Do BETTER This Holiday Season - Idea 3

Getting your family members to completely choose against getting you a gift can be nearly impossible for some. Same goes for people in your family that may be disappointed with you for not getting them a gift. Change is necessary and also hard. If you aren’t willing to push into that, consider gifts with purpose. 

In my last post, I suggested you purchase an item from a holiday catalogue from a relief and development organization like World Relief. Buy a goat, backpack, or assign a donation to providing clean water. 

In this post, consider buying a socially concisious gift from a retailer that is committed to giving a percentage of profits to charity/development oriented work. This option may be the least effective longterm, but just like any other donation, research is the only way to know your purchase/donation has the impact you’re interested in making. 

Here are some examples of companies using basic consumer goods and shopping patterns to do good in the world. 

TOMS - Arguably the most popular company that does this. Their buy one, give one model with shoes is a powerful force of leveraging culture, hipness, and relief work. You can argue that there are better ways to use the dollars you’ll spend on their simple shoes, but you can’t argue that their model has been successful in leveraging people to consider how their buying habits can help a social cause.

SEVENLY.org - This is a company that designs really cool t-shirts for one charity a week and donates $7 from each shirt to that charity. They’ve donated over $110,500 to charities since they’ve been in business. That’s a lot of t-shirts. The best part is that the funds go directly to the organization, which allows them to designate it to areas that need it most. 

The Cause Shoppe - It’s an online marketplace for all kinds of companies that are giving back with a portion of their profits to charity, relief, and development work. Here’s an excerpt from their website. 

The Cause Shoppe is a socially-conscious online shop that helps everyday consumers become philanthropists. We connect people with products and services that inspire awareness while supporting our local and global communities. In these trying economic times, buying PhilGoods™ offers opportunities for shoppers’ purchases to have a greater purpose — supporting charities making vital change in our world.

These are just a few ideas of thousands. I’ve made it a point in my life to choose products that are trying to do something rather than nothing whenever I can. It just makes sense and I think it’s a competitive advantage. Do I research every charity before buying? No. Do I agree with every company’s strategy and reason for doing this? Not at all. 

The point is, you have options to do good with your regular, everyday purchases and gifts this year even if you’re not ready to skip the gifts entirely or donate as a gift. 

It takes small steps and this is one to consider.