How To Make A Memorial Donation

A memorial donation is a gift to a charity made in someone’s name after they die, usually in place of flowers. Sometimes the obituary names a charity. Sometimes they don’t, and you’re left to pick one yourself. Either way, it takes about ten minutes, and the gift keeps working long after the flowers are gone.

We see these gifts from the receiving end. Harmony & Healing is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and some of the donations that mean the most to us arrive with a name attached. A piano teacher. A drummer who ran an ambulance crew. Here’s how to make one, what to write, and what happens after you click the button.

How do you make a memorial donation?

Pick the charity. Check the obituary or the funeral program first. If the family asked for gifts to a specific place, go with it.
Make sure it’s a real charity. The IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search on irs.gov shows whether an organization can take tax-deductible gifts. You can also ask the charity for its EIN. Ours is 83-3162389.
Give, and say who it’s for. Most online forms have an “in memory of” field. On a check, use the memo line.
Pass along the family’s contact. Ask the charity whether it lets the family know a gift was made, and tell it whether you want the amount mentioned.
Keep the receipt. For a single gift of $250 or more, the IRS wants a written acknowledgment from the charity before you deduct it.
Tell the family yourself. One line in the sympathy card does it.

The right charity is the one that sounds like them

The memorial gifts people remember connect to something real in the person’s life. A lifelong gardener, a land trust. A veteran, a group that serves vets. Someone who spent their last months in hospice, the hospice itself, or a program that brought them some comfort there.

Music works the same way. Kevin G. Weber taught drum lessons for years and played with bands around southern Wisconsin. When he died in hospice care in June 2024, his friends, a crew of EMTs and musicians, sent a gift to us in his name. It fit. We pay professional musicians to play for hospice and hospital patients, and Kevin spent his life doing both halves of that.

Cynthia taught piano in students’ homes. In her final months she found the strength to sit at the piano she’d had since childhood and play “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” one more time. Her daughter, Belinda, told us about her after a gift arrived in Cynthia’s memory.

Did the family name a charity? Use that one. A memorial gift is for the people left behind as much as for the person who died.

How do you word a memorial donation?

Keep it plain. The words land on a form, a check or a card, and nobody on the other end is grading the prose, so a line or two is plenty even when you knew the person for fifty years. Use the name the family used. If she was “Peg” to everyone, write Peg.

On an online form, “In memory of” followed by the full name.
On a check’s memo line, “In memory of” and the name, or “IMO” and the name when space is tight.
In a sympathy card: “I’ve made a gift to Harmony & Healing in your mom’s memory. She loved to sing, and this felt right.”
In the obituary, if you’re the family: “In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Harmony & Healing, www.harmonyandhealing.org.”

There’s no right amount for a memorial gift

Nobody checks. If you’re stuck, start with what you’d have spent on flowers and go from there. A $25 gift still arrives with a name on it, and the name is the part families hold onto.

Some people give more because the cause fits the person so well. Others split a gift across two charities the family named. Both are fine.

Is a memorial donation tax deductible?

Usually, yes. When it goes to a qualified 501(c)(3), a memorial gift is a charitable contribution like any other, and it gets treated exactly the same way on your return as a gift you’d have made on an ordinary Tuesday. Two rules in IRS Publication 526 trip people up.

First, cash to the family isn’t deductible. That includes a crowdfunding page for funeral costs. The IRS doesn’t allow deductions for contributions to specific individuals, however kind the reason. Give that money anyway if the family needs it. Just don’t count it as a charitable gift.

Second, any single gift of $250 or more needs that written acknowledgment from the charity. And if you’re mailing a check near the end of the year, the IRS counts it as given on the date you mail it. Ask your tax preparer about the rest.

A memorial gift to us puts a musician in a hospice day room

Our professional musicians perform live for groups of patients in the day rooms and common areas of hospices, hospitals, memory care communities, VA facilities and rehab centers. We pay every musician. Patients and their families never pay a thing. A gift in someone’s name pays for one of those performances.

When a gift arrives in someone’s memory, we sometimes write to the family. We ask about the person. With their blessing, a few of those stories become Musical Memoriam posts on this site, like Cynthia’s and Kevin’s. It’s our way of saying the name out loud a little longer.

You can make a tribute gift by card or PayPal on our donation page, where there’s also an option to make it monthly. Prefer paper? Mail a check to Harmony & Healing, 11040 Bollinger Canyon Road, Suite E-938, San Ramon, CA 94582, with the person’s name on the memo line. Then email hello@harmonyandhealing.org with the name you’re honoring so we know who the gift is for. Our Candid profile has our filings if you’d like to look us up first.

Some families turn one gift into a lasting one

Start a monthly gift on their birthday. Or a bequest in a will that carries the person’s name forward. If you’re 70½ or older, a gift straight from your IRA can count toward your required minimum distribution. Our page on major gifts and planned giving lays out the options, and our guide to planned giving goes deeper.

Flowers last about a week. A song in a hospice day room, played because someone you loved cared about music, stays with the people who heard it.