Everyday Giving Blog

5 Charity Ideas for This Summer

Charitable giving, like most other things in our modern world, has become a highly complicated and often difficult endeavor given the vast number of organizations and causes vying for your dollar. While simply picking and choosing between them can often lead to regrettable contributions, narrowing your focus to causes and situations that work for you will help you to be sure that your charitable donations are contributing to the best possible cause.

If you're looking to combine sunny fun with thoughtful giving this during the warm months to come, check out these five charity ideas for this summer:

1. Book Your Hotel, Save a Child

If you're planning a summer vacation that will see you travel abroad, one excellent way to give while saving is to book your hotel with CheapHotels.org. Besides offering some of the lowest hotel rates in the world for a wide variety of locales around the globe, CheapHotels.org automatically donates 1% of each and every booking to OrphanAid Africa, an organization that helps disenfranchised children in Ghana to grow up in safe, secure and loving environments with a focus on education and family stability.

Save money and donate to a worthy cause at the same time - now that's an excellent way to start your summer!

2. Become a Summer Fundraiser

The warm months of summer open up endless opportunities for outdoor fun, making it the best time of year to organize a fundraising event in your own community! Whether you opt for a bike-a-thon, a car wash or a bake sale, heading the effort to raise funds for a worthy cause, whether a local or international one, allows you to offer a helping hand to others while enjoying a fulfilling time yourself.

3. Lend a Hand on Your Vacation

The Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms organization connects organic farms around the world with people looking to stay and work temporarily to the benefit of all, presenting any able bodied wanderer with a unique way to enjoy a summer vacation! Learn about permaculture and agricultural stability while developing the skills required to grow food, all in a foreign land that offers exposure to exciting cultures and ways of life and helping to further the cause of sustainable growing in the process.

4. Clean House and Help the Needy

There is no better time than summer to take stock of your belongings and reorganize your material life, offering up the items you no longer need to those less fortunate as you go. Whether you choose to donate via a Goodwill foundation or in person, you can take pride and pleasure in the mutual benefit that cleaning house offers!

5. Be a Volunteer

If you've got some free time on your hands this summer, consider becoming a local volunteer in order to gain valuable experience while lending a helping hand to those around you. With national volunteer databases available to people in most countries, choosing a volunteer opportunity that suits your skills and desires is a breeze, ensuring that you are able to bring your very best to the table each and every day.

Conclusion

Whether you've got free time to kill or a deep, residing passion for helping others, using the time that summer frees up for many of us towards charitable causes is a fantastic way to grow as people, both in skills and life experience, brightening the lives of others along the way. Given the easy availability of opportunities both local and abroad via the internet, becoming involved with a cause that suits your abilities is a cinch once you narrow your focus, leading you to new opportunities and memorable moments that will last a lifetime!

Image Credits: 1, 2.

Three Surprising Facts About The Science Of Giving

There have been many studies recently that strive to determine the root cause and psychology behind the act of charitable giving. People's attitudes towards altruism and their perceived social responsibility are affected so many different environmental and emotional factors, it's often difficult to ascertain their precise reasoning. But, thanks to a series of studies published by the Journal Of Experimental Social Psychology, we're able to get an insight into the complex motivations people have when engaging in a philanthropic or charitable act. However, it's not as common sense-based as you'd think. Here are three surprising facts discovered through the course of these studies:

More people pay more and produce a greater profit when they're operating under a 'Pay What You Want' scheme

According to a field study conducted in 2010 and co-authored by Professor Leif Nelson at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, more profit per unit is produced if people are allowed to decide how much they want to pay for goods or services. The study inolved presenting 28,224 participants with a picture postcard that cost a pre-determined $12.95. Despite being told a significant portion of the product would go to a charity, only a few people actually purchased the item, yielding a tiny profit of just 6 cents per visitor. However, when the postcard was sold under a pay-as-you-can method, although the average price paid was considerably lower (an average of $5.33 per person), the amount of people who participated meant that the profit margin was nearly twenty cents to the charity. Interestingly, when people were told that none of the proceeds would go to charity,the amount they chose to pay decreased dramatically. So it appears that a combination of asserting a social responsibility but also giving the donor complete autonomy, it produces the greatest amount of profit and all parties benefit.

People From Lower Incomes Are More Generous Than People With High Incomes

In the findings of a paper entitled “Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior” written by a scientific team operating out of University of Toronto and UC Berkeley, it was discovered that people who perceived themselves as of a 'lower class status' were persistently more altruistic in terms of their dealing with charitable giving and compassionate acts pertaining to other volunteers then those who perceived themselves as of a 'higher class status.' This is perhaps not so surprising but what is interesting is that the altruism that both parties displayed was directly linked to the concept of compassion and the participants ability to feel concern for their fellow man. When the higher class participants were experimentally induced to feel compassion by watching a film on child poverty, their prosocial behaviour changed and their actions and decisions fell in line with the lower class participants' actions.

Literally Being on Higher Ground Encourages More Enthusiastic Giving

Occasionally, there are metaphors that are generally accepted across a variety of different cultures and the notion of being 'on higher ground' being associated with a generosity of spirit is one of them. In a series of fascinating studies conducted by a group of social scientists at the Universities of North Carolina and Michigan, it was discovered that in a survey of shoppers who were offered the chance to donate to the Salvation Army, that the people who had just disembarked the upwards escalator donated in significantly larger quantities than those who had travelled on the downward escalator. In another study, participants were offered the chance to pour as much as they wanted of an unpleasantly potent hot sauce into a cup who another volunteer to drink. Participants who were onstage (the upper level) persistently allocated a smaller quantity of sauce then the participants in the orchestra (at a much lower elevation). This demonstrated that the more physically elevated the volunteer, the more likely they were to exhibit compassion for their fellow man. Perhaps there is something to Feng Shui after all!

Citations: Photo credit - ryantron

Barbara Pelvin is an author, speaker and blogs about social issues for Third Sector