Choosing Recipients of Charity

December is the season of solicitations, and besides the catalogs peddling obscure gadgets and enormous hunks of meat from the Great Plains, you’ve also probably received an impressive pile of pleas from various nonprofit institutions.

Some people immediately throw away these missives from charities. Others find them a helpful reminder of causes that were once important to them or could be now.

To my mind, however, each of these letters is a nagging reminder to our household that we have failed to plan for charitable giving as carefully as we’ve planned for our savings. Even though we’re reasonably deliberate about allocating our investment assets, it usually isn’t until tax time that we tally up what we gave away. And rarely do we stop and ask why or which causes are our highest priorities.

This year, we hope to be more strategic, and I don’t think there’s any downside in anyone taking a less haphazard approach. Start by setting a rough budget for giving, and then divide that pie according to the causes and institutions that are most important to you. Here are five things to think about as you sort through the mail and draw up your own list of priorities.

THE WHY OF GIVING Giving is optional, so why do you give? There’s no right answer to this question, and if you do it just because it makes you feel better about yourself (or how you’ve earned your money), so be it.

But listing honest answers to the question can be clarifying. Jonathan Katz, a physics professor from Clayton, Mo., considers things he believes in and feels responsible for, keeping in mind that belief is necessary, but not enough, for responsibility.

He believes, for example, that diabetes research is a good thing, but he feels no particular responsibility for it because he has no diabetics in his family. But because his mother died of breast cancer, he feels some responsibility for supporting the cause of treating and eradicating it.

Indeed, these personal connections may be the most powerful motivators of all. It’s why so many people give first to PTAs or their alma maters, particularly those like me who received scholarship money and wish to pay it back and then some.

THE WHERE OF GIVING This is, perhaps, the toughest question: How best to divide your budget among neighbors in need (and local cultural institutions that enrich your life) and people in developing countries for whom help from elsewhere may mean the difference between life and death?

In an investing portfolio, making large, single bets is generally a recipe for anxiety and unhappy outcomes. With contributions, too, an equal split among global, national and local causes may be a good approach for the first draft of your giving budget.

That said, many of the people I spoke to this week find themselves swayed by current events, like the earthquake in Haiti. Others devote more of their (often limited) giving budget to local causes when the economy is particularly bad and more people closer to home are suffering.

Here, too, I’m not sure there is a right answer, though I’d be interested in hearing your approach to this tricky allocation question on our Bucks blog (nytimes.com/bucks).

THE WHEN OF GIVING Even outside this season of solicitation, we see opportunities to contribute practically every day. The need out there is acute and ubiquitous, so it’s little wonder that we are often so overwhelmed that we do nothing until a deadline arrives. Then, in the season of giving (and getting the tax deductions by Dec. 31), the solicitations show up and we make hasty choices.

But any institution would welcome your gift at another time of year, and spreading contributions across the calendar may actually make it easier for you to give even more.

One of my favorite Your Money pen pals is Ned Gerber, trained as an accountant and now a brother in the Anglican Benedictine Order of Christ the King in Sydney, Australia. He pointed me to an adage in an early Christian document known as the Didache, which suggests that you should “let your alms sweat in the palms of your hand.”

Wise stewardship, Brother Gerber added, doesn’t happen automatically. It takes time — and work.

DOING YOUR HOMEWORK So how best to know what organization will make the most efficient use of your gifts?

This is the subject of a fair bit of debate, and many people reflexively go to GuideStar or another Web site that offers data on nonprofit groups to make sure that an organization isn’t spending too much on staff salaries or other expenses.

That said, some organizations may play fast and loose when reporting those data. Leaders of other nonprofits note that if members of their staff aren’t constantly worried about making their own ends meet, they can throw themselves further into raising money for the cause.

Melissa Berman, the chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, offers advice to the kinds of donors who have so much money to give that nonprofit groups are happy to answer any of their queries. If you’re not that kind of giver, however, she suggests asking the institution three questions.

First, what is the problem you are trying to solve? Second, how do you think that will actually get solved? And finally, what evidence do you have that you are helping to solve the problem?

Ms. Berman’s organization, which was spun out of the Rockefeller family office in 2002, has posted other guidance on its Web site.

ROPING IN THE CHILDREN There are a number of ways to make children a part of your family’s giving. You can buy them a piggy bank that has a slot for charity and make sure they understand why you’re dropping off coats or canned food at their schools or community centers.

Then there’s the Hanukkah ritual that Dan and Barbara Aldouby have developed for their six grandsons, ages 5 to 18. Each of them gets a $10 check in the mail with the “to” portion blank. All pick their own cause to support and must report back on how they chose the recipient.

“I was born in 1931, and I can remember the bad old days,” said Mr. Aldouby of Yardley, Pa. “I remember looking at the kids and thinking they we’re living a much different lifestyle than the one that I had, where you maybe got one pair of new shoes for Rosh Hashanah. So how are they going to know that there is a whole different world out there?”

The results have been somewhat unexpected, though the Aldoubys don’t really mind as long as the money is going to help something, somewhere. “One of our grandsons chose the Ronald McDonald House,” he said. “He said the reason he chose it was because they make good hamburgers and they like kids. Who’s to argue with that kind of logic?”