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Giving to a charity is easy, so they say. You write a check and send it off to your favorite 501(c)(3) organization. Come tax time, if you itemize, you may be able to deduct the amount (often up to 60%) of your adjusted gross income for cash gifts to qualified charities (though limits can be lower depending on the type of contribution and recipient).

However, most professionals would recommend that you put a bit more thought into how you give. For instance, instead of giving cash (which is basically what you’re doing when you write that check), you could try a more tax-friendly approach: give stock or mutual funds that have gone up in value during your time of ownership. You get a deduction equal to the full value of the securities at the time of donation (rather than how much you originally paid for them), and you never have to pay capital gains taxes on the appreciation.

If you want your donation to provide income during retirement, consider a charitable remainder annuity trust or charitable remainder unitrust, where you put money in a trust set aside for your favorite charity. Over the rest of your life (actually up to a maximum of 20 years), you receive income of at least 5% of the original trust value (annuity trust) or the annually recalculated actual value (unitrust) each year. When you die (or the term of the trust expires), assets remaining in the trust are given to the designated charity. In each case, there are tax calculations based on the assets and the income you receive, which determine the deduction you will get when you donate to the trust. Also, you avoid paying capital gains and depreciation tax recapture (if the assets happen to be real estate) on the property you contribute.

For example, suppose you happened to have $1 million worth of real estate that you originally purchased for $200,000. When you sold these properties, you would owe capital gains taxes on the $800,000 of appreciation, plus recapture of the annual depreciation deductions.

Now, let’s suppose you donated this property to a charitable remainder unitrust. The unitrust would sell the properties for $1 million and reinvest that money in stocks or mutual funds. Under this arrangement, you might get income in the first year of $60,000 (6% of the trust amount), avoid $120,000 in capital gains taxes, and receive an immediate tax deduction of somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000.

If the stocks and funds in the trust were to earn 7% a year (no guarantee, obviously), then the value of the trust would increase, over the next 20 years, to just under $1.5 million, at which time the full amount would be donated to the charity. Overall, you might receive approximately $1.2 million in income over the same 20-year period—a figure that, once again, depends on the earnings inside the trust.

Another alternative is the lead trust, which works essentially the same way, except that this time the income is paid to the charity for a 20-year term, and then the assets in the trust pass to your heirs estate-tax-free. The lead trust is only appropriate if your assets at death would exceed the current estate tax threshold ($13.99 million per individual, $27.98 million for couples).

Finally, some families are creating a charitable inheritance, where parents donate to a donor-advised fund, receive their tax deduction, and the donor-advised fund invests the assets to grow, until the fund is informed of where the assets should be distributed. The children are designated as the advisors to those assets, giving them the right to instruct the donor-advised fund on where to make donations. It’s a simple and creative way to provide the adult children with an opportunity to determine their own charitable inclinations.

The bottom line here is that giving can be more rewarding and more interesting than simply writing a check.