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

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.

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

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!

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.

Toys for Tots is my favorite holiday charity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.