Charities are among the hardest-hit victims of the current economic slowdown. If you’re like me, you get two or three requests in the mail every day for help during tough times — most of them from well-known, deserving organizations.

For older citizens, however, there is a little-known, financially friendly way to help the organizations on Vashon and elsewhere that need funds now more than ever.

There is a provision in the tax law, know as the Direct Charitable IRA Rollover, which allows persons 70 and a half and older to give up to $100,000 to a charity and get the equivalent of a deduction, whether they itemize or not.

Let’s take the following example, involving someone we will call Margaret Mary Smith, a 72-year-old widow who has lived on Vashon all of her life and has enjoyed a 40-year teaching career at Vashon High School.

Her house is paid for, and she receives $18,000 a year in Social Security benefits. She also has taxable investment income of about $1,000 a month and a $300,000 IRA account with Vanguard.

Her children are doing better than she ever expected and want her to enjoy her assets. Because she has relatively few deductions, Margaret Mary will not be able to itemize.

Margaret Mary’s children urged her to do something for the town that would memorialize her and her late husband. What could be better than a scholarship in the Smith family name?

Margaret Mary could talk to the school district or to another charitable recipient with ties to the school district, such as Partners In Education (PIE), entities that could agree to use the funds for the named scholarship.

She would then direct Vanguard to transfer $2,000 a year to the Vashon Island School District or to PIE to be given to a graduating senior, chosen by Margaret Mary or others, in the name of the newly established Smith Family Scholarship.

If Margaret Mary had simply withdrawn the $2,000 from her account, or had Vanguard made the check payable to her, and the funds then given to the school district or to PIE, she would have been taxed on it. Since she did not have enough deductions to itemize, she would not have gotten a deduction for the gift.

However, because it was transferred directly by the IRA custodian to the charity, Margaret Mary will not be taxed on the $2,000 at all. Consequently, it has the same effect as a deduction.

The Direct Charitable IRA Rollover rules will expire at the end of 2009. However, because the provision has already expired once, at the end of 2007, and was extended by Congress to the end of 2009, it is likely that it will be further extended.

There are additional advantages for high income donors, whose deductions for such gifts would be limited to 50 percent of their adjusted gross income or, (the opposite of Margaret’s situation, where there are not enough deductions to itemize) whose income might be high enough to result in their loss of itemized deductions, in that the Direct Charitable IRA Rollover is both excluded from their income and also not counted for purposes of the 50 percent limitation.

Also, if, as expected, the Required Minimum Distribution rules, which required most people reaching age 70 and a half to take money out of their retirement plans, whether they need it or not, but which were suspended for 2009, are reinstated for future years, Direct Charitable IRA Rollover will provides another advantage in that it is subtracted from the required distribution.

If we assume that Margaret Mary is required to take $12,000 a year from her IRA, the $2,000 given to the school district or PIE for the scholarship would be subtracted from the $12,000 Margaret Mary would otherwise be required to take (and be taxed on). Because of this she will be taxed on only $10,000 for the year or years in which she has such the charitable rollovers made.

Again, there are many deserving charities on Vashon, some of which will have to curtail needed services because of an unforeseeable cash crunch.

If you are suffering from a similar cash crunch but would like to continue supporting your favorite charity, you might consider using the Direct Charitable IRA Rollover as a way to help.

Forms and assistance are available on the Web sites of IRA custodians, such as Vanguard, Fidelity or Schwab.

— Shelly Frankel and his wife Carol live in Burton. Shelly recently retired from Seattle University Law School after 37 years of teaching tax and related subjects.