December 10, 2009
Charitable Gift Giving
Choosing the right gift for loved ones, friends and associates can often be a tricky business so some gift givers choose to make a charitable donation in the recipient’s name instead of opting for a more traditional gift.
Focusing on the recipient’s interests, passions, lifestyle and what would be meaningful to them is the key to a successful giving experience. Consider children, as well as adults, when you’re thinking about charitable gift giving. Giving children a small amount of cash and letting them choose which cause they want to support is a wonderful way to encourage them to become philanthropic adults.
Here are just a few of the many organizations that are worthy of consideration:
- UNICEF - Works for children's rights, their survival, development and protection by providing them with vaccinations, food, education and much more.
- Kiva - Allows you to make a loan to a low-income entrepreneur across the globe for as little as $25 and help them to start their own business.
- Heifer International - Gives hungry, poor families livestock and training, providing a source of food rather than short-term relief. Recipient families are required to share their animals’ offspring with others, creating an expanding network of hope, dignity and self-reliance.
- National Park Foundation - Helps educate Americans about the their National Parks.
- National Foster Parent Association - Helps foster parents and children through advocacy, services and scholarships.
- Trickle Up - Offers grants, not loans, to women and people with disabilities in Africa, Latin America and Asia living on less than $1 to help them launch their own microenterprises, while providing business training and savings support to build assets.
- Smile Train - Provides cleft lip and cleft palate surgery to children in need, as well as providing cleft-related training to doctors.
- Reading is Fundamental - Books, literacy campaigns, and reading to children.
- Habitat for Humanity - Builds houses for needy families.
- Big Brother Big Sister - Provides mentors to all children who need caring adult role models/special friends.
- Sierra Club - Promotes conservation efforts aimed at protecting communities, wild places and the planet itself.
- Doctors Without Borders - Doctors and nurses volunteer to provide urgent medical care to victims of war and disaster regardless of race, religion, or politics.
- ORBIS International - Focuses on the prevention of blindness and the treatment of blinding eye diseases in developing countries.
- National Center for Tobacco-free Kids - Helps reduce the number of children who will start smoking.
- Rainforest Alliance - Dedicated to the conservation of the planet’s vital tropical forests.
- Children for Children - Promotes community involvement and social responsibility in children from all backgrounds, beginning at a young age.
I would recommend that you use Charity Navigator to help you to evaluate charities before you donate to them. If you’re not sure which charity would be most meaningful to your recipients, let them choose for themselves by giving them a gift card like the ones offered by Just Give, Global Giving and Charity Navigator.
Giving to charities is a clutter-free, feel-good, do-good way to honor the person in whose name the gift is made, and, really, how many people do you know who need more “stuff?
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