Low cost/No-cost ways to donate to worthy causes.

I was just discussing with someone about couple places I know of on the net where you can donate to worthy causes at no cost to yourself. I thought I would share them here and see if anyone else knows of any.

The first is in my signature line. http://www.thehungersite.com . How it works is you click a button and then a page with small ads comes up. For doing this a small amount of food will be donated. The ads are actually pretty useful. If you shop at their store they donate food for each item you purchase as well. There are lots of things there very appropriate for Christmas gifts. You'll notice links at the top to several other of their sites such as breast cancer, literacy, and rainforests.


The next is a site called MAATIAM (http://www.maatiam.com). The way it works is you pick a charity (they say they have 800,000 in their database), then you pick a store you want to shop at (amazon.com, macy.com etc etc). Each store has promised to donate a percentage of your purchase to MAATIAM who then gives it to the charity you picked (or maybe it goes directly to the charity... not sure). This is all at no cost to you.

Be sure to give this a kick if you find it useful so other people can see it.

you pick the charity and everytime you search they get a donation.

www.goodsearch.com

organizations is to give them stock. The reason this is cost-effective is that if the stock has risen you can realize the gains without paying capital gains tax, and then you can write off the amount of the stock as a donation. This seems to be a new trend, although I have not tried it. I'm not sure I understand precisely how it works, but there was a discussion on this just days ago on a Los Angeles radio station. Maybe someone here knows more about this method.

A few hours of your time.

Some local agencies frequently looking for volunteers include
American Red Cross
Soup Kitchen
Meals on Wheels

If you have more time to donate
Volunteer Fire Department
Volunteer Ambulance/EMT
Search and Rescue Organizations

And if you have military leanings
Civil Air Patrol
Coast Guard Auxiliary

FEMA employed a number of volunteers after Katrina. I think their recruitment was limited to people already active with certain above organizations.

for causes ranging from breast cancer to animal rescue. You'll find them on tabs at the top of The Hunger Site page.

Mom likes The Animal Rescue Site, which always has a picture of a rescue animal; Repuke Stepdad, a confirmed dog person, has been known to growl from the back room, "It's a CAT!"

drivers to go around collecting places where citizens deposit aluminum cans or bottles and take them to the nearest city.

There are a lot of ways to help, depending on what means the charity of your choice has to raise funds.

The Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Care facility here in Winston-Salem is amazing. I don't know about other facilities elsewhere but this one has kitchen facilities and open dining areas where families and volunteers can bring in food for family, visitors and staff. If it's on the table, help yourself.

My SO's mother died yesterday in their care and they were so helpful to all of us during this transition. I plan on bringing some fresh fruit every week and maybe get a pizza delivered for the nurses on the late shift.