I would like to know, to the extent to which you would like to tell me, where you like to do social good with MONEY. That is, I know some of you volunteer your time and/or skills, and some of you use your position/power to pull other people up, and some of you write letters and make calls and circulate petitions, and some of you fundraise, and some of you coordinate workplace efforts that benefit the community, and some of you loan your possessions, and there are lots of other good non-money ways to do good—but right now I am only wondering about the things you do that involve giving away your own actual money. Well, or things that involve giving away items you have to buy with your own actual money, such as if you buy diapers and donate them, or if you buy presents to donate to a family at the holidays.
If you would like to discuss it (and feel free to go anonymous: the comment form asks for an email address, but it accepts fake ones), this would be a very useful place to mention some of the ways you yourself were helped at a time in your life when you needed it. Paul and I were extremely helped by a local, non-government program that helps to pay dental expenses for children: Rob was about six, and we were so strapped for cash we weren’t going to the dentist, and a school dental screening showed Rob had several small cavities. There was no way we could pay for that, but there was a fund, and there was a matter-of-fact person running the fund, and she matter-of-factly connected us to a dentist and paid the bill, and also arranged for him to have sealants (sealants are an excellent example of “it’s more expensive to be poor”: not being able to afford them can lead to expensive dental problems). I can get weepy just thinking about it.
This is a fine moment to mention charities you like, but I am particularly interested in other ideas. Here are some of the neat ones I’ve seen:
• donating money to a school, asking them to use it to help pay off lunch-account debts
• donating money to a library, asking them to use it to help pay off fines and lost-material fees (the library SHOULD be the perfect resource for people without much money—but anyone’s kid can accidentally lose a book, and some libraries won’t let you check out anything else until the fines are paid down, or a family might be embarrassed to keep being asked at check-out if they will be paying off their account)
• donating money to an auto mechanic, asking them to put it toward someone who needs help paying for a repair
• donating money to a vet, asking them to put it toward someone who needs help paying for a treatment
• buying pants/underpants on good clearances for the school nurse’s office; the nurse can use them for kids who have an accident or a muddy fall, but nurses are also in a good position to find a way to discreetly get the clothes to kids who may need them
• buying backpacks on good clearances in the fall, and donating them in early summer to local welfare groups who collect such things
• buying winter outerwear on good post-season clearances, and donating them in the fall to local welfare groups who collect such things
• buying the really-good-sale foods at your grocery store each week, having them bagged separately, dropping those bags in the donation bins on your way out
• banding together with a group (church, social, work) to put together a scholarship for a local high school senior (when Rob was a senior, there were a lot of scholarships in the $500 range)
But I am not ONLY interested in creative/non-traditional ideas. I want to hear ALL of them: one person’s “well, this isn’t creative or interesting, but I…” is another person’s “OH, I hadn’t thought of doing that, but it really appeals to me!” Also, I hope I don’t need to say this, but let’s be on the safe side and say it anyway: this is not the place to criticize other people’s methods of giving. That is, I don’t want to see a link to that article that tells people to stop donating food to food banks, even though food banks are asking for food donations. I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing makes me want to give up and do nothing.
My university just sent out a call for donations. Apparently I can sponsor a “wellness basket” for a student in exams. The basket has nice pens, a quality notebook, expensive lip balm etc. For an extra three dollars they will include a potted plant. I remember how stressful university exams were and if someone bought me lip balm and a potted plant I think I would have cried. Seriously considering buying the basket
Oh my gosh a potted plant. That is the part that gets me, too.
Appolition https://appolition.us/ is a great example of this – you hook up your card, and then every time you make a purchase, the change to the nearest dollar is donated to help people who can’t afford bail.
I teach science biweekly at an underprivileged school, and twice I have noticed 4th grade students wearing glasses held together by tape. So I asked our internet community to chip in to buy glasses, and the first time I had $300 within 8 hours, the second time I had $320 within 2 days. (The second time was just this week.) I PayPal-ed the money over to the teacher and said she should just keep any extra and use it to get kids other stuff they need, and then suggested a glasses fund, and now I’m wondering about the logistics of starting a glasses fund locally.
If you have a LensCrafters near you, it’s worth asking if they would donate glasses to students in need. We have a program at my school where the teacher can fill out a referral form and the parents can take their kids to LensCrafters to get glasses at no cost.
Wow, I had no idea that program existed! Thank you for mentioning it.
I’m not as good at this stuff as I’d like to be, so I’m looking forward to reading some good ideas.
A high school acquaintance’s family member invented a wheel chair alternative for little kids. Basically, it allows the kids to be closer to the ground and therefore makes it easier for them to play. Every year they do a giveaway for people that can’t afford the device. I donate to that.
My friend recently became a foster parent. I’m not sure it even really counts, but I’m finding clothes and toys to purchase for the kids. It’s surprising how little stuff they come to the foster home with.
This totally delights me. I’m in the licensing phase to become a foster parent right now, and the whole thing is EXPENSIVE. There are no fees, but stuff adds up (books, toys, fire extinguisher, locking door knob for the closet that has the medicine in it, etc.). I’ve been touched to the point of tears when people have given me, for example, a waterproof mattress pad.
Related to that, there’s a fabulous, local-to-me organization called Treehouse that provides all sorts of stuff for foster kids– funds for clubs, new clothes, tutoring/academic support, etc. It’s an amazing, amazing place that does fantastic good with the money and goods it receives.
The wheelchair alternative so the kids can play together has me in tears at my desk. Wow, what a wonderful device.
I match families/small groups from my church with college freshmen and sophomores who are away from home for the first time. The students receive something small each month from their sponsor (a small note with a small denomination gift card is what I usually send), a birthday card, and two care packages each year, one in early December and one in early May, to get them through their finals. The students have filled out a profile ahead of time so that their sponsors are aware of any food allergies, likes/dislikes, etc.
I remember how tough it was to be away from home for the first time and it gives those with a little extra time and money a way to help out a kiddo whose parents may be strapped for cash because of the rising costs of college.
LOVED the idea about donating to the library to cover fines for people….my grand daughter had ran into this even, and I didn’t even think about doing this. Our library in Missoula, MT, has a couple of times during the year where you can donate a can of food for the local food bank to forgive your fines. Will be interesting to follow this thread.
I also donate to Ronald McDonald House, as was able to use it in San Francisco when the same grand daughter had heart surgery. We have a RMH in Missoula as well.
I’m not sure if this counts. I’ve been buying hard back books again, rather than Ebooks, that way I can immediately donate them to the library. Or, if I’m traveling I leave a finished book in a hotel room, by the pool, or other random places to pay it forward. We sponsor little league team jerseys. I make sure to purchase something from Love-water.org each year for my kids gifts. This year they got awesome new water bottles, and Love Water was able to sponsor two families.
You might already do this, but leave a note in/on the book so they don’t end up in a lost and found waiting for you to come back! :)
We have a local charity that supplies and delivers pet food and litter to seniors in need. The expense and physical load can be barriers to pet ownership. I’m not sure if there’s a national charity that does it, though.
Our district accepts new school supplies for families who need assistance, discreetly. They also keep a scholarship fund, which is is what they use to make sure no child has to skip a school trip (including weekend camp in 6th grade) due to lack of funds.
One charity I love donating to is called Modest Needs. It’s for keeping the social contract alive. Submit your need for crowdfunding up to a limit; it gets verified and the money is paid directly to the vendor of the goods or services. It is meant to be used for working people, to keep them from sliding into poverty because of a car repair, utility bill, or pair of glasses. Sometimes I like to be the first donation, and other times I like to cap off the last bit.
My dream job is philanthropist, but I’m lacking just one qualification.
I like the idea of the charity that supplies and delivers pet supplies to the elderly in your neighborhood. What is the name of that charity? I would like to see if they a chapter in my area. Thank you.
In missoula montana we have a local group called animeals which does the same.
It’s an offshoot of Meals on Wheels but goes by different names everywhere.
I also give to Modest Needs monthly! I think it’s just a great charity; there are so many people who are doing ok until they get one unexpected issue which can push them into poverty. It feels much more immediate than our other charities. We also give monthly to Heifer International and Planned Parenthood, and to other charities as issues come up or opportunities present themselves. I always feel bad about not doing more, but given our skill sets money is almost certainly more helpful than our time.
This is so great! I read about Modest Needs somewhere years ago (when I had no money), and looked for it a few years ago but I couldn’t remember the name, and my Google Fu was not good enough to find it again.
DonorsChoose is a fun place to donate money. Teachers post things they need (or would like) for their classroom, and your money goes directly to buying those specific items. There’s a wide range of schools and projects to choose from, so it’s fun to look through the projects for something that interests you. I teach in a low-income area where teachers use their own money to buy everything (including essentials such a paper and pencils). My class has had many projects funded by complete strangers, and each time it makes me teary with gratitude.
Yes! Donors Choose is awesome! I’m a preschool special ed teacher at a Title I school and I get so many amazing resources through Donors Choose! I’m consistently amazed by the kindness and generosity of strangers. I like that you can search by subject, location, type of materials requested, etc. You can even help fund a field trip for a class! It’s a great place to help children in need.
I love digging around DonorsChoose and finding a request that hits me in the heart. Sometimes I search by local schools, sometimes by the project. Love it!
Elle, my company has donated to DonorsChoose as well. In line with that, we also donated old binders, folders, and other office supplies to a charity here in St. Louis that provides hose things to teachers and underprivileged youth that may not be able to afford school supplies.
I’ve donated to several charities with my church as well: food pantries (we do a “souperbowl” thing in feb.), adopt a family (Xmas gifts at holiday time), etc.
Recently I’ve been giving my daughter’s clothes that she’s outgrown to a friend who gives them to a teacher in a underprivileged school district where many of the kids don’t have permanent homes, clothing, shoes,etc. I feel much better about that than say Goodwill bc I know it’s to a good cause directly in my surrounding community.
Some great ideas!
I set up recurring donations to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU (last January, ahem); giving $5 a month to each is something I can afford and makes me feel better. It isn’t much, but as a knitter I understand how small things add up.
More recently, a friend whose daughter was selling Girl Scout cookies said that if anyone wanted to support the scouts without bringing cookies into their house, she was raising money to give a whole bunch to a food pantry near her, which I thought was a great idea. Happy to support that.
We always adopt an angel tree child that corresponds with the age/gender of each of our three kids at Christmas time. We try to shop smart and buy everything on the (heartbreakingly modest) children’s wish list. I’ve made blankets for Project Linus and goodnight bags for kids accompanying their mothers to domestic violence shelter (pjs, toothbrush, stuffie and storybook). For three years now our teacher gifts at the holidays has been a donation to No Kid Hungry in each teacher’s name. For $10 you get a card telling them about the donation. We have had an overwhelmingly positive response to this and I enclose a note telling the teacher I want to provide another child with something as valuable as what they give my kids. No more angst over teacher gifts and hungry kids is something that really pings my heart. Can’t wait to get more ideas from these comments!
I don’t even have kids and LOVE the idea of a donation to No Kid Hungry as a teacher gift, what an absolutely perfect Idea.
oh, that’s such a good idea. teacher gifts make me nuts
this is brilliant, and I’m going to do it from now on!
I’m a lifelong reader and I like to support local libraries. I support them four ways. #1 I donate soft and hardbacks to the Friends of the Library group after I’m done reading them. They sort and sell these books and use the money for buying new materials for the library. #2 Every time I am at the library I check that section to see if there are any books I’d like to buy. #3 If I have any extra money I donate directly to the local library’s materials fund. That money is only used to buy new material for the library as well. #4 my library is listed as an Amazon smile charity so every time I buy something a couple cents on the dollar gets kicked back to the library. Most libraries have at least one of these programs and I know you read as much as I do AND you have social anxiety like me to and detest hating talking to strangers. So every time you read or buy something on Amazon you’re helping out all fellow readers.
I like to keep a watch out on social media and in my immediate social circle and I try to donate to fundraisers as they come up. I was feeling discouraged last December about consumerism and tight budgets, etc. and I added up all those $5, $10 ,$20 donations that I had been contributing to various fundraisers and it added up to $300! That made me feel better about actually making a difference. The fundraisers last fall/winter that we contributed to included gas cards to get refugee families to and from dance classes (my friend owns the studio and donated free classes and dance shoes to several refugee children); my kids’ school’s Sub for Santa; a diaper drive for the homeless shelter; a fundraiser for Hurricane Harvey families and Puerto Rico families, etc.
I hope those numbers aren’t gauche to talk about, I’m the kind of person who finds concrete examples really helpful, so forgive my oversharing.
I appreciate it! I had the same thought when looking through receipts at tax time, I felt like we hadn’t done hardly anything last year but the total reassured me that we had done SOMETHING. I now have a goal to beat for this year! The small amounts DO add up!
Boring but, I sign up for payroll deductions for the United Way (an umbrella charity) through my employer. I started with $1/day when I started out and have been steadily increasing that amount as my earning power increases.
I also try to say yes when people I know ask for contributions except through social media. There would be just too many if I said yes to those. But when neighbours’ kids are doing a “dance-a-thon” or there is a donation-in-lieu-of-flowers request at a funeral, I often donate. I also add to the plate on the few occasions that we attend church.
We have some designated monthly contributions we do (besides our church tithe): missionaries (some of whom are family members), Compassion International (a boy in Malaysia), the college I work for for scholarships. These are all automated giving amounts so I don’t have to really think about it and I don’t miss the money as much that way. Then we try to give to other things that come up: special offerings in church, children who are selling stuff for their school fundraisers (my husband drives a school bus so he gets asked a lot). We like the personal touch and are often happy to give some when we are asked personally. We also give a little to Habitat for Humanity, World Vision or Samaritan Purse for disaster relief, Special Olympics, the food bank, and other local charities in the area. None of these amounts are large. Then at the end of the year, we usually donate a little extra to organizations like Angel Tree, and I always try to put money in the Salvation Army Kettle, and do boxes for Operation Christmas Child. We feel we have been blessed and try to share that blessing. Some years the finances are better than others, so these amounts may change from year to year.
Only recently have I been able to make the transition from donatee (?) to donator. Over the years my kiddo has received a scholarship for glasses from the Lions Club (connected by our school nurse), I got my Implanon birth control completely subsidized by a private donation fund at Planned Parenthood, and we received a partial scholarship so she could go to a week long summer camp.
I don’t have a set schedule for giving but if the budget allows I try to add a little extra. When I pay the $36 yearly school supply fee, I add $14 for the scholarship fund. When the field trip permission slips asks for $5, I send in $10.
This Christmas we used the app DayMaker that’s like a virtual giving tree all year long. You can give a specific gift from a list or money, and it is facilitated by local social programs. It was the fuzzy feeling of choosing gifts and doing good with the ease of shopping online (I am so tired of stores and people).
I’m a child welfare social worker so I donate to children/families in need through that. I work for a government agency, but some of my co-workers also run a nonprofit on the side that we can use to request items for children’s well-being/social life. Stuff like sneakers and fees to join their school basketball team, etc. I donate money to that. Also if I’m working with a family that is not very well off or have a kid who is in a dependent shelter with a birthday I’ll use my own money to take that child out to eat or get them a cake and a gift.
The weekend before Christmas, good friends of ours always hold an annual open house from noon to 6 pm at their home. They supply a huge feast of amazing homemade Mexican food, and in exchange they ask everyone to bring a store or restaurant gift card (in any amount) for a local nonprofit that benefits underprivileged teens. It’s the perfect for that crunch-time weekend when you’re running around doing last-minute errands and the last thing you feel like doing is cooking! Everyone just pops in when it’s convenient for them, and it’s a nice way to see friends and connect with them before the holidays. This past year they raised more than $800!
Love this!!
I worked for about 15-16 years as an inner city preschool teacher (funding from the government but privately operated schools). The lack of good children’s books that the students have access to at home and in school is sad. I had tried to enroll my class/school into the programs for receiving free books but there are many, many hoops to jump through in order to receive free books. Therefore, I wish that there was a way where parents and the community could get together and help build a quality children’s library in the preschool classrooms and at home.
Is your old school still open? I’d love to help make this happen if it’s still a need. Really.
It would be awesome for Swistle’s readers to make this happen. I know that you can set up an Amazon wish list for a school/group/whatever, then it’s really easy for shoppers to buy stuff off their list, and as a Prime member I’m so stoked to not pay shipping that it frees up more money for stuff!
I volunteer at a local food pantry, and they wanted to stop purchasing plastic bags for clients (to save $ and the earth). I stared a tote bag drive at work, and have gotten a great response – you get to clean out your overflowing drawer/closet and the food pantry can buy more food! It’s a little thing that means a lot. In terms of cold hard cash, I also like to support my local college radio station, as well as various national and local charities (PP, ACLU, City Harvest). The last thing is the most fun – every xmas, through a local organization, sign up for a winter wishes program — you can specify little kids, teens, seniors, and get their (heartbreaking) “Santa” letters. Usually spend about $40-$50 and get an immense amounts of holiday joy in doing so.
If you would still like tote bag donations for the food pantry, please let me know. I imagine I have at least a dozen I could send your way – they seem to multiply overnight, and I’d love for them to go somewhere useful!
I have sent money or books or specific requested items to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There is a huge variety of people to help there: children, teens, babies, elders, etc. They often have links to the items they request so you can buy online and have it sent directly to the organization that needs it.
https://friendsofpineridgereservation.org/projects/
We have an automatic donation with the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and the Sacramento Children’s Home.
Other ways we donate –
When someone on Twitter or Facebook asks for a specific reason.
I try to send random gifts to around five people a month. Last month it was a votive candle, pajamas, a Starbucks card, grapefruit, and a book. This month so far Starbucks.
A lot of our giving is through school. We pay twice for field trip fees and ask the teacher to pay for someone who might need it. We donated underwear to the underwear drive. We donated to the 6th grade pasta dinner, the jog a thon, the family baskets at Christmas, all that kind of stuff. I also donate all my unneeded books to the library and they sell them in their store but I don’t know if that counts. And in the summer we take our extra produce to the food bank to donate.
My favorite idea so far is the Christmas feast! I am totally doing that!!!! What an awesome idea.
I donate to https://www.donorschoose.org/ I usually pick art projects in my neighborhood schools. I also give to a local animal rescue group (where I adopted my adorable cat) who uses the money to bathe and groom homeless peoples’ pets and also gives them food and supplies. I found the second group on Instagram. Both of these organizations have low overhead so most of it goes to the cause.
I just dug though the site some more to fund a couple projects (I love Donors Choose!). There is an option to search for donations being matched. So for each dollar you give, another organization is matching it so it’s double the impact. And to top it off my company matches donations 100% up to $2500 each year so it’s a triple impact. Needed a little pick me up today and that made me happy.
I’m not very good at regular donations – that is, I tend not to have charities I ALWAYS donate to, or donate to monthly, or anything. I sort of randomly donate when I see something that tugs at me, or a link goes up from someone I really admire to a charity or GoFundMe they are supporting.
My few regular donations are to the Christmas toy drive the firefighters put on in our area (I take the kids shopping to pick out something suitable for a child their age), and to the local homeless shelter through our school’s Socktober program. The 6th graders at my daughters’ elementary school do an October drive for packages of new socks that they can donate to the winter shelter. They also do other drives throughout the year, and fundraisers, so I try to donate when I can to those.
My church also does a “share the plate” thing at certain times of the year, in which they pick a charity on a particular Sunday and half of what you put in the offering basket goes to that charity. I also donate to the local food pantry through church, and all kinds of other charities that crop up through the year with events or fundraisers. One of the reasons I joined a church was to have a path for charitable donations (as well as volunteering) that I didn’t have to forge myself, so that’s worked out well, I think.
So that is what I do. What I would LIKE to do is have a set amount to donate every month to a different “area” I care about. That is, one month might be women’s rights, and one month might be racial justice, and one month might be helping the homeless, and one month might be something that aids the elderly, and so on. I think this would help me be more organized in my giving, while also allowing me flexibility in picking different charities. I could even see having a master list of charities I like for particular areas, like, “It’s February, it’s “save the environment month,” let’s look at the list and decide between the World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace.” I think this would really help with what I like to call donation paralyzation – I wish I could donate in so many areas I end up donating to none of them.
I did this “one charity a month” approach a few years ago and it was fun. I tried to give about $50 to whatever struck me that month. Only problem is getting on too many renewal lists!
A friend who works for a nonprofit said that organizations are glad to hear from donors about what the donors’ plans are. (This may not work if you’re not an annual donor, but I was asking whether they preferred a lump sum or a trickle and once I’d picked, how could I get them to stop suggesting Other Ways to Help.) So writing to the charity and saying, “I have scheduled an annual donation to be paid in April, and I would like not to receive other solicitations” makes their job easier.
Great post, great reminder to make donating a priority (for me).
1- we buy Christmas presents for under privileged kids off a Christmas tree
2- I donate about $50-100 a year to the college sports program I was a part of. It’s barely anything but I love the program; they did their best for us and a lot of schools just do the bare minimum to stay title ix compliant. My experience was different and I am so grateful.
3- I try to say yes when the cash register asks if I want to donate to whatever. I can spare a dollar each week.
4- I donate my kids’ clothes to goodwill. It’s nice stuff, not worn out. I feel guilt like I should donate it to a shelter, foster group etc but it becomes overwhelming to me if I try to do that. I hope that the clothes going to goodwill make it to a nice young family who needs it. It’s the best I can do.
My husband and I are not habitual church goers so I always tell myself to donate when asked elsewhere, since it’s not like we’re giving a weekly amount to a church (a good portion of which would be used to do good works). This week I’m donating to my senator’s re election campaign and every town for gun safety, which I’ve donated to in the past. :(
I just want to say how much I love this post and comment section. It’s full of great ideas and it’s making me a little weepy.
Some of the creative ways we’ve done social good with money (that haven’t been listed above) include:
Donating supplies to local animal shelters. They can often use items we would otherwise just recycle as animals beds/toys/litter trays. Also, a few times a year our local shelters have discounted promotions and I have stopped in to pay the adoption fee for a pet, or two, while these are going on, so that the shelter can promote some of their animals who might be particularly hard to adopt or less easy to find a family for than say a kitten or puppy.
There is a local program funded by teacher donations that provides scholarships for high school students to attend the annual NAACP dinner. And we always donate to that through work.
I was just coming here to suggest the adoption fee payment idea–just this weekend I saw a local shelter was advertising free adoptions thanks to an anonymous donor who paid for a large number of adoption fees so pets could be adopted at no cost.
Money wise, since I just did my taxes, this is fresh in my mind: My workplace supports the American Heart Association, with our local AHA chapter reps coming to see us and explain how the funds are used, so I give there via monetary donation AND because I work for in retail, I inadvertently give a lot more when other departments have sample sales (proceeds go to the AHA). Laptop for $100? Fine Jewelry for $5? Yes, please! My wallet is always angry during sample sale time of the year for AHA!
I give clothes donations locally in my city to CASA, which supports victims of domestic violence with various programs and housing…the sellable items go to their thrift shop to raise funds and non-thriftable items go directly to victims who need help and don’t have anything when they arrive at CASA (tshirts, shorts, PJs, etc.).
I gave to Austin Pets Alive solely because of the urgent work they were doing after Hurricane Harvey and the funds were directly being used to continue that work immediately. And I gave to Animal Aid Unlimited (USA) because you can specify where the money goes and they have international chapters. Oh, and Portlight Strategies, which helps disaster affected individuals. Little did I know, I’d be hit with Hurricane Irma after donating for Harvey. Luckily, everything was fine minus lost power for 6 days. Then Maria hit and I was stunned, and circled back to see what I could do there. It seemed a bit more hopeless with Maria because they were so cut off and I still think about personal stories I heard from friends and co-workers who have family in Puerto Rico that were out in the rural areas. Heartbreaking.
Lastly, because I dream of adopting another dog day, I gave to Golden Retriever Rescue of Mid-Florida. My goal in life is to adopt all the senior goldens and give them a great last few years.
Volunteer wise, I am a member a 501c3 group that not only has copious amounts of fun, but we help the 1Voice Foundation (pediatric cancer) and the Florida Aquarium. We have to volunteer 40 hours a year, and it’s really a fun way to give my time via volunteer events/opportunities.
Not as creative as trying to cover fines, etc (which are fabulous ideas and I love to stay local), but I do what I can. Cheers!
I haven’t done this yet, but I really want to give monthly to water.org. I saw a sponsored FB post with a long video about how it got started and the good it’s doing in getting clean water for all and 100% goes to the cause.
At Christmas time we always give our kids’ classroom teachers a $250 budget and they give us a list and we buy it. Some teachers have wanted a mini ipad, one sent an Amazon wish list of books for the classroom and a subscription to scholastic news, another wanted those wobble chairs for kids who can’t sit still, and another wanted various teaching tools like DVDs and such. It always feels so good to give them th gifts :)
Sorry I keep thinking of something else! I love Glennon Melton’s non-profit, Together Rising. She does Love Flash Mobs and it’s always a great cause, usually to people who write to her asking for help or things that come up like the refugee crisis or Hurricane Harvey. She’s good at getting the money where it needs to be to help the most.
YES! Yes, yes, yes. So good!
My kids school always have special dress up days i.e. wear Holiday pajamas, Dr. Seuss inspired, lots of dots, pockets, etc. I’ve emailed my kids teacher to ask for sizes for classmates that might not have special outfits. I’ve purchased them at target and just sent them to school. The teacher has taken stuff home and washed it and dressed the kids. I know there are more important things, but always feel sad for kids who aren’t able to participate.
Oh man, this got me right in the heart. That is an absolutely lovely thing to do and every bit as important in its way as the other things mentioned in these (awesome) comments.
I split up my donations between several organizations and do a little bit of rotation and reorganization every year or so. There are so many to give to it can be overwhelming so I separate them into subject matter and national/local charities to feel like I’m getting good coverage. I am very lucky in that I work for a company that matches my donation amounts and takes the money right out of my checking account. The last few years I’ve focused on environmental protections and women’s health nationally and animals and children locally. It’s really helped me feel like I’m doing as much as I can for as many organizations as I can. This year I’m going to give more to foster children locally (Treehouse, which someone mentioned above!). I know this might sound boring and not very fun, but I like seeing how it adds up over the year and all of a sudden I’ve donated an amount that doing it all at once would have seemed prohibitive.
I like knowing my funds directly help someone. Right now that’s mostly to my kids’ school. Sometimes I feel like if I’m sending money to an organization, it just goes…where? So I like to send in double field trip money with a note to use it for someone in the class or the grade that my kid is in and if no one needs it, the teacher can keep for classroom supplies or donate to PTA. I like to send in extra money for the school book fair for the teacher to be able to sponsor a student that may not get a book.
I like to give money more to individuals than to big organizations when I can. Some of my favorites are:
Sending money to Maureen up there to buy glasses for kids.
I send double the money for field trips to my kids’ schools in case someone else in the class can’t go because they can’t afford it. (If everyone can go, the teacher sends it back to me.)
I buy candy grams for the entire class when my kids’ schools have those as fundraisers. (I get double the benefit there. The school gets the money for the fundraiser and no one gets left out by not getting the candy delivered to class.)
Whenever Twitter fundraisers for something.
One of my friends where I used to live left an abusive marriage. One of my other friends and I buy her a gift card at Christmas and leave it anonymously in her mailbox every year.
So many lovely ideas. Good job everyone!
I’m trying to think what I do. As far as charities, I’m random. I gave $25 to the SPLC for someone else once and then I got on the newsletter mailing list and now I send them all my money (not really all, but, they get a nice chunk of change. I can’t even read the newsletter. I dream of the day they can’t publish it for lack of awful people doing awful things.)
I have a friend in VA who is super PTA mom (super). She runs a food pantry for food insecure children in the schools (where they can take a backpack of food home on the weekends) and I’ve sent her Trader Joe’s gift cards for that. They also give away winter coats to children that don’t have them – I just sent her 8 coats from Land’s End clearance, about $20 each. Clearance is awesome.)
My husband works in Boston and passes all sorts of homeless (we assume) people all the time, so I buy nice wool socks from a store when they’re cheap (it’s the Kittery Trading post, and they’re under $5/pair, not like smartwool, but fine enough) and then make him take them to work and give them away to people he sees, which he actually really likes to be able to do.
I grew up in an area with a huge hispanic population (mostly Dominican and PR) – after the Hurricane someone from high school knew someone else who was organizing donations so we sent a package (rice, beans, solar charger, maybe batteries? I can’t remember and a bunch of other stuff) to a man in PR and the family sent the nicest thank you note. Which still makes me smile.
If I know someone in an area affected by some sort of disaster, I ask them where to give – we gave to something in Baton Rouge after the floods and a dog shelter in NOLA. There’s a group in TX that I can’t remember the name of and can’t find on Facebook, that I sent a bunch of clothes and shoes (honestly, that land’s end clearance is amazing) after Harvey.
I’ve done the bailout funds.
I sent money for Black Panther tickets through a group.
I dig the nurture project international (which supports breastfeeding and mothers/infants in refugee situations, as well as natural disasters I think.)
ACLU.
Planned Parenthood, although I’ve been bad about that because I’ve been sending my money hither and yon for others in need.
I have asked at my child’s school about: coats, school supplies and paying fees for extra-curricular activities and have been declined (which annoys me to no end. BUT, I do not want to run these programs, so, super PTA mom friend wins)
And that’s what I can think of off the top of my head. I go back and forth over: give to the same organizations over and over OR give to organizations that speak to me in the moment…and, I dunno. But I do think giving is so important.
I really like the idea of socks for the homeless! and bags of personal items!
This is not terribly creative, but for my birthday this year I hosted a small house concert with my favorite artist. I told attendees that whatever she collected in the “pass the hat” I would match and donate to a local sexual assault victim non-profit. People were wildly generous (which I suspected and budgeted for) and the artist was BOWLED over, and I got to make a big donation as my birthday present to myself. Oh, and got to have an amazing house concert birthday party! Absolute win, all around.
Oh, also, this year I got tagged on Facebook to donate a dollar for every like to a non-profit and at first was SO annoyed, but also was drowning as it was right after the Inauguration and I was like “TELL ME HOW TO HELP” and so I posted a very cute video of my kids and said what I was doing and then picked a local charity that was a the center of my “He Will Ruin The Best Parts Of This Country” worry (immigration. it’s a immigration org). That’s a long sentence to say I gave to a non-profit based on picture likes which is a VERY weird think I never thought I’d do.
We give monthly to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. One thing I want to start this year at Christmas is that each of my daughters will sponsor a year of a girl’s education somewhere in the world—I’m not sure what charity we’ll go through, so would welcome any recommendations!
I love PlanUSA.org. They have a catalog; you can click the “Education” category in the menu to the left to see the options, or you can click “Because I Am a Girl” to see the specifically girl-related options.
Blinknow.org runs Kopila children’s home and school in Nepal and you can sponsor students there.
I give monthly to our local NPR station (KPCC – it’s the less popular one, we have two in LA), monthly to ACLU, my sister and I give each other gifts of money to charity of choice for Christmas rather than stuff (last year was a gift to a women’s homeless center in LA for me and the Southern Poverty Law Center for her). I also do DonorsChoose when I have extra money in my bank account, I like to look for schools in the LA area to help, but I’ve also given to schools in Detroit and Flint. I do Amazon Smile to Everytown. And we give to our public school for the arts, PE, music and general fund. Lyft has a program that rounds up your fare to the nearest dollar and you can pick your charity, mine goes to ACLU. I wish I could do more, this year I hope to be able to give to Miri’s List – an organization that helps refugee families with supplies to start their new lives here.
Oh! I forgot one. One of the elementary schools in our district has lots of struggling families. Apparently 80% of the kids qualify for free lunches. Their school librarian was talking on Facebook about how hard it is for these kids to never be able to get something from the book fair. We took up a collection and they were able to make sure that any child who wanted a book, got one. So that’s another avenue to consider; while it may not be a strict need, how great is it to feel like you leveled the playing field just a little for a child?!
Most of our cash goes to the church. We keep the toothbrushes and stuff from the dentist and give it to the Church’s out reach. When I travel we take the soaps, shampoo and bodywash and give it to the outreach too. We do PBS because we watch a lot of public TV. I make loans on Kiva to underserved populations around the world. I give to Wikipedia because I use it a lot. We buy extra food for the food pantry. We give gently used clothes to the poor. I donated running shoes that weren’t working for me to the high school for the kids who can’t afford good running shoes.
I do monthly auto-donations to a variety of groups (ALCU, Planned Parenthood, the local food bank, the Girl Scout council I grew up in, a Conservation group, Human Rights Campaign, maybe one more that I’m blanking on?) so I don’t have to think about it but I’m putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak. Each one is only 5 or 10 dollars a month and I barely even notice it but over a year that adds up! I also grab a kid off the angel tree at the school I work at and try to donate every time our school-based food pantry puts out a call for specific items (they do a big drive once or twice a year but sometimes need to supplement the major staples like peanut butter that go into every single box.)
I have a very soft spot for the small ones, so I try to find the local humane society or other animal rescue groups where a disaster has occurred and either make a monetary donation, or if it’s nearby, donate pet food and other supplies.
I like the suggestion above of contacting the local Meals on Wheels to ask about donating to help seniors get pet supplies!
Thanks for a great topic, Swistle!
I just remembered something else we try to do to help our fuzzy friends. http://www.petoxygenmasks.org sells a pet oxygen mask kit specifically geared for fire departments. The kit has 3 different sized masks and all the equipment needed for firefighters to help give oxygen to pets rescued from fires.
The company also has a searchable database to help you find out whether your local stations need the kits, and if they are already equipped you can have the kits sent to those in stations who need them.
I try to donate my dollars to local lgbtq groups. I also give a scholarship for a girl to participate in girls on the run through my local chapter. I give dollars to the soup cellar at my church in addition to a tithe. I donate to donors choose (local schools). Also local groups addressing homelessness. Angel tree, school fund raisers, American heart association, cancer research, local “giving back” to the children’s hospital, buying things for a foster family from their wish list, classroom supplies and snacks for school. When I can, I buy products from local artisans.
Also, period products for the soup cellar patrons. A huge need for female homeless.
My sister is a quilter and she has a few sewing friends that like to make something for charity each year. This year they are making surgical caps of kids in the hospital to be able to choose. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2017/11/29/sewing-surgery-urmc-kids-golisano-childrens-hospital-ur-medicine-university-of-rochester-pediatrics/889116001/
Their goal is to make and send 100 caps.
I am not as handy with the sewing so we are focused more on giving money. My husband loves KIVA (which I learned about from Swistle) and he has about 13 active loans out right now. We are members of our local public radio station and send money monthly. We are also involved with angel trees at Christmas.
But the giving that is closest to my heart is that which supports services for disabled adults. My adult son is autistic. goes to a arts based day program, and lives in a group home. Direct Support Professionals who work with disabled adults are woefully underpaid (they make less than fast food workers) so I like to provide extras to those who work with my people like my son.
Oh, I love this. These are the things that get me through the news every day.
(1) I donate food to a church in our historically black neighborhood which provides food directly and regularly to our community. Shopping BOGO stretches those dollars.
(2) We have several local animal rescues that always need help covering expenses for the foster families. When the good quality dog food goes on sale, I buy several bags to donate. We also give money sometimes, but doing the shopping saves them time and energy.
(3) We believe the arts are important to our community, so we donate to a local theatre. We chose that one because it has a robust program to bring low cost or free programming out in to the community.
(4) At the holidays, instead of giving gifts to his co-workers, my husband makes a donation to a small counseling non-profit and gives his co-workers a card telling them he’s donated n their names and a bit about the organization for anyone who is new.
(5) We make compassion bags – gallon bags filled with toothpaste, toothbrush, hand sanitizer, socks, matches, snacks and whatever else we think of that time – and keep them in the car. When we see someone who appears to be need one, we offer it. I worried people would be embarrassed. They are not; the bags are usually received with excitement.
(6) My church has a discretionary fund that the ministerial staff can use to help when someone comes to the church asking for food, bus passes, whatever. I give an extra offering every once in awhile and designate it for that fund.
(7) And a new one for us is that today, my 7 year old is holding a lemonade and cookies stand. She wants to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society after learning about them through a fund raiser at school. This is what she came up with. We will be covering the materials cost. :)
This blog post inspired me. I went to DonorsChoose.org and found a couple of projects in my community and donated. Then I went to my corporate citizenship site and requested a match. Then (I was on a roll), I posted a link to one of the projects on Facebook.
So thanks, Swistle…because of your post, there are some kids in Iowa who now have a rug for their technology classroom, and some others who are closer to getting math games. Thank you for the encouragement.
When my kid were little, I didn’t have the mental energy to come up with a super-efficient/effective way to figure out donations, so I just signed up with the Combined Federal Campaign even though the overhead gnawed at my thrifty soul.
Now I set up annual scheduled donations, usually one a month to save them money on bookkeeping, to various charities that are important to me and have a good rating with Charity Navigator (to which I also donate). I try to sync things up with various milestones: Equal Justice Initiative for Black History Month, Islamic Relief USA during Ramadan, Center for Constitutional Rights for Constitution Day. (I’m sure the charities don’t care when the money comes; it’s just fun for me).
My extended family usually wants donations to charities instead of Christmas and birthday presents, and I just go with the charities they ask for, even if my research tells me that a particular charity doesn’t do as much good as it might.
I also try to shop mindfully, even if local businesses and sustainable products are more expensive than mail order and big bargains. Then I wind myself into Chidi Anagonyesque knots about whether it would be better to save money and send that to charity or just never buy anything and send even more.
Our school district has a foundation that allows teachers to write appeals for projects in their classrooms. Last year, we donated to a fourth grade classroom at my son’s school so they could buy alternative seating (wiggle seats, exercise balls, etc). We got the nicest thank you letter from the teacher and the class, along with pictures. You might see if your district has something similar. I really liked the idea of giving to a defined project, not just the foundation.
We also donate outgrown spirit wear from our elementary school to the school counselor, so she can give it to families that might not be able to afford a school t-shirt or sweatshirt.
Another thing I like to do is double up on an item when we get a school notice. Instead of buying one choir t-shirt for my son, I sent money for 2 and asked the teacher to use it for someone who needed it.
I love so many of the ideas above! Voting with my money is very important to me, as well as how I can try and help others, even in small ways.
One of the things I like to do is check the clearance aisle at my grocery store for pads and tampons. Lots of times a box is damaged or slightly crushed, but the individually wrapped products are ok, but they’re on sale for like 75% off. A surprising number of young women in schools aren’t able to get their own supplies and school nurses can’t always accommodate them or have only the giant old school pads. If I have a really good coupon or deal for brands I don’t use I will buy boxes. Most of us have a few cosmetic/travel bags laying around, and they’re frequently given away as promotions. I fill the cosmetic bags and either give them to my teacher friends or drop them at the school for the nurse to add to her stock.
A local homeschool group that I sometimes tag along with on outings meets every few months to make baggies as described above for people in need – socks, water, snacks, and a handmade card. I keep some in my car to give out as needed, but I also save up pet food sample bags – lots of homeless people have pets and can use help feeding them.
I’d also like to share this link – https://thistlefarms.org
Thistle Farms makes great quality body care items which are ready to have on hand for gifts or for treating yourself. But the employees are all women who have been trafficked, or in jail, or otherwise needed a second chance at a good life. I likento support businesses like this as often as I can.
Just wanted to thank you and second the Thistle Farms link. They are a great organization!
I like to find projects on Donors Choose. The jr high I attended is a title 1 school now, so I fund projects there first. Then I look for projects at my own kids school and give to those.
My mom volunteers at the pool where every kindergartener in the county learns to swim, so I buy her underwear to stock their supply for kids in need. She couldn’t give me a Christmas list this year, so she got LOADS of 4/5 underwear.
I send in double the money for school field trips. I send a note to say you can use it for any kid in the grade level because I’ve been asked by my kids teacher if it can be used for a different classroom instead. In flush years I also tell my kids teachers that I will spend $50 on anything she needs during the year. I’ve bought globes, laminating sheets, puppets, etc. This year I checked in with teachers in January to ask if there was anything they needed restocked.
I do not donate my money creatively, I just send money to organizations I like. Well, and when something particularly egregious happens I like to make an extra donation in some particular asshole’s name. Planned Parenthood donations in Mike Pence’s name, ACLU donations in Trump’s name, etc.
Anyhow, I give my money to:
Planned Parenthood
ACLU
Gabriel’s school
Boys and Girls Club (I donate to the local one)
NPR
I sponsor a kid or two at christmas, via whomever I know who is doing that in a particular year.
There is a shoe store in town that lets kids from the local shelter pick out shoes they want and they are up on the wall as little shoe shaped cards and you can pick one out and buy it. I like to do that when I am buying Gabriel shoes. I try to pick the teens and older kids because I figure little kids tend to receive more public sympathies, etc.
I don’t do it every year but in the past I’ve bought third world country livestock (like where you buy a goat for a family in Ghana or whatever)
In times of crisis (hurricanes, wild fires, etc) I try to donate to local and well regarded charities in the affected area
When the internet of ladies is having a crisis, I try to donate money to specific friend causes
I give food to second harvest food bank
I like to donate to a local crisis maternity home. There was one where I lived during my first pregnancy (and were were very poor) that provided me a free doula that I will never forget. Donating local makes me feel like I am helping my community. I saw them advertised at my church.
Also, this thread is making me cry sentimental tears of joy. Thanks!
I’ve seen it mentioned a few times, but my favorite is the school “scholarship” fund, which helps out with any extras (camp fees, sports fees, band fees). Usually when there is a fee due I’ll just round up to the next $50/$100 and ask that the extra go to the fund.
A few times a year, I’ll also send packages of sharpened pencils and big boxes of tissues to school (those seem to be the most chronic needs).
Oh and I fully realize that this is not DONATING this is just SPENDING MY MONEY but I make an absolute point of spending money on lady stuff or black stuff or a combo thereof. Like I made a point of paying cash money to see both Wonder Woman and Black Panther in theaters even though I never see movies in theaters.
My most recent one was the clearance clothing section at Target. It was 30-50-70% off items and it wasn’t picked over too much. I dug and spent about $50 on brand new super cute trendy clothing that I then bagged separately and dropped to our schools clothing donation drop box. Something about donating NEW clothing – for a child to see a brand new thing vs a used item. It made me happy!
I am part of a local facebook group which is run by two lovely ladies who every week find a local project on donorschoose.org for us to all donate $5 too. Sometimes I chip in more (if it’s an ambitious goal or one that really resonates for me), but I always do at least $5. It’s EASY (someone else is doing all the legwork!), impactful (these are local kids, often at low income schools and this is someone who KNOWS telling us what would be most helpful).
I also donate semi-regularly to a local fund run by the volunteer escorts outside our abortion clinic (one of just 3 in the state). The fund is used to help offset the costs of abortions, plan B etc for women who cannot afford it. They will occasionally do a call for donations for women who are in a situation where they cannot afford the cost that is left after the initial offset by the fund (often they are in domestic violence situations where they do not have access to their money), so I’ll chip in to those too.
And I donate to other things as they come up…if people do the thing on facebook where they want donations to a cause for their birthday, or I donated to the diaper banks after the hurricanes, or I donated to the food bank in the name of my companies canned food drive, etc.
We are Very Close to paying off our last student loan and, once we do, I’m going to build more charitable giving into our budget, because I don’t feel that we are doing nearly enough but my husband feels that we need to be out from under student loans before we ramp that up. On my radar are the local food bank, animal rescues, public radio station, and library.
Oh and a comment up thread reminded me…I started a program in my quilt guild where we make and donate quilts to our local St. Jude’s hospital. Other women are now running the program, but I’m still involved as a participant. Last year our guild of 17 people donated nearly a quilter per member. The year before we had some particularly prolific members with a lot of free time and we donated nearly 40 quilts! ^_^
I’m a monthly supporter of NARAL Prochoice Virginia Foundation and my family exchanges charitable donations at Christmas. This past year it was ACLU, SPLC, planned parenthood, and amnesty international. My son is growing like a weed and he grows out of his clothes before they are even slightly worn. I donate his tap shoes to his dance school for kids who can’t afford new ones, and his dressy clothes to a thrift store that specializes in proms and other milestones, and gives the proceeds to a teen shelter. His other clothes go to a thrift store whose proceeds go to the local abused women’s shelter.
We like to give internationally, nationally, and locally each year. This year internationally it was Doctors Without Borders and a school/ feeding program my church helps with in Haiti, plus some Kiva loans. Nationally we gave to RAINN, Second Harvest, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a church fund specifically for Puerto Rico, Lambda Legal, and Everytown for Gun Control. (That’s the first time we have donated to a policy group instead of to a group that directly helps individuals bu UGH SERIOUSLY.) Locally we gave to Family Promise which is a homeless shelter for whole families together instead of separating the dads, the Women and Children’s Free Restaurant, the library, our local NPR station, backpacks with school supplies for local kids, Crosswalk which helps homeless teens, and a chunk to our church.
I wish I gave to the arts but I don’t ever feel like I have any left over.
We started giving money to a local group that sets up soccer teams/clubs for refugee kids. We have a pretty big refugee community in San Diego, and many refugee kids play (or would love to play) soccer since it is usually the most popular sport in their home country. And San Diego has great weather so kids can play soccer year-round. But it’s expensive to play youth sports, team fees + uniforms + equipment, plus the system can be confusing and intimidating if you don’t understand how it works.
SO this local group organizes coaches & gear, gets the kids onto teams, gets them uniforms, get the team into local leagues, etc. One other thing I love about this group is it also incorporates tutoring and academic help, the soccer team becomes a kind of home base around which other services can be organized.
Anyway, we are a big soccer-loving family (my husband grew up in Italy) and we love this group because it combines soccer & helping refugee families, both causes close to our heart.
I do Give Directly. For $25 a month, I can give someone in Kenya enough income to cover the basics…and I like the idea of trusting that person to decide how to spend it. It takes some of the stress out of giving for me. Instead of second guessing whether I’ve found the way to do the most possible good with my money and wondering if I’m squandering all my opportunities, I give a little of that money and opportunity away to a mystery villager and wish them luck with making good decisions, and contemplate our common imperfect humanity.
I love “contemplate our common imperfect humanity”
i also love the idea of Give Directly, I’ll have to look into it.
So, I am a pretty dedicated charitable giver–my local library, the ALCU, and Doctors without Borders are my standards with occasional gifts to the International Rescue Committee when the refugee stories break my heart into 1,000 pieces. But I was really motivated by the Doug Jones turnout, which got me thinking about voting rights and how we just need more people of color and women elected, period.
So this year I’m looking at ways to help on that front. I am currently looking at Spread the Vote, which helps people in state with strict voter ID laws get the ID they need. Also, Higher Heights, which helps black women become civically involved and train to run for office. Anyway, it’s not radically different, but I am not a political giver, so those feel out of the box to me.
Not me, but an idea is like to share. I am a teacher and our small town, volunteer firefighters donated a bag of supplies to each teacher at the beginning of the school year. They looked at the grade-level supply list so each bag had the correct supplies for a student in that class. To give it directly to the teachers was such a nice touch. We often have kids who bring in just a few supplies, so it was easy to fill in the holes.
I have a budgeted amount every month for donations. A third of it always goes to the Unitarian church I sometimes attend, and a third always goes to New Sanctuary Movement, an organization that supports immigrants. The last third I give differently every month — sometimes an individual who comes up in need through my social networks, sometimes an urgent currently-arising (like natural disaster relief), sometimes in response to a particular injustice that’s rising to the top of my awareness.
I like this approach because the organizations can count on a regular amount for their budget and operations, and I still get to respond emotionally when a need moves me.
Also, whenever I have a bunch of one-dollar bills, I set aside a few of them to hand to people in need on the streets. I hate feeling pressured to give to people on the spot, but I like sometimes going downtown with a handful of dollars to drop into people’s buckets.
Too many responses to read to make sure this isn’t a repeat; sorry if it is. My daughter goes to a school that has a fair number of students at or below poverty level. When the time came for an expensive field trip, we paid for our daughter and another student (we didn’t specify who or anything like that, just wrote the check for double the amount). It wasn’t much, but it was what we could afford, and I hate to think of a kid missing out on a field trip because their parents can’t afford to send them.
Something that we have benefitted from, and plan to do ourselves when possible in the future, is people purchasing parking tickets to the hospital parking garage and donating them to inpatient families. Parking garage costs can add up fast and those donations have been a huge blessing to us and other “hospital families” that we know.
Oh this is a fantastic idea. I often see friends band together to provide a gift-card basket to a family who is going through a hospitalization. Next time, I’m going to send a parking ticket as my donation.
I LOVE this thread. Philanthropy is super important to my family and we try to be very strategic about it. Some of our “methods”
– Decide on a set amount of $ for philanthropy for the year. (We do about 3% of our income because the world is very messed up right now.) We pick 5-7 priority areas.
– There’s a lot of overhead associated with processing donations, so we give just a handful of large gifts to organizations we’ve researched extensively.
– In addition to direct service type organizations, we try to focus on the root cause of problems and donate to organizations that work on big-picture and preventative issues (advocacy, research, etc).
This! Such good advice.
(I work for a non-profit – you are one savvy donor!)
Great thread, Swistle! Very encouraging and makes me weepy.
I don’t have anything new to add. We spread our giving out internationally and locally to a variety of causes. If there is one ‘issue’ that tends to get most of our money it is maternal/child health in Africa (we have lots of connections to various programs in sub-Saharan Africa) and justice/anti-slavery/anti sex-trafficking organizations.
We and my in-laws always make donations in each others names for Christmas. None of us need more stuff and this makes everyone happiest (and is easy). We pick an organizatton they like and they do the same.
Love this!
I work for a company whose cause is to reduce hunger globally so I love Heifer International (helps people be self sustaining through animal agriculture) and HATCH which gives eggs to food pantries.
I also love American Humane – they do good work for animal welfare without being crazy.
I donate to Soldiers Connection. It was started by an American Legion in GA and they ship care packages to servicemen overseas. Most of the Chaplains who select the recipients. They send socks and little hotel soaps and candy and letters.
ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Habitat for Humanity, library, PTA and alma matter are all on my list. Excited to see a few new ideas.
In our family we have to be fairly limited in our monetary donations because otherwise my natural tendency would be to give away the proverbial store. I have increased my pledge to my UU church every year since I joined but I started at almost nothing so it’s still a very modest amount. I’m a Board officer this year and am really proud of what our small congregation manages to get done in our community, so that motivates me to donate. We do special collections for local, regional, or UU-affiliated charities once a month and I like being able to support those causes when I can.
Other than that, we contribute to our local humane society roughly annually (that is, when I remember to do so). Their budget is tight enough that I direct my Amazon Smile and Kroger card proceeds there rather than to church. My husband is a graduate of a local college, and we recently started giving a tiny bit there as well.
This is another great Swistle thread–I really enjoyed reading all these responses.
We buy Christmas gifts for kids in foster care every year through a specific local program where you go to a local Walmart, pick a kid (first name, gender, and age with a list of 3 items they want), shop for as much of the list as you can, then bring it all back and hand it over to the charity in exchange for your tax receipt. We have each of our kids pick a child to shop for and buy their whole list; then Christmas morning, we talk about those kids by name (“right now, Destiny is opening that Barbie Dream House you picked out for her!”). It makes me a little sad to see how amazed the staff is that we’ve actually bought the whole list for multiple kids. We benefited hugely from charities like this when we were fostering.
We also like to over-tip. Especially at lower-scale places (Steak and Shake, for example) or when the restaurant is really slammed and crazy. We’ve sometimes tipped as much as 100% and written a little “have a great day!” note with a smiley face on the receipt. Not sure if that counts as charity, per se, but I do think of it as “social good.”
And our local school’s bookfairs always include a “teacher wishlist” and I always like to get a few things from there.
Our local women’s refuges and homeless shelters put out a thing last year saying that for people in a tough situation that little treats make a big difference. I had so much fun going around and buying lots of treats like individual desserts and fancy cookies. It was a win/win because I had so much fun with it and hopefully brightened a few peoples’ days.
One more quick and easy one: Amazon prime members can select a charity to donate to. It’s a fraction of a percent of your purchase, but even pennies add up. And once you’ve selected your charity, its automatically set up to donate with every qualifying purchase.
I have been focusing recently on local causes. Our local grocery store has $10 grab bags (Brown paper bags already full of non-perishables) – that you just take to the check out, pay for, and then drop in the food pantry donation bin as you walk out. Our town also has a backpack program that is run through the local churches – you take a backpack, fill it with groceries from a list, take it back to your church, and these are given out to kids on the free lunch program every Friday to provide food for the weekend. We live in a small town on the edge of a major metropolitan area and we have groups that do lots for the homeless – blanket and winter clothing drives, socks and underwear drives, etc and so we always donate items, buy items, and donate money depending on what is needed. I like for my kids to see us do these tangible things on a regular basis. Some great ideas on here for other great places to give $ to, I am excited to check these out and broaden my giving!
A thing I do that costs me no extra money is to donate empty pill bottles (label taken off) to a medical mission so they can use them to dispense medicine.
This is one of my most favorite comment sections ever! We donate regularly to formal charities, but we also like to anonymously mail grocery store or pharmacy gift cards to senior citizens in our community and include a little note to let them know it’s a no-strings-attached random act of kindness. We do larger amounts around the holidays, but even receiving a $10 or $20 gift card randomly during the year is helpful to someone on a fixed income.
A couple times my mom has called her local energy/utility company and asked to pay down the gas/electric bill of a family that was behind so their power wouldn’t get shut off.
I’m bookmarking this to come back later and check out all the good ideas. Right now I feel like we don’t do that much locally (other than “Fund a Friend’s field trip” added to our school fees) but I give monthly to the International Rescue Committee (which my employer matches) and to the ACLU.
I guess we also donate our used glasses (mine and kid’s) to the Lions Club for redistribution, and give a lot of stuff to our local Goodwill. I don’t have a good sense though of how much impact that really has.
I love reading all of these! We have a local group who gets together to make the toiletry care kits that other people mentioned above, and it’s made me pay more attention to the people around me as I commute downtown for work. Also, we have a local nonprofit called Home Slice who gets the cake preference and a birthday gift idea for kids (often teens) at a homeless shelter and you can sign up to bring them a cake or present or both for their birthday.
Over the holidays, I send a big batch holiday cards with a handwritten note inside each one — “Wishing you a lovely season,” “Hope the spirit of the season brings you joy” — to a local nursing home. The activities coordinator says the residents love decorating their doors with cards, even though they aren’t really personalized.
This is not directly charity and it also benefits me, but one primary way I try to make a difference through money is to buy organic and/or chemical-free and/or biodynamically grown and/or local foods rather than the cheaper alternatives, shop at farmer’s markets and preferentially buy from local and minority- and women-owned farms, and eat at resturants that buy local produce. Actually, we have a specific budget for the difference between basic food and more environmentally sustainable food which is akin to a charity-giving budget although it isn’t technically charity. I shop this way deliberately not primarily because of the health & deliciousness benefits to me but because I feel it is important to support these businesses.
We do a variety of things. My husband’s office matches donations so every year we give amounts through that program to a variety of charities and both kids’ schools. We also donate all of our kids’ clothing that are in good shape that they’ve outgrown as well a household goods and furniture to various charities. Every month we buy food for the food pantry at Youngest’s school and we also donate grocery store gift cards and gifts to the outreach program at Youngest’s school for Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I was young (4-7) my parents had very little money. I never went hungry but I know my parents were on the knife’s edge there for awhile. Now I’m fairly well blessed financially so I feel like it’s my turn to help families who are financially struggling and for whom food or enough clothing is not certain.
The parochial school sells gift cards that they buy at a discount and then sell at face value. So they make a couple bucks off a $25 gift card to a grocery store or restaurant that people are going to shop at any way. Something I like to do (but don’t do often enough thank you for the reminder) is to buy a grocery gift card and then give it to St. Vincent DePaul Society. It’s nice because one gifts gives twice and the grocery card is a nice low-key way to help folks get over a hump.
I give consistently (paycheck autodraft) to 4 charities: Planned Parenthood, the United Methodist relief organization, and two local charities serving low income families in my city; this is also how I give to my church. I like it because I never have to think about it, and it’s not much money per paycheck but I think the predictability of it is probably useful for planning purposes for the organization (hopefully?).
I also really, really enjoy buying things for specific purposes: my church collected school supplies and backpacks at the beginning of the year (and I friggin’ love buying school supplies and backpacks); I buy small things year-round to put in Operation Christmas Child boxes at Christmas; I shop for kids on the Angel Tree at Christmas. If you’ll indulge me for a moment, one of my angels this year was an early-teen girl who asked for makeup, which meant boxing up allllllllll the samples I had received from my beauty box subscriptions that were still sealed and perfect for someone looking to experiment. It was easily my biggest gift of the season, though I only actually bought an eyelash curler, a set of makeup brushes, and some sponges for her. We’re talking like 6 different highlighters and a dozen mascaras. I was so stoked to put it together, imagining how I would’ve felt at that age if I had asked for art supplies (my top choice for all presents) and had been gifted a crate of mixed media.
Otherwise, I respond to GoFundMe campaigns from people on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook when they hit the right chord with me at times I’m feeling more flush with cash, and I support friends who do charity runs and bikes and dance-a-thons.
The predictability of auto-pay donations is ABSOLUTELY helpful to non-profits, this is why organizations like NPR stations are always pleading with listeners to become sustaining members. I used to work in public radio and having sustaining members made the pledge drives a bit less stressful/lower pressure (at least for staff, they are still super annoying for listeners!).
Planned Parenthood and ACLU with auto pay, I don’t even think about it until I get a thank you email.
Late to the conversation here (but have loved learning more about how others who post here approach this), but here’s what we have been doing: right after the 2016 election, we scheduled monthly donations to 6 organizations — Planned Parenthood, a local immigrant organization, the NAACP, Doctors without Borders, and the ACLU and Human Rights Committee. One per month, so 2 each per organization over the course of the year. Then I also got somewhat more generous when hit up for various causes so would usually give a flat $100 to those, too (the same amount as the monthly amounts we were giving) as they arose. We do also do the send-twice-the-amount for kid school activities that others have mentioned, and contribute through United Way at work.
I also put last year’s Roth contribution (and will this year also) in a local credit union that focuses on bring underserved populations into its client base (really, it focuses on underserved populations AS its client base), and have identified a few local businesses that are immigrant- and/or African-American-owned that I try to support.
The new tax law has kind of changed our strategy, not in any big picture sense (we plan to keep doing the same thing in roughly the same way over time) but in terms of timing. I added pretty much all of what would have been this year’s tax deductible donations up and we gave them before the arrival of 2018. In 2018 we will try to give absolutely nothing deductible (I don’t mean that quite literally, but close. I even contacted my HR office to cancel my United Way contribution) and will then give double (again) in 2019. Basically, we’re trying to clump deductions as we’ll no longer itemize every year — we’re sort of right at the point where we could, or could not, with the new limits, and where at the margins lumping stuff up and alternating will save us money (and while I am dismayed at the tax reform, I am also unenthusiastic about giving money to the current government). So for 2018 we are focusing our giving on the not-deductible stuff which, conveniently in an election year, is the political stuff. That includes ACLU and HRC, which were in our original list, as well as Indivisible and perhaps some gun-control/school-safety organizations, too.
Oh … and yes, we give stuff-we-can’t-use-but-believe-others-can to e.g. the local school “closet,” which works to make sure local families have what their kids need; a local immigrants’ group; Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity. I put some effort into trying to get stuff to the right places — the school “closet” is forever in search of shoes, and we sometimes find we buy pairs that don’t get worn because they turn out not to fit right, or whatever; the immigrants’ group asks for art supplies, which are something we seem to acquire but not always to use, and so on. But I also sometimes just put a bunch of stuff in bags and take it to Goodwill as sort of the default solution because oh-my-goodness, sometimes it seems there’s so much stuff, so little time.
Hi there! So I have a few examples.
My son’s school runs an initiative to provide sandwiches to an under-privileged school down the road from them. Every Wednesday a different class in my son’s school takes a turn to provide the sandwiches. For a lot of these kids, they are lucky if they have breakfast and many don’t have lunches, so these sandwiches are the only food they have in the day. All we do is buy a loaf of pre-sliced bread (most of us usually buy 2 loaves) and fill the sandwiches with any kind of filling that can be frozen (in case there are leftovers). Re-pack it into the bread bag and drop it off at the school, which then takes all the donations down to under-privileged school during the course of the morning. It’s inexpensive for us but it makes a big difference to the kids.
A local project that I want to support but have not yet got involved with collects donations of baby essentials (nappies, toiletries, onesies etc) and essentials for new moms (maternity pads, breast pads, toiletries etc) and packs them into a nappy bag and delivers them to under privileged moms in the government hospitals.With this organisation they welcome cash or goods donations (they list what goes into the bags so you know what to buy), or you can essentially pack a bag yourself as per their list and drop it off with them. I think it is a really great initiative, especially since it includes both mom and baby.
Then one that I am involved in – I run it each year for our company. There is a very specialized Children’s hospital that takes in kids from all walks of life and from all around the country. Every year at the beginning of December I run a collection for Christmas gifts for the kids in the hospital. We keep the total spend per gift quite low, and we allocate each person that wants to volunteer either a girl or boy and an age group. We collect the gifts over a period of 2 weeks and then go to the hospital to hand the gifts out (along with a Santa, an elf and a reindeer). For some of the kids it is the only gift they get, for some that have been in for weeks or months it is the highlight of their day. Last year we accumulated enough gifts for every single child in the hospital (300 beds) and were still handing out to people sitting in the waiting room and radiology department.
Similar thing, and I am not sure how well known it is outside of our country, is the Santa Shoebox project. They distribute gifts at Christmas time to under-privileged kids. You pledge to a child of a selected age or gender, and you fill a shoe box with 8 standard items (toothpaste, toothbrush, face cloth, soap, educational supplies, a toy – usually specified by the child – a complete outfit of clothing, and some sweets). You can add other things in as well. You then decorate the box and drop it off at the Santa shoebox head quarters and they distribute it to various organisations such as children’s homes etc. Again, for most people it is not a huge outlay in terms of cost, but it make a big difference to the kids receiving it.
I was bowled over the year that I was laid off and couldn’t find work. Someone at my kids’ school made sure that both my kids, girls aged 6 and 7, had a generous (wrapped) present sent home with them at the last day of school before Christmas. It made things look a lot less bare under the tree and the kids still (5 years later) remember what they got: a set of 7(!) Barbie knock-offs (with clothes), and a car to drive them around in.
I still don’t know who made that happen, but I know that lots of kids in a families in tough circumstances that year had a present go home in their backpack.
We were lucky enough 2 years later to be in a better place. That was when the fundraising committee that had been working so hard to build a gorgeous (and much needed) climbing structure, was looking for another way to bring in the dollars, because they were just shy of their goal. My husband told them to quit already, we’d write a cheque (yes, I’m Canadian) for the remainder (around $3,000). This inspired a few others to contribute, and I think the final cheque we wrote was for about $1,500. That felt good.
The other cool thing we did at school, earlier, was when “our” super, loving and hard-working kindergarten teacher (she had taught both our girls) had her first baby. After doing a little sleuthing about what she needed, we got her a good stroller/ car seat combination at great price. (We were members of one of those buy-direct-from-wholesale arrangements then, because we were doing renovations.) My husband asked other parents if they wanted to contribute, but only one did, which was too bad. (If I was doing it again, I’d ask by email or something rather than just asking those we ran into at pick-up time, they’d take the ask more seriously, I think. )
It meant a lot to her to get what she really needed most, not just more super-cute outfits and stuff. We put the stroller together (since we couldn’t return it, anyway) and somebody got a picture when it was rolled into her classroom when the staff were saying good-bye on her last day before leaving. Her face was priceless.
I volunteer at a soup kitchen at our church that is always in need of toiletries to offer to guests. People typically just drop them off at the church — sometimes newly purchased kits of travel-sized items, sometimes those samples of lotion you get as a bonus or in the mail, really any small toiletry items — and they are always appreciated by the volunteers because the soup kitchen doesn’t buy them (the funding only covers food) and by the guests, who can go through the offerings and choose what they want/need. In winter, gloves and hats are also great to donate to shelters and soup kitchens for giving out to guests. Theoretically, you could find a local soup kitchen and offer them money instead as a “toiletries fund” which would be super helpful.
This past fall, the NY Public Library had a library fine amnesty day on the International Day of the Child where they automatically zeroed out all overdue fines on the library cards of anyone under age 18. That was, I believe, funded by an individual. I was so thrilled by that idea!
I just learned the other day that banking at a credit union means your money stays in the community. Traditional banks don’t have the same requirement to invest in the community so they invest offshore or in funds that don’t necessarily match my values. I now consider increasing the money in my savings account an act of investing in the community because I choose a credit union.
I always say yes at the check out when I am asked if I want to give money to their charity. This includes the food bank at the grocery story, children’s literacy at the book store and after school activities for kids at the hardware store. It is only $1 or $2 per purchase but it adds up over a year.
Finally, I know a few childhood friends who struggle to make ends meet and I have groceries delivered to their houses when I know they are home. I don’t know if they know it is me but I know the food is needed and appreciated.