New York ? Kathy LeMay lives in the college town of Northampton, Mass., with a mortgage and a 2005 Honda Accord hybrid that she’s paying off mainly by counseling billionaires and others on how to give away their money.

LeMay is a so-called generosity coach. She advises donors large and small to identify the issues they’re passionate about and the nonprofits that address them. She has worked with clients of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to her and representatives of the companies.

Whether you’re donating money, time or both, she recommends zeroing in on a few causes to develop expertise and relationships with organizations.

“Generosity should become a part of your life because of what it does for you and your sense of well-being,” she said LeMay, author of “The Generosity Plan: Sharing Your Time, Treasure, and Talent to Shape the World.” “You have a sense of being connected to something greater than you. It’s how you do it that defines whether you’re effective or become burnt out.”

LeMay, 39, was in New York commemorating the International Corporate Philanthropy Day. The first such occasion was in 2004, while the program dates from 1999, when actor Paul Newman helped start the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy. As of February, his Newman’s Own Foundation had given away $285 million. He died in 2008.

LeMay’s new book, “The Generosity Plan,” argues that strategic beneficence is the key. Focus allows you to say no to solicitations more often than yes. Scattershot onetime gifts aren’t emotionally satisfying, she said. And they confuse organizations, because they expect and solicit additional donations that don’t materialize.

“It’s not helpful to the nonprofit sector to be writing checks all over the place,” LeMay said. “You’re diluting your efforts.”

She gives away about 30 percent of her own income to charity and friends and family who live below the federal poverty line, which is about $22,000 a year for a family of four.

Nonprofits she supports include Farm Sanctuary, which advocates against “cruelty at factory farms” and shelters farm animals in upstate New York and northern California, and World Pulse, which publishes a magazine about global issues from a woman’s perspective.