From a tax perspective, at least, if she does enough business, the assumption could be that she's making the investment as a business expense, not as a charitable donation, so that should be fully deductible on her Schedule C. The fact it's going to a worthy cause is just a bonus.
Where someone could theoretically get into a fix in this situation, though, is if they end up running their notary business at a loss, but have other outside income, then try to take this business expense as a deduction, especially if they've done taken a loss in the past. If large write-offs are being taken, I believe the IRS expects a business to show a profit after a certain number of years.
Write off or not, I would think the judgment as to whether or not it's a good investment would depend on whether or not it produces any results.
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