Avoiding capital gains home sale

[Patrick Thomas Dickinson]

Hello

Any tax savvy people / cpas out there want to help me out. 

My moms selling her house in the Bay Area and will have a large amount of capital gains once it is sold, I have a few questions. 

1. You pay capital gains to the feds and your state of residence ( California for us) correct ? 

2. If my moms can creatively come up with a way to keep her taxable income below 47000$ ( for single filers) she would have to pay 0 in capital gains on the sale of her property, am i understanding this correctly. 

If so I’m thinking she could make some sizable donations which would lower her taxable income to below 47000$. It seems like a no brainer to me if I’m correct. Any insight on this ?