Under Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) rules, an IRA can make a contribution directly from the IRA to a charity. The donation is not claimed as a deduction, though the distribution from the IRA is not reported in income, either. In fact, since the IRA itself is a pretax account, contributing directly from an IRA to a charity is the equivalent of a “perfect” pretax contribution.

Read more information about QCD rules and the discussion of donating to charity directly from your IRA at the Wall Street Journal:

http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/07/04/the-benefit-of-donating-your-required-ira-distributions-to-charity/