You know it's getting close to the holidays because all of a sudden, every charity you've ever donated to, and a ton of the ones you've never even heard of, let alone donate to, sends you mailings. Yes, mailing
s. Not one, but maybe about 3 a week. Can you imagine how many trees died in vain to solicit a few dollars?
We set a certain amount of our budget to go toward charitable gifting to our favorite groups, although there's a bit of room for adding one or two more donations when we come across another organization whose cause capture our hearts. It gets very hard when you get bombarded by requests to donate to this, that, and the other thing. You just have to say 'no' at some point, and I do feel bad about saying 'no' but we're not the Rockefellers; our funds are finite.
Now, if you think I'm a mean-hearted woman, I'm not (well, my kids think I am, but don't listen to them, OK?). We donate to a ton of charities. In fact, a few years ago, in one homeschool co-op we belonged to, we were doing some project for Earth Day and my kids and I counted up how many charities we donated to, and we discovered it was
a lot. I'm talking about 15 or so. Our top three favorite groups to donate to are:
Southern Poverty Law Center (helps fight hate crimes),
Co-op American (fights social and environmental injustices), and
The Land Institute (researches sustainable crops, such as perennial wheats).
The kids get Christmas money every year from dh's parents, and sometimes from my parents (they are more forgetful than dh's parents). We stipulate that they donate 10% of that money - they can spend 10% and the rest must go into their savings account.
So, every year, we talk about the types of charities out there, and they get to choose one or two of them that catch their fancy to donate to. There are humanitarian ones, like
Doctors Without Borders,
Mercy Corp, and
Heifer International; environmental ones, like
Environmental Defense,
Sierra Club; animal causes, like
World Wildlife Fund, and
National Audubon Society; and local charities such as
Mother Hubbard's Cupboard (local food bank), and the
Monroe County Humane Association. It's fun to watch the kids decide whom to donate to.
For anyone interested, there's a good article on donation at
Care2.com:
Giving Green.
So, in the spirit of giving, today is the day to choose my "green giveaway" recipients.
Random.org chose
#5, which is Stace!
Feeling generous, I decided to ask ds#1 to pick a number between 1 and 9 at breakfast, and he chose "7", which is Marr!
So, ladies, I'll be hopping over to notify you about your free one year
Co-op American (soon to be called Green America, apparently) subscription. :)
Hope the weekend is a good one for all!
"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet." ~ James Oppenheim
After printing all the names out, I cut them into strips. Boy, do I love my paper cutter:
Then, I tossed all the names into our little plastic jack-o-lantern, and swirled them about:
I had ds#2 reach in with his tiny hands (at age 11, his hands are still a bit smaller than mine), and pull out the winner:
Statistically, you'd think those three with the most comments would have really good chances of winning this. But, here you are. Congratulations, Anne-Marie (Soap and the Finer Things in Life)!! I will be sending you this bone-bead:
And just for fun, I had ds#2 pull a runner-up name (alas, stupid me forgot to take a photo), which turned out to be Michelle P! So, Michelle, I will have a little surprise for you soon. :)
I'll be contacting you, Stace and Kaycee...and congratulations! 
#5, which is Stace!
So this time, I was actually able to refrain from commenting on my own post and winning my own prize, BUT, my darned child wasn't. What is with the universe trying to thwart my attempts at an otherwise easy project?