I am conflicted about charitiy.  My parents give tons of money to various causes, plus do fundraising and volunteering, so that's how I grew up thinking it should be.  But we are in massive debt, so I can't be as generous as I'd like, and I have trouble figuring out how to best give what I can.

I usually go with personal causes, like if people I know are involved.  I'm donating $50 out of a couple of paychecks to Pretty Bird Woman House.  I also hope to be able to get some Home Depot gift cards for the local progressive radio station's Missippi Mission.  I think it would be better if I could actually put in time doing something like Habitat for Humanity, but there's the challenge of juggling the baby around anything like that.

I don't have much money to give. While my kids are tiny, it's not been as possible to give a lot of time either, but I can at least stay informed. As they get older and more observant, I'm able to do more and more. I think action might make more of an impression on my young kids anyway, more so than sending checks.

I also find that doing stuff to help ultimately helps me feel better when I start to get really worried about the poor, about politics, and about global warming.

I don't do anything right now.  I admit it.  One day I hope that changes.

My main reason is that the amount that I can give, or used to give, whether it be to my alma mater, a political cause or a charity, only seemed to fuel them sending me brochures and letters and phone calls for years, which surely cost 10X more than my original paltry donation.

So now I consider that I am doing them a favor by not donating my too-small donation.

I'm right there with you. DH and I are trying to hit the 10% mark on charitable giving (in lieu of tithing to a church), so each year we ramp things up by adding charities and using auto withdrawal, etc. This year we're at...1%! ARGH!

We also do a charity budget, which we started when our youngest was 4. So far, their favorites are WWF and Heifer, but we volunteered at Feed My Starving Children this year and they really liked that as well.

I applaud your efforts to raise funds in your community. We live in an affluent area, and I am amazed by the lack of giving I see. I was asked to solicit for juvenille diabetes last year and netted $5 (and I'M diabetic! You'd think I could get a little shout out!) I would like to host a party for Women for Women Int'l, but I'm afraid I'll have to disown all my friends if they show up and don't donate!

DH and I try to focus on hunger/clean water, and children's health and well being. I mentioned some of our faves above, but we also like World Vision, Ronald McDonald House and a local org. that helps the developmentally disabled. We give equally to secular and faith-based organizations...as long as they're getting the work done.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post Treena, and for reminding us all that this is, above all, a season of giving.

I know where you're coming from.  We live pretty paycheck-to paycheck, and don't give as "regularly" as I'd like.  Neither are we saving particularly well.  However, we do give to a gay-rights organization every year, and when I inherited some money from my grandmother this year, we took 5% of the total amount and picked 4 charities to pass that along to.  (The rest wen to paying off DD's January hospital bills and  moving).  CARE (a women and child centered organization), NRDC, our church we loved in Southern California that is run by friends, and to a set of friends of ours.  

These two people have been homeless (with their kids, despite having rich parents in the area), and are now reduced to panhandling on the street since her job fell through.  He was a plumber, but is now disabled, and is going back to school so he can take on a new career.  She has a history degree from Cal Berkeley and is trying to get a job while she earns her teaching credential.  Rough stuff.  We bring them food and such on a pretty consistent basis, and invite them over for family meals, but we figured a chunk of cash tucked in with the book we got them for Christmas couldn't hurt either.

I do wish we gave more, but I'm hoping that this year I'll be able to give more of my time to offset the fact that we're broke.

how much everyone on this site seems to think about the same things I do! I've been mulling this one over a lot lately. I don't know what percentage of our income we give away, but I'm guessing it's closer to one than ten percent. We have "charity" as a line in our monthly budget, but usually we decide what to give after everything else (both necessary and unnecessary) has been paid out.

One thing we do conistently is give both time and a decent amount of money to our church. We make an annual pledge that we up a little bit each year. Our older son also makes his own pledge and has an envelope (that he fills out) to put in the collection plate each week. We also do a lot of local giving at the holidays - buying gifts for needy families and food for the food bank in particular. A list of our other charitable giving would include the American Cancer Society, the ACLU, the Sunday Breakfast Mission, and our local nature society.

A lot of our donations tend to be small, and overall I think we could and should give more away. But I also believe in the power of small donations and if the opportunity comes up to make one, I always do.

One thing I really wrestle with is the issue of donating time. I know I should, especially as a model to my kids, and yet right now I'm so busy and really want to spend what little extra time I have either writing or with them.

Ultimately, I'm never comfortable that I'm giving enough away. I suppose that's probably a good thing, because I'm not!

could give more than we do, and I also think we could do some volunteering, which we don't really do, other than our daughter's school.  We always give to Mercy Corps.  If I hear about an organization, and I like what they do, I try to give something.  Around this time of year, I let my daughter choose something she'd like.  Last year, she chose a food bank, and this year we're adopting 2 families and she also bought a flock of chickens at Heifer International.

I always try to give something to an arts organization because those are always so strapped for money, and where would we be without music, etc.?

There are some great suggestions in this thread!

We are members of public television and public radio, the local science center, and also the art museum of which I am an employee. We're also members of the American Museum of Natural History.  We've made a four figure capital campaign commitment to the museum, which is the biggest gift we've ever given.

All of these are kind of self-serving.  We get benefits and take advantage of the resources provided by these non-profits.  I do also participate in the United Way campaign by having $5 a pay period withdrawn from my paycheck.  And whenever the grocery story is fundraising for the food bank, I always add a few bucks to my bill.

We do make gifts to Amnesty International and a couple of environmental organizations, and Miles is raising money for Greenpeace and also participates in fundraising efforts at his school for things like Alex's Lemonade Stand and Pennies for Peace.  We also always provide Holiday Hope Chest items annually for a neat community project that many local schools take part in.  

What does it all add up to?  I really don't know.  We often talk about what we would do if we had many more assets and agree that we would probably set up an endowment at our local library which serves the whole community so well.

I guess at this point we're not strategic with our philanthropy (which is funny since I'm in the philanthropy business).  At this point it's a patchwork.  We are only just now getting some savings put away and feeling like we are doing alright financially, so it's hard to make larger commitments.  But it's certainly something we plan on doing.

close to 15%. We give 10% to our church, some of which goes to support our building and staff while other parts go to support the free meal we provide to anyone who needs it every Thursday night, or the other mission projects our church is involved with.

The rest, we give to various organizations and it is not always the same. Some years we give more to political campaigns [usually presidential election time] so there is less for charities. This year I've given more money to breast cancer research, having had three friends diagnosed in 2007. We give to the local PBS and public radio stations, some around Christmas time to Heifer International, some to environmental causes [often dependent upon what is in the news or who asks us for money], some to local museums.

We are fortunate financially and it is important to us to help out those who are in need.

And, this was timely to me, too, as another mom and I were just discussing something we could do for our kids' class holiday party that would be about giving to others. We decided to have them make cards to mail to a recovering soldier at Walter Reed.

I haven't really added up all of the numbers, but we give probably 1.5% or so.  I'd really like to give more and think that monthly giving is the way to do it.  This year we spent at least 26K on adoption costs so I'm hoping that we can ratchet up our giving next year.  

We do some monthly giving to the DNC and DH periodically gives to various candidates.

It's not charitable giving, per se, but we "green up" our electric power every month.  We had been doing carbon offsets but it expired and I haven't renewed yet - anyone have a carbon offset place they recommend?

Locally this year we gave to our daughter's nonprofit preschool scholarship fund, a great local food bank, an organic farm land trust, the local independent radio station, the local zoo and the local natural history museum.

Nationally we give to the ACLU.

Internationally we like PATH, Partners in Health or the Carter Center.  For fun holiday gift giving I like Heifer International & the Seva Foundation.

I think I'd like to add a child advocacy group that works to help at-risk kids here in the Puget Sound - Childhaven.

Time-wise, ha!  I'd be a disaster helping out.  I can barely lug my 2 kiddos and pregnant belly out for coffee, let alone help!

does make me think about giving back to people more than causes. this year i've been thinking a lot about reducing our consumption so instead of buying toys and giving them away, i just donated money to the local children's theater for a fund that offers tickets to low-income kids and families.

otherwise, we support a variety of local institutions - the children's hospital, the zoo, etc. and a few national organizations. we used to give more money to enviro groups, political campaigns, and reproductive rights orgs, but money is tight now so we do what we can.

Please reconsider UNICEF - it's probably not the organization you think it is!  It is highly controversial and opposed by many organizations.  

From the 60's through the early 90's UNICEF was wonderful, one of the most remarkable organizations in the world.  But in 1995 Carol Belamy took over and redirected the mission away from direct aid.  Under Belamy UNICEF's stated priority was influencing the policy of other nations, not direct aid to children.  Children became political pawns and fundraising tools; many of the gains of the 60s and 70s were lost.  The prestigious medical journal The Lancet has been harsh in it's criticism and has some excellent editorials summing up the issues and urging a return to children's aid.

UNICEF is the organization that has been trying to keep "Baby Brave" from having a family.  They believe institutionalization is often preferable to international adoption, though they intervene in severely impoverished countries without providing any funding to orphanages themselves, some of which are horrific.

We donate at the end of the year for tax reasons and as we see how we're doing for the year.  We donate to a small organization we trust doing rural health and infrastructure in a developing country; our contributions are comparatively big for this little group and I get a great deal of satisfaction estimating how much of a difference my contribution makes. We also make an annual donation to MSF to use where they see fit - they really gained our respect when they said "no thank you" to tsunami-related donations after their capacity was tapped out.

I hate hate hate getting solicitations - I'm contrary and ornery, and these make me want to close my purse. So aside from one local group we no longer make small donations except anonymously.  The JustGive website is a good way to make anonymous contributions to many organizations.

We don't give as much as we know we should.

We started it last year. We decided to choose a handful of organizations and give them a good chunk each, annually until we reconsider, if we ever do. We stick with the plan, and don't give to other organizations on the spur of the moment. This keeps our giving focused and provides a bit of "protection" from guilt induced giving, which doesn't feel that great.

Our list:

Dh's undergrad alma mater, general fund
My undergrad alma mater, School of Education, student teacher scholarships
My graduate alma mater, School of Education (my psychology program was under the SOE)
Habitat for Humanity, Katrina fund for now (g-d, I hope that's doing something)
A program at the University of California, San Francisco that provides AIDS drugs directly to the program's adult patients in Africa (this is from a personal relationship to the program, plus it's one of the health disasters of our time).
Planned Parenthood, local region
Depending on the election cycle, some political giving directly to a candidate

I am thinking of adding the local children's hospital (toys) and a group that provides food directly to people who need it.

The other benefit to a plan for us is that we actually then do it. I just go down the list one evening in January (I know, late!) and do it online. Rather than having that task get buried with all the other ones.