Put more love in your holiday greetings with cards that benefit charity

If you're like me, the holiday season might be the only time of the year when many of you actually pick up a pen and write out longhand well-wishes to your friends, family, business associates, and acquaintances. 

If you are one of those who enjoys sending and receiving holiday greeting cards, I hope that instead of picking up something treacly and generic at the Hallmark store this year, you'll buy cards that financially support one of your favorite charities. It's a great way to show your far-flung loved ones that you're not just thinking of them, but also about the greater good!

After the jump you'll find a wide variety of holiday cards that benefit an equally wide array of causes. I think everyone can find at least one organization they can get behind to do some charity work while also sharing the holiday spirit!

  

Big Easy Money

I spent Halloween weekend in New Orleans on a freelance production project, and as you might expect in a town full of drunken revelry, there seemed to be change scattered everywhere I went. Over the course of four days, I snagged 83 more cents to donate. Included in that total are an inordinate number of very new, very shiny 2010 pennies. That brings the found money fund to $26.52 year to date.

I half wonder if that's not a calculated decision by the mint, introducing newbies to circulation in a spot where they will quickly disperse throughout the country in tens of thousands of hung over pockets. If so, it's my pleasure to help put their plan into action!

Are you throwing away money that could help your local school?

As the school year wraps up, I thought it was a good time to encourage everyone out there to support their local school's participation in the Campbell's Labels For Education and the General Mills Box Tops 4 Education programs.

Most of us probably remember saving soup can labels when we were schoolchildren, but a lot of us were mostly interested in the competitive angle (i.e.; the trip or pizza party that the top-raising classrooms). As adults, we can much more clearly understand the need for our educational institutions to take advantage of every avenue for free educational equipment, and it's incredibly easy for all of us to pitch in (even if you're a childless bachelor such as myself)!

Every General Mills box top is worth a dime, while Campbell's has switched from their old nickel-per-label model to a point system that's a little harder to figure out monetarily, but which makes certain premium products add up to more bucks for your school. I handed off my annual haul to my friends' son Lukas last week, so he could turn them in at PS58 here in Brooklyn. Surprisingly, in the past year, I accumulated $12.50 worth of box tops and what I reckon adds up to about $7 to $10 worth of Campbell's points. Imagine if every household in every school district turned in the equivalent of $20 per person each year!

It only takes a second or two to rip or clip the appropriate part of the packaging, and the whole kit and kaboodle fit in a small baggy tacked to my kitchen cork board. It's just that easy to get free money for your our kids' classrooms! Even if you don't know any students, you can mail them to a participating school for proper routing, so I hope you'll make a habit of it and help ease the burden on your local school!

By the way, in the past three days alone, I've found another 47 cents, bringing the Found Fund for charity to $20.96 so far this year!

Little Change Is The Way Of The World

I realized the other day that I hadn't done an update on the amount of found money I've gathered for charity so far this year. The reason I had this realization was that in about ten different places in a single day, I stooped to snag another 31 cents. Those two dimes and eleven pennies bring the grand total so far to $18.47!

That's an average of about 13 cents every single day so far this year. Sure, that figure is skewed by the few bills that I've found, but the vast majority of it is in change, as you can see in the photo.

Has anybody else been keeping track?

"Skip Lunch Fight Hunger" with City Harvest!

Tomorrow, May 12 is the annual City Harvest "Skip Lunch Fight Hunger" campaign, when teams of people throughout the five boroughs of New York (and beyond!) ask their friends, family, and colleagues to chip in and help reduce the number of hungry mouths in our world.

Whether or not you join (or start) a team and raise funds, I hope you'll at least throw a few bucks at the campaign. It's easy as pie...or at least as easy as giving up your pie: just donate what you would normally spend on a single day's lunch to City Harvest, who will use your generous gift to feed hungry children and families throughout the metro area! If you can spare $10 every day for a burger and fries or soup/salad/soda, surely you can sacrifice a few bucks to help support those less fortunate.

Of course, you don't actually have to give up a meal, and you're encouraged to donate much more than you spend on your average meal! A few stats that show how far your lunch money can go:

$10 can help feed 7 children for a week.
$20 can help feed 3 children for a month.
$40 can help feed 2 children for the entire summer.

Over $400,000 was raised last year through the Skip Lunch Fight Hunger campaign to help feed hungry children and families throughout New York, and hopefully this year will pull in even more donations. I joined the City Harvest team ("The Harvesters"), and I'm hoping to solicit the support of friends and family--and readers!--to add at least $250 to that total. If you feel like putting a few of your hard-earned dollars to use providing nourishment for the needy, your sponsorship would be much appreciated!

If there's a similar campaign (or any other good cause) that you'd like to share news about, please post it in the comments section. I always love learning about new pro-social initiatives!

Make every day Earth Day!

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. I remember how stoked I was on the 20th anniversary, when I was a high school senior. In part, it inspired me to start the first ever recycling program at my school. But more than that, it made me begin to live my life as if every day was Earth Day. Sure, sometimes I still buy food that's over-packaged, and I enjoy a lengthy shower, but for the most part, it's pretty easy to be an everyday environmentalist.

You've probably heard the tips a thousand times: buy local produce (or better yet, grow your own). Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Buy in bulk. Walk or bike as often as possible. Put a timer on your air conditioner and heater. Plant a tree. Use canvas bags for your groceries. Compost your kitchen scraps. Close the drapes on hot, sunny days (or open them on cold, sunny days). Don't litter. Reduce your meat consumption. Take public transportation. Join the library. Carry an aluminum water bottle. Turn off lights and appliances when out of the room. "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down."

None of them take much effort, and after a little while, they truly become second nature. Pick a few and give it a try...you'll see!

Another important thing you can do in your daily life is to stay on top of environmental issues and make your voice heard by local, state, and federal officials. There are a bunch of great groups out there who can keep you in the loop about pressing environmental issues year-round, and who make it easy to contact the proper authorities with a click of your mouse. If you want to get more intimate with your planet, sign up for their newsletters below (you might want to create a bulk email address for action alerts and the like).

Sierra Club

Environmental Defense Fund

World Wildlife Fund

The Nature Conservancy

Ocean Conservancy

National Wildlife Federation

Audubon Society

Natural Resources Defense Council

Center for Biological Diversity

EARTHWORKS

True Life: YOU Can Save A Life

I produced an aftershow special that followed last night's premiere of "True Life: I Need A Transplant," interviewing the two transplant recipients and their families. I also wrote a companion blog post for MTV, which I wanted to encourage you to read and act upon! Getting yourself on the bone marrow registry is the easiest and most non-invasive way to help save a life, and they're waiving the laboratory testing fees for a limited time, so please sign up today!

Money Doesn't Grow On Trees...It Grows On Sidewalks!

The theme of this blog is that each of us can do small things to make a positive change in the world, but today I want to address change in a very literal way.

 

It surprises me that even in these difficult economic times, people blithely drop change (and sometimes bills) everywhere and don't bother to pick it up. It surprises me even more that dozens--even hundreds--of people will walk right by and completely ignore it. Glance around next time you're waiting on line at the drug store or ordering a drink at the bar, and I'll bet you'll find some cold, hard cash. Last Sunday alone, I found $1.41 sprinkled around my subway station, a record fair, a bar, and a bodega. There is rarely a day that goes by that I don't at least find a few pennies here and there.

For years now, I've had a strict policy of picking up any found money, and earmarking it to give away. In the past, I've always donated it to whatever situation I next came across, whether it was a charity's donation can on a store counter or a homeless person shaking their coffee cup. For 2010, though, I've decided to slip any and all found money into my right pocket for safekeeping (I keep my own cash in my left...please don't pickpocket me), and then put it into a jar on my bookcase every night when I get home. The running tally so far this year: $9.37! Sure, it's not a mint, and it won't have the greatest impact in the world, but for cash-strapped charities, literally every penny comes in handy.

I'm going to keep an occasional count here on the blog, leading up to my end-of-year donation to the charity I co-founded, the Sean McGrath Fund, and I encourage you to do the same for the charity of your choice! I'd love to hear about your progress, so feel free to post your tally in the comments section sometime.

If your impulse is to dismiss what a coordinated effort of change gathering can accomplish, check out what the Common Cents Penny Harvest is doing in New York City right now, in hopes of beating last year's record haul of $665,000. Proof positive that a little change can make a huge change!

How you can help people "get wild" for wildlife

We all know that human overpopulation has a lot of consequences: food shortages, deforestation, pollution, social unrest, and poverty, just to name a few. While we're thinking about these human issues, though, it's easy to overlook the effects on the non-human world, first and foremost the endangerment of animal species.

Whether it's from a loss of habitat, being hunted and fished to the brink of extinction, or from environmental factors like poisoning from chemical seepage, our own imperative to propagate our lineage can imperil some of our more defenseless neighbors on planet earth.

To raise awareness about the dangers behind tipping this delicate balance, the good folks at the Center for Biological Diversity have created a clever outreach program that marries education with an actual tool to help prevent overpopulation: endangered species condoms!

Of course, proper outreach requires a lot of people to reach out and distribute these prophylactics all across the nation, and they want your help! Click here to sign up as one of their distribution volunteers, and if they still have a need in your geographic area, you'll receive a delivery of all six wildlife-themed jimmy hats (from birds to mammals to amphibians) to spread liberally around your community!

How often do you encounter a volunteer opportunity that lets you help threatened critters AND gives you an entree to flirt with complete strangers? Take advantage while you can!

Please consider texting a small donation to Haitian earthquake relief efforts!

The devastation in Haiti from yesterday's earthquake (and the continuing detriment from aftershocks over the coming days and weeks) is likely to be the worst global disaster in years...maybe in decades.

In the face of massive destruction like this, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless to help, but in the early stages of a natural disaster, there is one--and only one--thing we can do as outsiders: donate some cold, hard cash to the relief efforts.

There is a list at this link of many non-profit organizations with infrastructure in Haiti, any of whom will be able to put your money to use where it's most needed, but there are also two more immediate (and more modern ways) to make a small donation:

1. Text "Yele" to 501501 and a $5 donation to Wyclef Jean's Haitian relief organization will be automatically added to your next cellular bill, or

2. Text "Haiti" to 90999 and your mobile provider will zap a $10 donation to the American Red Cross for its post-quake disaster efforts (added to your next monthly statement).

Even in these tight financial times, most of us can scrape together five, ten, or fifteen dollars to send to the disaster zone. Even if you personally can't, though, you can still take initiative and get creative: organize a bake sale, car wash, sporting event, rummage sale, concert, walk-a-thon, raffle or other fundraiser in your community to pull together a few bucks. If you get a solid group of people donating items and promoting your event, you can collectively make a big difference!

If you're one of the millions of Americans with family in Haiti, and you can't reach your loved ones, the U.S. State Department has set up a hotline to assist your search at 1-888-407-4747. They are scrambling to gather information on the ground (where communications systems are practically nil), and to accommodate callers, but they warn that because of high volume, many callers may receive a recording on their first attempts.

Share some edible love during National Soup Month!

January is National Soup Month, and I suggest that we all celebrate it by extending the season of giving into 2010!

Food pantries around the country are in desperate need of donations right now, with a record 49 million Americans going hungry right now because of the economic slump.

Soup (being both a healthful and reasonably affordable staple) is always high on the list of suggested donations to food pantries. It's also--to borrow a term from a chain of souperies in the New York City area--a hale and hearty meal that's especially satisfying this time of year!

I hope you'll join me by picking up a few extra cans at your local grocer and dropping them off at a food bank in your community this month. If you clip coupons and look for a good sale, you can feed a family of four for just a few bucks!

You can find a food shelf near you by searching your ZIP code on Feeding America's website.

If you don't have the time, or if you're one of those who order in instead of visiting the supermarket, I hope you'll take a moment to make a donation of any size (literally every dollar helps) here.

I hope you'll join me in getting 2010 off to a soup-er start!