Charity suggestions for holiday donations

[Eff-1]

We have been relatively lucky during 2020 and fortunate to be able to give back a bit. We are putting a list together of charities we'll donate to this year.

Personally I am looking for something that is more grassroots, and likely has been impacted by the pandemic, more so than a typical year.

Open to any ideas or suggestions from the RS community for charities you may be personally familiar with.

One that's already on our list is the Harvest Project, as they support families on the north shore with groceries, rent, and job searching.

Thanks for any ideas.

[punkwax]

I would suspect food banks would be in greater need this year due to amount of jobs lost due to the pandemic.

Unlike you, 2020 has hit us fairly hard financially so while we won’t be donating any cash this season, we dropped off about a dozen gently used jackets to Atira.

https://atira.bc.ca/

[320icar]

Local food banks and children’s hospital are usually my go-to.

Let’s not forget community reach out programs for homeless. It’s winter now so blankets, boots, jackets etc could save peoples lives who sleep outside

[lilaznviper]

i usually donate money to the foodbank since their buying power is a lot more than what we can buy for the foodbank.

It seems like this year around there is a lot more people using the foodbank so its a great choice to donate.

[winson604]

Does anyone know of any places taking toys preferably in Van/Burnaby?

[whitev70r]

Canucks Place Children's Hospice.

Covenant House

[EuterVanWasser]

@winson604 - I've gone down this path and had difficulty finding an association which will take toys and as a reminder, for hygienic regions even prior to COVID, most would only take new and still in the box toys. I ended up giving a box of toys away years ago to a women's shelter that housed victims of domestic violence but this was probably 10 years ago now.

I too have been fortunate in that our household income is protected thus far by our employers. As with last year, I've just donated $1,000 to United Way, and I have chosen UW's BC North chapter to get my donation as I suspect their donator pool is shallower than the LM.

[Jmac]

I've donated to local food banks, United Way, Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, and MS Society this year and, at work, we donate to a family in need each Christmas.

The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation is because I have Crohn's and the MS Society is because my neighbour growing up and my best friend's wife both have MS, so those are my "selfish" donations I make every year.

[Zedbra]

Made the corporate decision this year that instead of sending out year-end gift baskets, my company would instead donate those sums to a local charity that can help many families this troubling year. On the flip side, I asked my vendors to not send us any gifts per usual, instead, please make a donation to a local charity in their hometowns. All of my vendors thought it was a great idea.

As my business is based in Coquitlam, we donated $1000 to SHARE Family & Community Services; more of a grass-roots charity that manages the local food bank, seniors' programs, helps immigrants settle and find jobs. My home town is Squamish, so through Save-on-Foods, I donated another $1000 to Helping Hands/ Squamish Food Bank, as this money doubles for them through SOF; these two charities are currently supply around 500 meals per day here locally.

[pastarocket]

The local food bank or United Way are local organizations that can use donations at this time of the year.

Watch out for the scammers during the holiday season! An idiot called me from Ontario. The guy had one of the most fake Nigerian accents that I ever heard.

The guy asked for donations to help underprivileged children in Africa.


My response to the Nigerian Prince? "Look buddy, stop wasting my time! Why don't you hit up Black Panther in Wakanda? I hear he comes from a rich family that has lots of Vibranium!"

Then I hung up on the scammer.

[mickz]

Originally Posted by winson604

Does anyone know of any places taking toys preferably in Van/Burnaby?

Not Vancouver/Burnaby but SHARE in Port Moody is accepting new toys. I dropped off my donation at the Port Moody Rec Centre. They also have donation bins at City Hall, Police station and Fire hall.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by EuterVanWasser

@winson604 - I've gone down this path and had difficulty finding an association which will take toys and as a reminder, for hygienic regions even prior to COVID, most would only take new and still in the box toys. I ended up giving a box of toys away years ago to a women's shelter that housed victims of domestic violence but this was probably 10 years ago now.

I too have been fortunate in that our household income is protected thus far by our employers. As with last year, I've just donated $1,000 to United Way, and I have chosen UW's BC North chapter to get my donation as I suspect their donator pool is shallower than the LM.

United way is a scam. Corporate pressure by employers to pad each others pocket books. Donating to a broad cause like you did that money was likely just swept away into beuacracy and logistics.

My dad works for a very large insurance company and they used to have pressure from the higher ups to make contributions to certain causes through united way (in that you could choose which group you were donating to as long it was through united way)

The first time my dad said specifically he wanted to donate to a a Cub Scout group (which me and my friends were a part of this specific group) united way came back and said no problem we do this all the time we have a relationship with them etc. My mom was the accountant for the group. No donation was ever made, no money ever came through.

The second time he was asked to donate he said he wanted to contribute to a girls figure skating group which my sister was in and her good friends mom was the accountant/treasurer. United way came back again and said thank you the funds will go there directly. Nothing ever came through, no donation made.

They donate all the time to various different charities, BC cancer etc. And he wasn’t too happy that there was this internal pressure from within his company to donate, which is why he tried to keep the money where he knew it would go, not that they aren’t into donating to help others etc.

These weren’t small sums either it was 2500 and 3000 respectively. If you read up on united way this is a common theme with their “corporate” donations where they approach large companies and have upper management donate

[unit]

i usually donate to covenant house, or the food bank. i've donated a few times to the muslim food bank as well since there are a lot of newcomers to canada who are pretty vulnerable.
i also donate to my old sar group, especially when it comes to items they need like vacuums, yard tools, etc... that i can collect from friends sometimes.

[bcrdukes]

I second what Hondaracer said about United Way. There is a tremendous amount of overhead that goes towards the operations of their organization, and where the money goes is a completely different story, or rather, a black hole. After learning of this myself, I stopped donating to them. For all I know, my money could have been supporting terrorists overseas, or paying for the living expenses of Chinese agents in Canada masked as economic development for all we know.

If any of you plan on making any kind of monetary charitable donation to an organization, make sure you understand where your money goes, how it gets distributed, and see if there are other ways to donate to the organization of your choice other than through monetary means (i.e. providing professional services pro bono etc.)

I provide professional services to various charitable organizations through my company by volunteering my time/expertise (of nothingness.) Sometimes, charitable organizations can tremendously benefit from services over financial donations, but you have to seek them out.

[CivicBlues]

I remember many years ago United Way started pushing the automatic deductions from your paycheque angle if you couldn't part with a lump sum donation. When I heard that, even though I was new to the workforce, I was like "nah...that sounds shady as fuck".

[bcrdukes]

Yeah, they rolled that out where I work and I was like NOPE!

[Eff-1]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

United way is a scam. Corporate pressure by employers to pad each others pocket books. Donating to a broad cause like you did that money was likely just swept away into beuacracy and logistics.

My dad works for a very large insurance company and they used to have pressure from the higher ups to make contributions to certain causes through united way (in that you could choose which group you were donating to as long it was through united way)

The first time my dad said specifically he wanted to donate to a a Cub Scout group (which me and my friends were a part of this specific group) united way came back and said no problem we do this all the time we have a relationship with them etc. My mom was the accountant for the group. No donation was ever made, no money ever came through.

The second time he was asked to donate he said he wanted to contribute to a girls figure skating group which my sister was in and her good friends mom was the accountant/treasurer. United way came back again and said thank you the funds will go there directly. Nothing ever came through, no donation made.

They donate all the time to various different charities, BC cancer etc. And he wasn’t too happy that there was this internal pressure from within his company to donate, which is why he tried to keep the money where he knew it would go, not that they aren’t into donating to help others etc.

These weren’t small sums either it was 2500 and 3000 respectively. If you read up on united way this is a common theme with their “corporate” donations where they approach large companies and have upper management donate

There are some points here I agree, and some that I differ on.

I think the United Way does good work, and there are many charities and orgs that receive funding and benefit from them. I can speak personally on that point, having seen the funds show up.

The United Way also has specific things they focus more on, like seniors and after school care for kids, so if someone is hoping to support something that falls outside their core themes, he/she is better off to donate directly.

I agree, they are such a large org that too much of the donation gets eaten up by overhead. And also one time when I donated to them, I designated a specific charity recipient and they wanted to charge me an extra admin fee in order to do that. I wasn't pleased at that.

I also worked for a company that did corporate united way support every October and I hated the pressure the bosses put on the employees to donate to this specific cause, when in fact people might want to take their limited funds and give to someone else instead.

[MG1]

I donate to the Salvation Army. It's a cult, but they are quite efficient. It's just too bad they are an army for god. As long as they help others, I wouldn't care if they were Bajorans.

[SkunkWorks]

Thanks for this. My work has a contribution matching program so this helps narrow down the list of causes.

[unit]

private donors have put up 375k towards matching covenant house donations 3:1. ryan reynolds and blake lively put up a big chunk of that.
so if you donate $50, $150 will be donated to covenant house. not bad..

[MG1]

Speaking of donations, is RS ever going to do a blood drive again?