Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with gift and charity

Extra special Mother's day

charmston — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:44:06 -0800

I have an amazing, incredible mother. Really, she's awesome. This will be the first mother's day that I have the fiscal resources to show her, rather than just tell her, how much I love her. I'll be getting her flowers, that much is sure. In addition to that, I'd like to do something meaningful. My (boring) idea was make a donation to a cause in her honor. But you have more creative, but still meaningful ideas, right? :)

Charitable giving for a 4-year-old?a

um_maverick — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 06:49:32 -0800

Help me present my 4-year-old niece with a way to donate to charity, as part of her Christmas present. For Christmas this year, I have a small gift for my niece who already has more toys than she'll ever need, but wanted to add a charitable side to it as well. I was thinking of giving her a relatively small sum of money (maybe 20-25 bucks) and telling her that she can use it to help someone else. My problem is how to frame this. Originally, I was thinking of asking her "do you want to help sick people, hungry people, kids, or animals?" and then donating in her name to American Cancer Society, a local food bank, a local children's home, or the ASPCA (or something along those lines). Is there a better way to do something like this on a level that a 4-year-old would understand? I'd like to make this a recurring theme for her birthday and other holidays where I would normally buy her gifts.

I came across this in the search, but it didn't seem to have the same focus as what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

Charities with online gift receipts?

GleepGlop — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:04:46 -0800

We are doing a $25 limit gift exchange where the recipient of the gift will be randomly chosen on the day. I want to give as a gift a $25 donation to a charity providing I can print off from my computer a 'gift receipt' made out to 'lucky recipient'. My first thought was donating to Wikipedia but I can't seem to find a way to get a gift receipt for it. A really good one would be if I could donate to a website where I pay the money and then the recipient logs in with a code and chooses what charity the money goes to. Any ideas?

What charity project shall I support?

badmoonrising — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:33:42 -0800

I'd like to donate a sum of money to a charity project, preferably an educational one, but I need some advice on which one to choose. This is a little long and rambly, so bear with me!

It's my 21st birthday very soon. My father has been hounding me for present ideas, and since I can't think of anything for myself I've come up with the idea of contributing to a charity project. I'm interested in education and am thinking of becoming a teacher, so I rather like the idea of building or equipping a classroom.

My preferred area would be South America, particularly Ecuador, since I spent some time volunteering there. This is negotiable, though.

The prices I've seen online for building classrooms range from £1700 to around £15,000. I don't know how much my dad is willing to spend (and it seems a little indelicate to directly ask him), but he is an exceedingly generous man and he originally suggested buying me an expensive new laptop, or paying for a holiday, so I think something in the high hundreds to low thousands would be OK with him. I'd rather err on the cautious side, though. My plan is to give him a few options (from, say, £500 to £3000) and let him decide which is closest to the amount he wishes to spend.

I know that the easiest option would be to simply donate a sum of money to be used at the charity's disposal, but I'd rather like the money to be used for one specific project. Also, most of the 'Oxfam Unwrapped" style giftshops seem very uninformative - they send you a greetings card and a certificate, in case you are making the donation on behalf of someone else. I know that personal gratification is hardly the point, but if I'm giving up a new laptop or a holiday then I would like more than a generic certificate. (Yes, I'm aware that probably makes me sound awful, but I don't care.) Something along the lines of some photos of the completed project, and maybe a very short report, would be lovely. Is this realistic, or is this kind of feedback only likely with much larger donations?

I've seen some rather suspicious websites, so I'd like to be completely certain that the charity I choose is legit and will actually use my money for the intended purpose.

I'd prefer a non-religious charity if possible, but I don't mind too much.

So. Does anyone on MeFi have any experience of this sort of thing and can offer any advice? Or does anyone have any suggestions of charities or projects? Many thanks in advance.

(In case anyone asks, Dad's absolutely fine with this - in fact he seems delighted with the idea. Also, in case anyone missed the references to pounds, I'm in the UK, but I don't mind donating to any nationality charity as long as it's above board.)

Meaningful charity for picky recipient

jaybeans — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:20:49 -0800

What's a good charity to give money to in someone's name as a Christmas gift? Caveats: The intended recipients are quite concerned with poverty and the third world. Ideally, the charity will send some kind of card that I can give the recipient to inform him, and they would send the card in time for a December 25th exchange. My brother and sister in law are very hard to shop for, but their feelings are enormously hurt if their Christmas gift isn't sufficiently thoughtful. My lady and I aren't big on gifts. We like to eat and drink and be with the family, but the actual opening presents bit just isn't as meaningful for us. We don't have a ton of money to spend and don't even usually get gifts for each other. As a result, my brother is nearly always disappointed and gives me crap about what he perceives as insufficient love and thought.

This year, we're making some homemade nibbly snacks to give to the family with bottles of wine (we're calling it cocktail hour in a box), but the brother and sister in law are picky vegetarians who don't care for wine and find our epicurean tendencies frivolous.

In order to give him something meaningful without trawling the stores for some piece of crap, we were thinking a charity donation might fit the bill. I'm wondering about one of those microcredit programs. Any suggestions for that or another kind of program? I'd rather avoid one of those buy a pig/cow/sheep things, as I think they get those pretty often (they are indeed very hard to shop for) and they might think it was a cop out.

What's a good silver watch for a 16-year old girl?

JDC8 — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:25:35 -0800

Charity Gift: 16-year-old girl wants a silver wristwatch. Price range is about $35. No other information available about the girl; anonymous gift from tree at work. What hip watches meet these criteria?

What do you want for Christmas?

etc. — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:28:18 -0800

What's an all-purpose gift for around $100? At our annual holiday party, instead of exchanging gifts or secret Santa-ing, we've decided to raffle off a cool gift and donate the proceeds to charity.

I'm looking for for one or two gifts totaling around $100 to $150.

The guests will be thirty-something urban professional types. Winner might be a guy or a gal. Got any ideas? It's for charity!