Did you know the IRS has made it tougher this year for all of us good people who donate money to worthwhile causes? This year there are new rules in effect which greatly increase your record keeping responsibilities if you want to take a deduction for charitable contributions.

Until last year, your check book register was all the proof you needed to claim deductions for donations of money you made to qualifying charitible organizations. Starting this year you'll need to be able to provide some form of bank record or other written communication from the charity. Your written proof needs to show the name of the charitable organization, along with the date and amount of your contribution. If you go the bank record route, be sure that it shows the name, date and amount too. Acceptable bank records include canceled checks, bank or credit union statements and credit card statements.

This change probably rings familiar to anyone who has previously donated $250 or more to a chartable cause. Any donation of that size or larger requires written confirmation from the chartable organization in order to make it deductible for the donor.

Want to make this as simple as possible? Here's how I do it: Donate to one organization exclusively. That's right. I designate 100% of my donations budget (or very close to it) to one organization and one only. The only donations that don't go there are those checks I write to support a friend or co-worker's pet cause, or a dollar here and there. You know the ones I'm talking about.

But think about it for a minute, this idea of making all your donations to one charity alone. How much money do you have to donate in a given year? Unless you're a Bill Gates (Yes, I suspect Bill is probably a regular reader here at MyInvestmentBlog.com), you can't possibly make a real difference to more than one .org, can you? If you want your money to have the maximum impact possible, find a charity that makes a difference to you and make a commitment to them.

Aside from a number of ancillary benefits outside the scope of this article, your donation to that single charitable organization will greatly simplify your tax records keeping chore. You'll either have a very small number of canceled checks to catalog, or even better, only a single letter from your chosen charitable organization to have on file.

The new IRS rules for tracking donations of money this year might seem to be a real pain in the you-know-what. They will make life harder for the taxpayer, who now needs to track all his or her donations or risk having them declared non-deductible. They also make life more difficult for charitable organizations, who will find themselves deluged with requests for receipts for donations of all sizes, not just those over $250. A simple change in your donating behavior will make life a great deal easier for both you and the organization receiving your donated funds.