What's Your Favorite Way to Give Back During the Holidays?

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Lizzy_B's picture
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What's Your Favorite Way to Give Back During the Holidays?

Anyone else planning to help out someone during the holidays? Do you volunteer at a food shelter, adopt a child, or make shoebox gifts? I'd love to hear your ideas.

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Ed and I really wanted to do something year. Like adopt a child and send him/her gifts but I couldn't find anything in our area. So instead we donated a bunch of food and clothes to the woman's shelter near me.

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I always donate food to the Boy Scouts food drive through my work.

Reflections's picture
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Great thread!

It's Ronald McDonald House for us! They don't necessarily need new things, just gently used items. It can be anything from entertainment items (toys, DVDs, video games) to personal care items to food for their pantry to food that you actually make and bring in. Money is also appreciated obviously.

It's such a necessary place for parents to stay when their children are getting treatment at a hospital and they live far away. Very often, the kids who are getting treatment but don't require hospitalization stay there too.

Thanks for the topic!

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We belong to a Corvette club and we always donate to three charities. One being Corvettes Conquer Cancer, another being the local soup kitchen and the third being the "adopt-a-family" program. All this is raised through the Corvette show that the club puts on in the spring. Club members also put in their own donations to each of these on a personal level. In fact a group of the club members are meeting this evening at WallyWorld to do the shopping for the two families with 6 children that we are sponsoring this year. Total budget for this shopping spree should be over $800.00 so there should be a couple of happy families on Christmas morning.

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Toys for Tots is my favorite holiday charity.

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I always hit the Red Cross outside of stores when I can. Sometimes its hard because I don't carry money in my wallet, but I try to always have something.

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We do an "adopt a family" every year at Christmas, and I always make a donation to the Humane Society so the animals have a good Christmas too.

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Our Starbucks adopted two families this year and we're contributing to their needs. I bought some clothes for a little boy, my daughter bought some toys and we also gave a gift card. It's not a lot, but it's what we could offer this year.

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Kristen K. wrote:
Our Starbucks adopted two families this year and we're contributing to their needs. I bought some clothes for a little boy, my daughter bought some toys and we also gave a gift card. It's not a lot, but it's what we could offer this year.

Kristen, it's your last sentence in your post that say's it all, and especially in this period of a downturned economy everything helps.

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Kristen which starbucks? I think you are somewhere in Illinois if I remember correctly. I'm a starbucks store manager and I wanted to do this this year. My store is in a very working class city but surrounded by white collar employers (hospitals, law offices, car dealerships, colleges). Many of my employees are single parents or living below their means. So I wanted to give back to the community but I couldn't find anyone willing to work with me except the salvation army. however the salvation army, being a religious group, had a lot of strict policies I had to follow so I couldn't do it.

A couple years ago around thanksgiving we donated Turkeys to our local food pantry. We got our customers involved. For every 10boxes of via or 5lbs of coffee we sold we donated a percentage of our tip money for the week to purchase turkeys. I think we ended up donating 12 turkeys after 2 weeks. I felt sort of guilty because the purchases helped the store but for many of my customers it was a no brainer because they buy these things anyway they just made sure to buy them from us. I also gave them the option to leave the purchase at the store and I sent a shipment of whole bean coffee and VIA to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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My department at work always collect money for the holidays. We used to adopt a family but the last couple of years we bought gifts for two kids at a local orphanage.

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Our classroom "adopts" a child in our community every year --every class does it in our school--and we send home a list to parents of what the child has requested and if they can they bring in an item for the child. I always try and buy something really nice for the child. We also have a few homeless families at our school so we all pitch in money and get them Wal-Mart gift cards.

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honeymoonin wrote:
Kristen which starbucks? I think you are somewhere in Illinois if I remember correctly. I'm a starbucks store manager and I wanted to do this this year. My store is in a very working class city but surrounded by white collar employers (hospitals, law offices, car dealerships, colleges). Many of my employees are single parents or living below their means. So I wanted to give back to the community but I couldn't find anyone willing to work with me except the salvation army. however the salvation army, being a religious group, had a lot of strict policies I had to follow so I couldn't do it.

Are you? How cool! I was a Supervisor & Coffee Master (LoL... way back when being a coffee master actually meant something. The training was totally intense, but I did in store events at least twice a month, I loved it!

I frequent Rockford, IL "State & Trainer" store, I can't remember the store number though. I think Joe (manager) said that they were working with the Salvation Army. They put up a tree with paper "ornament" tags that each had one gift that the family had requested. Customers could pick the tags that they wanted and then bring back the unwrapped gifts. When I was in charge of it we also worked with Salvation Army, I also always put out an extra basket in the store where people could drop off whatever they wanted to and I would take it to toys for tots, or a local hospital.

You still have lots of time to do a random toy basket and take them to a local pediatric unit. Give the public relations at a couple of your local hospitals a call and see if they need something like that. My son was actually in the hospital last December and there was a boy scout troop that was going around and giving toys to all of the kids. It really meant a lot to us that they did that. The hospital is a rotten place to be for the holidays, especially if you're a kid.

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Kristen K. wrote:

You still have lots of time to do a random toy basket and take them to a local pediatric unit. Give the public relations at a couple of your local hospitals a call and see if they need something like that. My son was actually in the hospital last December and there was a boy scout troop that was going around and giving toys to all of the kids. It really meant a lot to us that they did that. The hospital is a rotten place to be for the holidays, especially if you're a kid.

Good for you, Kristen. My son was also in the hospital last December, so I love the idea of taking toys to the hospital. That's also why I mentioned Ronald McDonald House. We stayed at one during that time. That's been a charity of mine for many years and I never thought I'd actually be staying at one.

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Joe makes several dozen cookies for the Charlotte Rescue Mission, both at Christmas & Thanksgiving, and we have food and toy drives at work, and we usually adopt a family or 2 at the office as well.

We also like to send money to the local animal rescue groups.

My Mom collected Beanie Babies (don't ask, I don't know why laugh), and when she passed away in 2009, we donated all of them (and there were boxes!) to the hospital where she worked, and they passed them out to any kid (and I think a few seniors) that was in there over the holidays. That one made me smile alot.

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JeffC wrote:

My Mom collected Beanie Babies (don't ask, I don't know why laugh)...

My friend Amanda collected those in HS (in the late 90's when they were really popular) we all mocked her relentlessly for it. She sold her collection recently and made about 15,000.

Yeah. I didn't laugh then.

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eek

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JeffC wrote:
eek

I know. I could be slightly exaggerating on the number because she didn't say exactly I just know she had a LOT of valuable ones and sold them all to a collector...then put a down payment on a house. Crazy.

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Bella wrote:

My friend Amanda collected those in HS (in the late 90's when they were really popular) we all mocked her relentlessly for it. She sold her collection recently and made about 15,000.

Sweeet!

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This is awesome and heartwarming to hear how people are helping others (and animals as well) during this holiday season. Thank you all for sharing. We're helping a single mom who has cancer (prognosis is very bad) to give her two children Christmas, and a military family whose dad is deployed in Afghanistan...Mom is having a hard time holding it together for the four children, suffering with her own health issues, among other things.

I think I'm especially touched to hear how your different passions have steered your giving. Well done. And let's all keep it up muchlove

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We support the Salvation Army kettle drive....they helped a brother of mine and our family has never forgotten. We also give gifts in the name of family members through World Vision. This year we started sponsoring a child in Ethiopia and we were able to send a gift to him and his community.

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I frequent Rockford, IL "State & Trainer" store, I can't remember the store number though. I think Joe (manager) said that they were working with the Salvation Army.

One of my partners used to work at that store and moved down to my area so I have him now. What a small world.

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honeymoonin wrote:

One of my partners used to work at that store and moved down to my area so I have him now. What a small world.

Well I'll be laugh I wonder if I'd know him.

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Hi name is Tom. For obvious reasons I don't want to post his last name in a public forum.

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Hrmm, if I did know him it wasn't by name. Oh well.

We took more toys in there the other day, their box is filling up!

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I was at Barnes & Nobles a couple of weeks ago. They had childrens books behind the counter and asked if I wanted to buy one for the local childrens hospital. I bought a Mickey Mouse book.

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JoAnn C wrote:
I was at Barnes & Nobles a couple of weeks ago. They had childrens books behind the counter and asked if I wanted to buy one for the local childrens hospital. I bought a Mickey Mouse book.

Ah, that's really sweet, JoAnn.

It looks like we're going to accomplish most of our giving after Christmas Smile A nasty cold swept through our house last week. I'm super behind!

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Mike and I are both sick. At least you had time to recover before Christmas, we're sick ON Christmas. Hopefully we will be over it when we leave on our cruise next week.

Since we are going on a cruise this year, we are not exchanging gifts w anyone in our family. This really bothered my youngest who has a huge heart and loves to give. Unknown to me, she chose several angels from different angel trees, plus we bought for a student in my class who is very needy.
We do the angel tree every year, but this year it seemed to mean more as we were not buying for each other. They were very involved in choosing gifts they thought the kids would like. My kids said the "angel" was getting more gifts than they are...and I reminded them that THEY are going on a cruise...
It really takes the hustle and bustle and stress out of Christmas when you don't have to buy gifts. Really helps put things in perspective and keep things simple. It's been a great experience. I love to buy gifts for people but hate the idea of "having to find something for _______" and buying something that is not necessarily from the heart. Maybe we'll start a new tradition.

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