Anyone know a good charity for the holidays?

[Marlene]

Me and some friends are thinking about adopting a family or two, I guess as someone suggested....a church would be the place to start looking

yes a church and also you could try your local schools as they might know. I like the idea of adopting a family rather than dropping off to a food shelf as it is more direct. another thing that would be nice is to look into donating food for cats & dogs as there are people out there having to give up their pets as they can't afford to feed them. I know some food shelves take pet food.

 

[Gino]

Besides the giving of food, money or your time helping...... we used to go to shut-in places. Basically the elderly, whether they have a lot or not, need attention and a feeling of being heard or talked to..... or just visited and still feel a part or wanted.

My wife and I, along with other couples in the Ballroom World would go to a different place week nights and some weekends and put on demonstrations of the various dances. This we did year-round about twice a month. There was a main group and we danced somewhere every week. We'd play music these people could identify with and when we were all finished dancing, we'd dance with the folks. I danced with women in wheelchairs, with walkers on oxygen and some without limbs. There were blind people who just listened and heard our shoes on the floor or the oohs and ahhs of the crowd. When you left a place like that, you really felt like you helped someone in need.

One time, there was a lady at one of these places and she was like 102 years old and said she was big into dancing back in the 20's before WWI and such. She still could dance up a storm at 102.

It's so rewarding to see all those smiling and happy faces.... then once you're gone, they almost all go into a zombie like condition...... until we show up again.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Marlene just reminded me of something. Many years ago I was close friends with a girl who had just started teaching 3rd grade in a school primarily made up of kids from really poor families. The kind of school where they don't even bother asking if anyone can afford to pay for lunch.

The teacher friend of mine asked a couple of people to help her buy notebooks and pencils for her class because the kids never had what they needed. The idea just snowballed, and a couple of her friends "rallied the troops". By the time it was all over she'd gotten backpacks, markers, crayons, coloring books, notebooks, paper, pencils, rulers, school t-shirts, and polar fleece jackets for every kid in her class and had enough extra supplies to keep her going the rest of the year.

I'm willing to bet just about any teacher can tell you who the "quietly needy" kids are in their class who could use a little help from "Santa Claus".

 

[CS-SignSupply-TT]

How to give

I was wondering if anyone knew of a charity for the holidays to give back to. I want to help feed people in need with a donation.

I wanted to take a % from each job and then money on top of that and buy needed things for the homeless. I feel that is better than giving money so i know it will be put to good use.

Be awesome to actually get food and give it to those people but not sure how to go about that either.

Any help is appreciated, Thanks!

john1, you questions and comments are near and dear to my heart. The Saturday before Thanksgiving we set up a buffet table (in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood) filled with traditional Thanksgiving food and served whomever stepped up. I encourage you to call a couple of the homeless shelters and ASK how you can serve. If you have any more questions or comments, please contact me.

 

[signswi]

Bunch of nonsense.

Volunteering time is super useful and a direct way you can contribute, as you've already mentioned. Getting pissy that a charity doesn't want to deal with your inefficiency (via physical goods donation) just because you want them to is ridiculous. You don't let people off the street come in and tell you how to run your business, why should they. Let the professionals be professional and do their job, non-profit work is multitudes more difficult than the for-profit world.

As for overhead, that's why you should check charity navigator, see how much of your donations go through to the actual cause.

genericname, good one mentioning Child's Play, they do a bang up job and are very worth support.

 

[Gino]

Volunteering time is super useful and a direct way you can contribute, as you've already mentioned. Getting pissy that a charity doesn't want to deal with your inefficiency (via physical goods donation) just because you want them to is ridiculous. You don't let people off the street come in and tell you how to run your business, why should they. Let the professionals be professional and do their job, non-profit work is multitudes more difficult than the for-profit world.

As for overhead, that's why you should check charity navigator, see how much of your donations go through to the actual cause.

genericname, good one mentioning Child's Play, they do a bang up job and are very worth support.

You still don't get it. I'm not upset/pissy that I don't go there, I'm upset cause they saw a way to bring more administrators in, pay them well and these poor people still don't get any better than before. In fact, they receive less, then the way it was set up originally. It's a big non-profit for profit machine. They're trying to beat the system with the 'needy' as their excuse. As they bring in more and more money through donations, as long as they show a certain amount on the books, the authorities don't monitor closely enough to where it's all really going. I mean... really, how many times do you see this in the news how these people are caught with their hands in the cookie jar ??

I don't care how they conduct their business. I'm just not going to be party to their lesser ways and methods of disguising stealing from these poor people in the form of charity non-profit status.

Again, about checking your navigator is set up to appear on the up & up. You honestly don't think these people play with the books ?? News flash for ya..... it's done all the time by all of them. There's just not enough authorities around to catch all these crooks, so they only go after the easy ones.



Oh, and by the way..... where did you find me saying what you have quoted ?? I don't remember saying that. You playing the racket game too ?? Just making sh!t up and saying I said it ??

 

[adkmaid]

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