Charity Involvement

I recently read a very uplifting post in The New York Times, “Charities That Inspire Kids: Family Gateway.” I recommend reading it. The family whose experience is detailed in the article is affluent, so not all families have the means to do what they do. However, it’s a wonderful example that can encourage others to get involved very hands-on ways with charities.

I don’t have a lot of extra time right now to be able to do work for charities, and since my daughter is just shy of 2 years old, I’m not feeling pressured yet to engage with it in a hands-on way so that she can be involved and share in the experience herself. I can, however, donate money every so often. I won’t lie: there is often alcohol involved when I go online some evening and send money or supplies to local groups. Emotional hug, warm and fuzzies, all that reinforcing stuff.

There are a lot of environmental, social, and other sorts of groups that I appreciate, but here are just a few that came to mind because of the topics discussed in the article above:

Local homeless shelters — If your company has leftover food, some shelters can even accept that. The company that I work for is very close to a shelter and regularly has food leftover from company functions that is donated. A holiday breakfast, for example, had way too much food and more people working from home than expected. Bagels and breakfast sandwiches were a treat for the shelter. They came and picked up the food while it was still hot. I haven’t personally donated money to this group, but their involvement with our company may actually make it easy to do some work with this around work hours or even as part of group from work. I need to look into this…

State niche groups — You may not see these fundraising appeals from some of these groups since they won’t appeal to the general public in the same way that something more general like Salvation Army would. They also may not have the money to have fundraising attempts. What issues are close to your heart? There’s probably an organization that focuses on that. One of my soft spots is foster kids. I volunteered with Foster Care 2 Success for several years, and in my state of New Jersey is a group called Foster and Adoptive Family Services, who helps provide training, connects foster kids to adoptive families, and provides funding so that foster kids can do normal things like go to prom or go on a school field trip.

P.S. If you need a quick pick-me-up, I recommend this Reddit forum of animal cuteness.