Giving and being thrifty are not usually seen in the same sentences, but there are some great ways to be thrifty with you giving. Here are my top five ways to give during the holiday season, and every other day in between. Perk, these charities and foundations are thrifty with their spending too. Everything on this list spends wisely and gives generously!
1) Grocery Giving
There are a great many grocery stores that offer holiday donation bags for purchase at the check out. These bags go to families who cannot afford a holiday dinner and most of them are well priced at under $50. To find out if your local grocery is offering any holiday donation bags, just ask your sales associate. Publix, the shop of choice in Florida, is currently running one for $39!
2) Giving a Donation
There have been a lot of foundations who have started offering charitable gifts. These are great ideas for the person who has it all or the person who loves to give. Instead of getting them something that could go in the back of a closet or returned, you give a donation in their name. The great thing about this is that they are tangible items. World Wildlife Foundation has a great gift kit for children. You adopt an animal and get the adoption certificate, photos, and a stuffed animal of the one you adopted. We did this last year through The Marine Mammal Center in San Francisco for our two year old niece and it was a big hit! World Vision also has some more adult options with buying chickens, goats, wells, etc. in a person's name!
3) Giving Instead of Getting
Charity Water is one of those fantastic companies with a great beginning. The founder used his birthday as a way to raise money for building wells in other countries. Now, they have a stream line foundation that is able to put 100% (!) of the donations to building wells and getting people clean water. And, they are still donating for their birthdays. The birthday donation drive is crazy awesome! The site is easy to navigate, you always know how much has been donated, and the e-mails that they help you create are super easy!
My husband did this for his birthday and the well is starting to be built! Knowing who is being helped is such a neat-o extra and something that every person who donates has access to!
4) Making Room for the New
The holidays are retail heaven, but not just for the new. People shop at Goodwill and Salvation Army through out the year and this time of year is no different. By cleaning out our closests, attics, and drawers, we can help someone re-use our donations and make room for our new gifts. Something too big for your car? Call them and schedule a pick-up time!
Trust me, you won't even miss that old stuff once the 26th roles around :)
5) Give, Twice
Make giving twice as nice! Shop at places like wildfiretees.com and United by Blue for things like uber comfy hoodies, bracelets, tees, bags, and such and give in the process! Both of these companies give all the proceeds of your purchase to help places in need.
Wild Fire Tees was started while Colorado was burning as a way to bring aid in to the State. All of the proceeds from shirt purchases went to helping stop the fires and recovery. Now, they have also started helping victims of hurricane Sandy. There are tons of great shirt and hoodie designs that can still be guaranteed to arrive by Christmas and will help someone else get on their feet again!
United by Blue is a foundation that uses the sales of their super nice shirts and accessories to clean up our oceans. Every purchase cleans 1 pound of garbage out of our oceans, and now, they are also sending proceeds to hurricane Sandy relief. I love knowing that my purchase is not making our world more polluted, but it is actually helping clean it!