Post by Frugal Dad

That was until two sources of inspiration smacked me in the face and encouraged me to get moving. The first was a comment left on last week’s post, The Proper Rate of Savings.  ”Philip” commented, “I’d like to see a post on the proper giving rate.” The makings of a new post were now in development.

Just this morning I read a post at No Debt Plan about DonorsChoose.org – Use Donors Choose to Support Your Local Schools.  The post introduced me to Donors Choose, and specifically to the author’s wife’s classroom project. His wife, a music teacher, is trying to raise money for two drums. Faced with a limited budget (even more limited for arts and music, I suspect), she is turning to community support to fund the purchase of these drums for her students.

It was at this point that I was inspired to take action. I have managed to build a large community here at Frugal Dad, and I like to think I’ve helped a few people along the way with money issues. But honestly, I don’t feel like that’s enough. Quite often I write about the need for improved financial education for kids, and education in general, and unfortunately many kids do not get that education because of limited resources available to teachers.

Not only are teachers grossly underpaid, in my opinion, but they are expected to cover many classroom expenses out of their own pockets. Considering we live in a world where six-figure salaried businessmen expect to be reimbursed for $10 cab fares, I think asking teachers to foot the bill for supplies is ridiculous.

My reluctance to donate to charities in the past was in part due to the fact it is hard to see where your contributions make an impact. Even if most of the money is put to good use it isn’t easy to see the direct impact of your support. That’s why the model at Donors Choose intrigues me.

Teachers and administrators list needed equipment for their classrooms. The requests and associated costs are vetted by Donors Choose representatives and the projects are made public. When fully funded, Donors Choose orders the materials, ships them directly to the school and notifies the school’s principal – reducing the chances of fraudulent requests. The requests also often include class pictures, thank-you letters from the class, etc. It’s really a heart-warming way to make a difference.

While I don’t have all the details down just yet, I plan to incorporate support for these projects into my work here at Frugal Dad. For now, I’ve included a link in the navigation menu above to my “Giving Page” at DonorsChoose.org. Here, I have hand-selected a few classroom projects that are meaningful to me, such as those that support financial literacy, autism and sensory disorders, writing, and other topics.

Other than this initial post, I won’t bombard you with messages about the giving project. If you can help with financial support, great. If you can’t, that’s fine, too. Perhaps you could mention the project on Twitter, or email it to friends. There are plenty of ways to support the cause without giving money.

I know this is a bad time, economically speaking, to be mentioning a giving project. We’re in the middle of our own budget crunch trying to pay off remaining debt, rebuild our emergency fund, and put a little away for a vacation in the next several months. Still, I should be able to carve out a little for this project.

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

To kick things off, I’ve donated all ad revenues from today towards the project featured at No Debt Plan, since it was his post and his wife’s idea that inspired me to get going on this project. (Update: That project is now fully funded, so I’ve decided to support a local project in my kid’s school district).

In the coming weeks I’ll donate a percentage of ad revenues to go towards the projects featured on my giving page. In addition to those projects, I’d encourage you to browse requests in your own community. You’d be surprised how many things are needed at your neighborhood schools.

Finally, to Philip’s original comment, giving is a personal decision. There is no proper giving rate, as it is a decision to be made with your family. Apart from examples such as tithing, there is no set amount a family should give. My recommendation is to give as much as you can without straining your own budget, and just enough to fill your spirit with the joys of being a giver.

Post by Frugal Dad

The late Larry Stewart is credited with starting the Secret Santa movement as he passed out over a million dollars in gifts in his 26 years playing Secret Santa in the Kansas City area.  After his death, an army of Secret Santas have taken up his cause.  An excerpt from the AP story provides a great example of the impact even a relatively small gift can make on a person’s life:

Cynthia Brown, 40, was laid off three weeks ago from her food service job. Santa found her at the St. Louis County health clinic and gave her $100, exactly what she had asked to borrow from her mother a night ago to buy food.

“I have three daughters, and I can’t get unemployment yet. I was down in food,” she said.

I imagine Ms. Brown’s life was forever changed at that moment.  Not because the $100 will solve all her financial problems, but because she was blessed by the generous gift of a complete stranger. The Secret Santa letter had but one string attached, and that “is that you do something nice for someone. Pass it on.”

In addition to participating in The One Dollar Give, this year my family is planning a little Secret Santa gift giving mission ourselves, but I can’t give details because then it wouldn’t be a secret!  I encourage you to find a way to perform a random act of kindness for someone else during the holiday season.  It doesn’t have to be expensive, in fact, it doesn’t even have to involve money.  Roll a neighbor’s trash can up from the street before they get home. Take some bake goodies around to neighbors on the weekend. Offer to cook a warm meal for a family going through a tough time. Volunteer some of your time to help a shelter or local charity. The point is to find a way to brighten the holidays for someone else.

I would love to hear your Secret Santa ideas for spreading a little holiday cheer this year.

Music-clubs.com

Post by Frugal Dad

Mandi and Tara had a fantastic idea to harness the collective power of bloggers.  The One Dollar Give project was launched December 1st, and its mission is to feature a blogger’s favorite charity each day during the month of December.  You can support all thirty one charities by giving just one dollar a day to each of the sponsored organizations.

I jumped at the chance to help with this project, and will even submit a write up about a charity I have had personal experience with this time next week (it will appear on The One Dollar Give site, but I’ll put a mention here to direct readers to their site). 

If you are unable to help financially, there are other ways to show your support.  If you are a blogger, feel free to grab the button in this post (or in my top right sidebar) and put it on your blog.  Maybe you could also mention it on Twitter, or in a blog roundup of your own.

Let’s face it, it has been a rough year for a lot of people, and charities in particular are feeling the pinch. One dollar may not seem like much, but imagine if just half of my subscribers (some two thousand people) pitched in one dollar to help a sponsored charity. I’ve pledged $31 for December by striking a video game purchase from my Christmas shopping list, and may give a little more at the end of the month with what I have left over. 

Thanks for allowing me a day to write about such a special project.  We trade a lot of ideas on saving money and building wealth here at Frugal Dad, and ultimately I hope we are all wealthy enough to give some of it away.  There is no greater joy than helping others, especially during the holiday season.

Post by Frugal Dad

We have recently attended a number of weddings, birthday parties and other celebrations.  With little time to shop for gifts we resorted to giving cash or gift cards in most cases, but from now on I think I’ll opt for simply giving cash.  Here are a few reasons why:

• Cash can be spent anywhere.  Unlike gift cards to specific stores, cash can be spent anywhere.  I always appreciate receiving a cash gift because I spend it in whatever manner I want.  Gift cards and gift certificates do not provide the same flexibility.

• Cash can be used for things other than spending.  Depending on what stage you are in of your financial turnaround, it might make sense to hang on to the cash gift, or use it to pay down debt.  In the past I have considered selling gift cards on eBay (for slightly less than face value) just to get the cash value to apply towards other goals. Newlyweds may be particularly appreciative of cash gifts to cover honeymoon expenses.  In fact, cash has become such a popular wedding option in Israel that couples are renting ATMs that allow wedding guests to transfer a sum of money in the newlywed’s bank account with the swipe of a credit or debit card.

• Gift cards may get lost. I am notoriously bad at keeping up with gift cards, and the remaining balances. If I toss the cash gift in a separate envelope I know exactly how much of the gift is left by simply counting the money.  That’s a lot easier than calling a 1-800 number and wading through a sea of voice prompts.

• Giving cash to kids helps reinforce spending lessons.  It is true what they say, spending with cash hurts.  When you hand over that $20 bill you got in your birthday card and get three pennies back it registers.  When you swipe the same amount on a gift card it just doesn’t create the same kind of mental lesson of separating you from your money.    What a better time to reinforce this lesson than when kids are young.

• Gift card balances are rarely fully redeemed.  Of course, this is primary reason retailers offer gift cards.  Unused portions of gift card sales eventually add to the company’s balance sheet.  Best Buy compiled its gift card redemption statistics and found that of its unused gift card balances, the average card had been held and not redeemed for about 2.2 years.  It’s probably safe to say the majority of those balanced will never be redeemed.

• Some gift cards and gift certificates expire with little warning.  I gave my wife a gift certificate for a day at the spa a couple Mother’s Day ago, along with the promise of keeping the kids out of her hair and letting her enjoy a day of pampering.  It was a while before we scheduled the spa day, and were disappointed to find out the gift certificate had expired the month before.  Fortunately, after talking with the spa owner she was still able to use it, but it made me recognize that if I had simply paid for the spa day on the day she visited we would have not had to worry about expiration dates.

Would you rather receive cash or a gift card?

Post by Frugal Dad

The first two episodes were about what I expected, but as the stakes were raised and the dollar amounts increased, I became more disappointed with each new show. In the March 23 airing contestants were asked to give away $100,000 in twenty-four hours. The stipulations were you could not give away more than $500 to any one person, or $10,000 at any one location, and you could not simply give away cash.

I was surprised when none of the contestants visited local churches, hospitals or social services offices. These seemed like obvious places to look for people who are hurting, emotionally, physically and/or financially. Most churches have a long list for their benevolence funds, and not all of them are requests for cash money. Many families need help making a car payment, or getting their mortgage caught up just to get back on track. Others may be recovering from a serious illness and are buried in medical bills, or have experienced a disaster such as a house fire or flood and have lost all of their belongings.

Many municipalities are closing city pools and recreational facilities because of a lack of funding and dilapidated equipment. I can just imagine a local Boys or Girls Clubs in Miami would have loved to have received a new basketball goal, or other updated recreational equipment for their facilities. Orphanages are frequently in need of linens and meal supplies to care for young people in their charge. Soup kitchens and shelters struggle to keep staples such as flour, bread, meats and rice in stock. There is no shortage of stories of victims of Hurricane Andrew still living in homes in need of repair, fifteen years after the hurricane blew through Miami. $10,000 would have gone a long way at each of these places.

Instead, some contestants bought groceries for random shoppers, gave away flowers at an intersection ($2,000 worth), and donated pet food and supplies to an animal shelter. These were all noble deeds, but I thought the name of this game was Big Give! These contestants were guilty of thinking small.

I was once part of a corporate initiative to implement a process improvement plan throughout the company. Our trainer had us perform an exercise in the very beginning of the 6-week training course called “think BIG.” Basically, each team was given an idea and told to expound on it as many times as we could in ten minutes. My group received the task, “Start a youth sports program – your existing budget is $0.00.” We started frantically throwing out ideas and capturing them on a worksheet. Separating each line on the worksheet were the words, “think BIGGER!”

After completing ten or eleven lines we had a strategy to start a youth football league sponsored by area businesses and local sports teams. A new stadium would be built using a combination of public and private, corporate-sponsored funds. Concession sales and banner advertisements lining the playing fields would pay for ongoing maintenance. Not bad for ten minutes of brainstorming. However, if the words “think BIGGER” had not appeared under each idea we might have stopped with “sell Krispy Kreme donuts to raise some money.”

Most people stop thinking big somewhere along the way. We all settle into our lives and outgrow those big dreams we had as a kid. I’d encourage anyone reading this to “think BIGGER” when imagining what we could do collectively to help other people. It’s easy to sit in my living room and play armchair quarterback, but I would like to think if I had a chance to give away $100,000 to people in need I could find more worthy recipients.

Image Credit: Daily News

Post by Frugal Dad