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Giving Doesn’t Always Mean Reaching for your Wallet

Easy Ways to Support your Favorite Charities this Holiday Season

The days are shorter, snow is starting to fall, stores are stocking up on Christmas decorations, and your mailbox is stuffed with donation requests from dozens of charities. The signs heralding the holiday season are here.

The holidays are the biggest giving time of the year, but it can be overwhelming to respond to all the requests for contributions while you’re also planning trips, cooking dinners, and buying presents. And budgets stretched thin at holiday time can’t always accommodate your philanthropic goals.

But philanthropy doesn’t have to mean writing one more check or clicking on the “donate now” button. There are many other ways to support your favorite nonprofits.

  1. Create a Holiday Fundraising Page. Do you find yourself overloaded with tins of candy, extra ornaments, and gift cards from holiday well-wishers? You can create a holiday fundraiser on Global Giving to support a charity of your choice. Share it with your friends and family before gift-giving time, and they have an easy option to show their appreciation for you without giving you a box of chocolate you don’t need.
  2. Shop at Amazon? Choose Amazon Smile. This is a great way to give throughout the year, not just during the holidays, especially if you do a lot of online shopping. Instead of logging in at Amazon.com, login at smile.amazon.com, register your designated charity (like the Chef Ann Foundation), and then continue with your shopping. Amazon will donate .5% of your total purchases to your chosen charity.
  3. Matching Gifts. Have you made charitable contributions throughout the year? Check if your employer will match your contributions. It often requires a small amount of paperwork, but the effort could result in doubling or even tripling the value of your gift!
  4. Workplace Giving. It’s often easier to give $5 a week instead of one big $260 gift at the end of the year. Many employers have workplace giving programs in place like United Way. You can sign up to have a small amount deducted from every paycheck and distributed amongst your chosen charities. It’s an easy way to give and to get the tax credit for your donations.
  5. Spread the Word. Many nonprofits provide their followers with opportunities to give through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you love what a charity is doing but can’t manage a gift at the moment, share their post with your friends. You never know who may be passionate about the same cause.

Just because you don’t have a Rockefeller-sized budget for philanthropy, doesn’t mean you can’t be a Rockefeller-sized supporter. All it takes is a bit of creativity to do some good for groups that make doing good their mission.

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