today and the philanthropic decisions over time,” he said.
Private foundations carry ongoing administrative, tax, reporting and governance requirements, so he often steers families toward a fund instead. “A foundation makes sense when the infrastructure itself is part of what you want to build,” Nelson said. “A donor-advised fund makes sense when you primarily want an efficient vehicle for giving.”
Speed has its own risks. Nelson, who has spent close to 30 years advising wealthy families, says sudden money calls for patience. “If you won Powerball tomorrow, you need to have thoughtful planning and great advisors to avoid rash decisions which can lead to bad outcomes,” he said. A fund lets a family lock in the tax benefit in the windfall year. Picking the charities can wait.
Why Stock Often Beats a Check
“The most tax-efficient charitable gift is often not a check,” Nelson said.
The math favors appreciated shares. A donor who sells a long-held stock pays capital-gains tax and then gives what’s left. A donor who gives the shares directly can support the charity with the full value and skip the tax on the gain. Wealth planners at JP Morgan, in guidance published last November, called long-held, publicly traded appreciated securities generally the most efficient asset to donate.
Donors have caught on. At Fidelity Charitable, 69% of contributions were non-cash assets, according to its 2026 Giving Report, which covers 2025. Its donors recommended $18.3 billion in grants that year, up 23%.
It hasn’t hurt that markets were strong. U.S. charitable giving reached an estimated $617.20 billion in 2025, topping $600 billion for the first time, according to Giving USA, which credited a strong stock market with lifting individual giving 4.1%. Bequests rose nearly 20%.
Nelson sees bequests as one more place to gain efficiency. Families that already plan to leave money to charity can coordinate those gifts with what passes to heirs, and he wants every part of the plan built at once.
“You don’t want the investment strategy, the tax strategy, the estate plan and the charitable plan operating independently,” he said. “The real opportunity comes when you design them together.”
The right structure depends on each family’s tax and estate picture, and Nelson says those choices belong in a conversation with tax and legal advisers. For Nelson’s clients at JP Morgan, and for any family sitting on a windfall in 2026, that conversation has a deadline: Dec. 31.
