Why More Investors Are Donating Stock to Charity

As the stock market reaches new heights after the presidential election, more investors are looking at their portfolios to see which securities have gone up the most—and then donating them to charity.

“We’ve seen an uptick in charitable giving using appreciated stock,” says Paul Stark, a wealth and estate-planning strategist at SunTrust Banks Inc.

That uptick is being fueled by assumptions about what a Trump administration will do.

“With Trump being elected, there’s more certainty that tax rates will be lower” in the years ahead, Mr. Stark says. That means investors who donate appreciated stock before the end of December will be able to deduct their gift’s value from a 2016 tax bill that could be higher than their 2017 tax bill.