Donating Canned Goods To Avoid Library Fees

"In the Illinois towns of Joliet and Palos Park, the economic downturn has pushed the public libraries into the grocery business, of sorts. Patrons with overdue books and hefty outstanding fines were recently given a way to clear their records: Donate canned goods or other groceries through the library to local shelters and food pantries."

The full story as published in the the New York Times is below....

New and Creative Leniency for Overdue Library Books
By SUSAN SAULNY and EMMA GRAVES
FITZSIMMONS
CHICAGO — In the Illinois towns of Joliet and Palos Park, the economic downturn has pushed the public libraries into the grocery business, of sorts. Patrons with overdue books and hefty outstanding fines were recently given a way to clear their records: Donate canned goods or other groceries through the library to local shelters and food pantries.

Dozens of library patrons in both towns jumped at the opportunity.

In Colorado, despite a multimillion-dollar deficit, the Denver Public Library has practically done away with fixed-rate fines. Now librarians there are free to negotiate a fee structure that feels fair to them based on individual cases, or to charge nothing at all.

Since the beginning of the economic downturn, librarians across the country have speculated that fines for overdue items are keeping people from using the library — particularly large families whose children take out (and forget to return) many books at a time. Some libraries learned that the fines, which are often as low as 25 cents an item per day, quickly multiplied for many people and were becoming an added hardship.

“We can’t push the cost to consumers because they’re also struggling,” said Richard Sosa, the finance director of the Denver system, which has $9 million worth of books in circulation through 23 libraries and two bookmobiles. “The library philosophy is: We do not want to restrict access to information. The use of fines or harsh collection tactics — and we could potentially do that — could essentially restrict people’s access to the library.”

And another thing: They need their books back.

As a result, libraries have been instituting amnesty days and weeks with increasing frequency this year, and offering programs such as “food for fines.” In Joliet, about 60 miles southwest of here, the program went well beyond groceries, and benefited a local social service agency that serves the needy.

“Toiletries, clothing — people could bring in just about anything,” said John Spears, the director of the Joliet library. “It went very well. I think these kinds of things are a win-win for everyone.”

The Conneaut Public Library in Conneaut, Ohio, has a list of more than 1,000 people who cannot use the system because of fines, and the staff has been contacting the long lost patrons to ask them to come back.

The food for fines program there, which started around Thanksgiving and runs through New Year’s Day, offers this deal: Take the amount owed, divide it in half, and give that number of items to the Conneaut Food Pantry. For instance, if a family owes $50, it can donate 25 canned goods to the pantry, and the fines will disappear.

“Behind my circulation desk, I have boxes and boxes of food that people are stumbling over,” said Kathy Pape, the library’s executive director. “The response has been overwhelming.”

Other libraries are accepting any amount of food in exchange for returned materials. And the ones that are offering amnesty require nothing at all.

“We service an area that’s extremely depressed, in the foothills of East Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains,” said Aliceann McCabe, the director of the Audrey Pack Memorial Library in Spring City, Tenn., where an amnesty week ended Dec. 18. “Our computer use has tripled thanks to unemployment claims and things. This is our Christmas present to the people who use our library. We don’t want to ding them with fines.”

Ms. McCabe recounted the story of one woman who had $196 in outstanding fines forgiven. The library, for its part, got her 10 books back in circulation. For a country library that only has 27,000 books in its collection, “that’s a lot,” Ms. McCabe said.

The Monterey County Free Library system in Monterey, Calif., has reclaimed more than 1,000 books since offering end-of-the-year amnesty to patrons in November and December.

“We thought, People are suffering, having a hard time, so let’s give them a break and get our books back,” said Jayanti Addleman, the county librarian.

But Ms. Addleman and others said they often faced a common-sense question from users and management: Why not raise fines to make money and serve more people?

The librarians say the new leniency makes sense. “What’s going to keep my library doors open is the bigger picture,” Ms. Pape said. “It isn’t going to be a hundred-odd dollars here and there.”

Mr. Sosa, in Denver, added: “A certain level of fines and fee structure is important to have people realize that these are important public materials, and that’s how libraries work in a democracy. But at the same time, we’re trying to figure out, when does a fee prohibit someone who’s on the brink economically from using our service? We’re cognizant of what we’re doing.”

In Pelham, N.H., the public library director, Robert Rice, offered a food-for-fines program during November.

“We will probably continue that policy once the new year starts,” Mr. Rice said. “The loss in terms of money was maybe $20 a day. We well made up for it with the amount of food that came in.”

He continued: “We got our materials back and did something positive for the community. Use is up greatly, and budgets are being cut. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re keeping the doors open.”

Article @ link - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/us/29library.html

Holiday Miracle - Mom & Baby Come Back to Life

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Girl Scout Inspires Unemployed Mom to Start New Business

In the Spirit of Christmas, Man Gives Away All His Possessions

Dennis Stevenson had a ton of stuff he didn't need. So, for last Christmas, he opened the doors to his home and allowed those who couldn't afford gifts to come and take what they wanted. It was such a hit, he's doing it again this year, but in a shop on the Gold Coast of Queensland.

Patrons are thrilled to take part, not just because of the free goodies, but because of how Stevenson is celebrating "the spirit of Christmas." (Excerpt from Impact page Huffington Post.com)

Full Story from Australia's Courier Mail below:

Dennis Stevenson gives away all his possessions

Hannah Martin
August 23, 2008 11:00pm
.DENNIS Stevenson lives in one of Brisbane's wealthiest suburbs and yesterday opened his front door to give away the contents of his home.

His washing machine, dishwasher, clothes and a computer were snaffled up in half-an-hour.
You couldn't wipe the smile off the face of the 62-year-old small business consultant, who struggled to explain why he decided to give away his life's possessions.

"The best way to answer that is, 'Why not?' " Mr Stevenson said at his Hamilton home in Brisbane's inner north.

"I was going to sell it, but had this idea that it would be fun and nice to give it away."

There were tears of gratitude and plenty of hugs for Mr Stevenson, as people from as far away as Toowoomba thanked him for their new goods.

Items up for grabs included a new silk suit, jugs, a microwave, fans, books, golf clubs, sporting equipment, a roof antenna, plastic storage containers, shelves and a television cabinet.

"Lucky I don't (own the house), I'd probably give it away, too," Mr Stevenson said.

"There were so many people here, people who needed things, (and) I think people really only took things they needed."

So, what's next for Mr Stevenson?

"Interestingly enough, I haven't decided. I'm looking forward to waking up in the morning and seeing where the day takes me," he said.

Mr Stevenson lives on his own, after caring for his elderly mum for several years until her recent death.

Luke Anthony and his friend Jamie Lee, who live near Aspley in Brisbane's north, were grateful for Mr Stevenson's washing machine, television, books, some grinding tools and new clothes.

"I think (the giveaway) is typical true blue Aussie and it's a dying trait. It's dead and buried, but Dennis has revived it," Mr Anthony, 40, said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/australian-man-opens-free_n_400960.html

For the Homeless, Sweet Music Lightens the Load

From the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/arts/music/19soup.html?adxnnl=1&sudsredirect=true&adxnnlx=1261494248-nxNeS1QFU4SJ0+0aGrneQQ

Just three blocks from Lincoln Center, they arrived at the concert on Thursday night by shelter bus, not taxi or limousine. They took their seats around scarred, round folding tables. The menu was chicken curry and rice served on paper plates.

These concertgoers were eight tired, homeless men who had been taken to the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church shelter for the night. They listened to the latest performance by Kelly Hall-Tompkins, a professional violinist who has been playing in shelters for five years under the banner of Music Kitchen.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins is not the only do-gooder in the classical music world. Orchestras nationwide took part in a food drive this fall, and Classical Action raises money for AIDS programs through concerts and other activities. Hospital Audiences brings musicians and other performers into wards. But most classical music institutions — orchestras, opera houses and conservatories — pour their philanthropic efforts into large-scale music education for children, supported by hefty fund-raising and marketing machines. They organize youth orchestras; play concerts in poor, urban schools; and provide lessons.

Music Kitchen has a catchy motto (“Food for the Soul”), T-shirts with a logo and a pool of donors. But the operation is essentially Ms. Hall-Tompkins, 38, an ambitious New York freelancer who plays in the New Jersey Symphony and has a midlevel solo and chamber music career.

“I like sharing music with people, and they have zero access to it,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said of her homeless audiences. “It’s very moving to me that I can find people in a place perhaps when they have a greater need for, and a heightened sensitivity to, beauty.”

She invites musician friends to play and uses her networking skills to cajole prominent soloists into joining. They include Emanuel Ax, the pianist, and Albrecht Mayer, a principal oboist of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Hall-Tompkins asked Mr. Ax to take part when he was playing a concerto with the New Jersey Symphony, and she encountered Mr. Mayer in a Tokyo hotel hallway while both were on tour.

The concerts have an air of authenticity and directness that sometimes does not exist in concert halls. Not all the listeners are new to classical music. One woman at a concert said the experience had been bittersweet because it brought back memories of working at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and “how much my life has changed since.”

For the performers, it can also be bittersweet. “When I have people to play for, it means they are having really hard times,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. But the benefit is mutual. “The artists, I find, are just as moved as the people we’re supposedly trying to help.”

Music Kitchen concerts mainly take place at the Antonio G. Olivieri Drop in Center for Homeless Women and at Holy Trinity. Ms. Hall-Tompkins’s first concert was in 2004, when her husband, Joe Tompkins, a percussionist who volunteered as a cook at Holy Trinity, suggested she play for the men there.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins creates programs of beloved pieces that most string players know well, like the Schubert String Quintet, and she uses the concerts as dress rehearsals for works scheduled for more public performances. All the artists are paid —a token $100 — because Ms. Hall-Tompkins said that she believed in the principle that musicians should be compensated.

On Thursday Ms. Hall-Tompkins had managed to snare a prominent player, Mark O’Connor, the fiddler and composer, who came with manager, personal assistant and public relations man in tow. She and Mr. O’Connor — who has played at shelters around the country — are planning to play together, including a Sept. 11 performance with the Evansville Philharmonic, in Evansville, Ind.

Shortly before 8 p.m., the men quietly filtered into the basement of the church, at 65th Street and Central Park West, and picked out their bedding. They wheeled folding beds over to a wall and opened them. They took their seats around the tables under neon lights.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins introduced herself and Mr. O’Connor. “You have here one of the great violinists of our generation,” she said. “This is a guy who fills concert halls all over the place.”

They plunged into a duet by Mr. O’Connor, “Appalachia Waltz.” As the two violins wove nostalgic, homespun lines, the men watched intently, not touching their food. Mr. O’Connor went off to the side and sat on a platform, while Ms. Hall-Tompkins talked about the next work, Bach’s Partita No. 2 for unaccompanied violin.

“It’s based on a set of dance movements,” she said. “Of course, it’s not the dances we would do today.” Bach looked down on the proceedings from a framed poster behind her. One man in a blue hooded sweatshirt moved his head back and forth to the music.

Mr. O’Connor took over with a medley of traditional American tunes, like “Boil the Cabbage Down” and “Arkansas Traveler,” a journey through blue grass, jazz and blues country.

“You guys are fantastic,” one of the men interjected.

They joined again for the first movement of Mr. O’Connor’s Double Violin Concerto, a jazzy, glissando-filled dialogue, in which Ms. Hall-Tompkins played the straight man to Mr. O’Connor’s wilder lines.

The audience members applauded politely between each number and finished their food. Afterward, Ms. Hall-Tompkins opened a discussion. “How in the world did you end up playing the violin?” asked a man in a black watch cap.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins said she was influenced by a visit to her local orchestra as a child in Greenville, S.C.; by the music of Bach in her Lutheran church; and by Warner Brothers cartoons. “We’re talking Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd,” she said, and played snatches of Bugs’s favorites: the overture from the “Barber of Seville” and the Wagner theme set to the text “Kill the wabbit.” Several of the men laughed in recognition.

One asked about the musicians’ feelings about pop music. “I’m a rock girl,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. Another asked what was Bach’s “most famous piece.” Ms. Hall-Tompkins played some well-known excerpts.

The shelter coordinator, Omowale Adewale, said he rarely saw the men so lively. Often they collapse with exhaustion after eating. Some even skip the meal.
Mr. O’Connor said he was struck by how the men opened up after hearing the two violins in dialogue. “Maybe through this music there’s healing,” he said.

One man, who identified himself by his nickname, Cleveland, said music helped him relax. He had a tattoo of a G clef and several notes on his neck. “I look at music as something to get my mind focused off of the other things I’m going through,” he said.

Joseph Rucco said the music evoked childhood memories. “Classic music will never die,” he said. “I’m not stable right now. To hear them play, it motivates me to do what I have to do in the future.”

Ms. Hall-Tompkins scrupulously memorializes each concert. She writes a description of the event, takes photographs and has the shelter residents write down their thoughts on index cards.

“I get a crazy kind of pleasure documenting the whole thing,” she said.

In one card from Thursday night, a man who gave only his first name, Daryl, wrote: “It touched my heart to hear such nice tunes,” adding, “I will keep you in my prayers. You made an impact on me greatly.”

After the musicians left, the men went to sleep. The bus would be back at 6 a.m.

For Local Artist, Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

From the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/arts/design/20herrera.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true

Under a skylight in her tin-ceilinged loft near Union Square in Manhattan, the abstract painter Carmen Herrera, 94, nursed a flute of Champagne last week, sitting regally in the wheelchair she resents.

After six decades of very private painting, Ms. Herrera sold her first artwork five years ago, at 89. Now, at a small ceremony in her honor, she was basking in the realization that her career had finally, undeniably, taken off. As cameras flashed, she extended long, Giacomettiesque fingers to accept an art foundation’s lifetime achievement award from the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Her good friend, the painter Tony Bechara, raised a glass. “We have a saying in Puerto Rico,” he said. “The bus — la guagua — always comes for those who wait.”

And the Cuban-born Ms. Herrera, laughing gustily, responded, “Well, Tony, I’ve been at the bus stop for 94 years!”

Since that first sale in 2004, collectors have avidly pursued Ms. Herrera, and her radiantly ascetic paintings have entered the permanent collections of institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Tate Modern. Last year, MoMA included her in a pantheon of Latin American artists on exhibition. And this summer, during a retrospective show in England, The Observer of London called Ms. Herrera the discovery of the decade, asking, “How can we have missed these beautiful compositions?”

In a word, Ms. Herrera, a nonagenarian homebound painter with arthritis, is hot. In an era when the art world idolizes, and often richly rewards, the young and the new, she embodies a different, much rarer kind of success, that of the artist long overlooked by the market, and by history, who persevered because she had no choice.

“I do it because I have to do it; it’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure,” she said of painting. “I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. So I just worked and waited. And at the end of my life, I’m getting a lot of recognition, to my amazement and my pleasure, actually.”

Julián Zugazagoitia, the director of El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, called Ms. Herrera “a quiet warrior of her art.”

“To bloom into full glory at 94 — whatever Carmen Herrera’s slow rise might say about the difficulties of being a woman artist, an immigrant artist or an artist ahead of her time, it is clearly a story of personal strength,” Mr. Zugazagoitia said.

A minimalist whose canvases are geometric distillations of form and color, Ms. Herrera has slowly come to the attention of a subset of art historians over the last decade. . Now she is increasingly considered an important figure by those who study her “remarkably monumental, iconic paintings,” said Edward J. Sullivan, a professor of art history at New York University.

“Those of us with a passion for either geometric art or Latin American Modernist painting now realize what a pivotal role” Ms. Herrera has played in “the development of geometric abstraction in the Americas,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Painting in relative solitude since the late 1930s, with only the occasional exhibition, Ms. Herrera was sustained, she said, by the unflinching support of her husband of 61 years, Jesse Loewenthal. An English teacher at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, Mr. Loewenthal was portrayed by the memoirist Frank McCourt, a colleague, as an old-world scholar in an “elegant, three-piece suit, the gold watch chain looping across his waistcoat front.”

Recognition for Ms. Herrera came a few years after her husband’s death, at 98, in 2000. “Everybody says Jesse must have orchestrated this from above,” Ms. Herrera said, shaking her head. “Yeah, right, Jesse on a cloud.” She added: “I worked really hard. Maybe it was me.”

In a series of interviews in her sparsely but artfully furnished apartment, Ms. Herrera always offered an afternoon cocktail — “Oh, don’t be abstemious!” — and an outpouring of stories about prerevolutionary Cuba, postwar Paris and the many artists she has known, from Wifredo Lam to Yves Klein to Barnett Newman.

“Ah, Wifredo,” she said, referring to Lam, the Cuban-born French painter. “All the girls were crazy about him. When we were in Havana, my phone would begin ringing: ‘Is Wifredo in town?’ I mean, come on, I wasn’t his social secretary.”

But Ms. Herrera is less expansive about her own art, discussing it with a minimalism redolent of the work. “Paintings speak for themselves,” she said. Geometry and color have been the head and the heart of her work, she added, describing a lifelong quest to pare down her paintings to their essence, like visual haiku.

Asked how she would describe to a student a painting like “Blanco y Verde” (1966) — a canvas of white interrupted by an inverted green triangle — she said, “I wouldn’t have a student.” To a sweet, inquiring child, then? “I’d give him some candy so he’d rot his teeth.”

When pressed about what looks to some like a sensual female shape in the painting, she said: “Look, to me it was white, beautiful white, and then the white was shrieking for the green, and the little triangle created a force field. People see very sexy things — dirty minds! — but to me sex is sex, and triangles are triangles.”

Born in 1915 in Havana, where her father was the founding editor of the daily newspaper El Mundo, and her mother a reporter, Ms. Herrera took art lessons as a child, attended finishing school in Paris and embarked on a Cuban university degree in architecture. In 1939, midway through her studies, she married Mr. Loewenthal and moved to New York. (They had no children.)

Although she studied at the Art Students League of New York, Ms. Herrera did not discover her artistic identity until she and her husband settled in Paris for a few years after World War II. There she joined a group of abstract artists, based at the influential Salon of New Realities, which exhibited her work along with that of Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and others.

“I was looking for a pictorial vocabulary and I found it there,” she said. “But when we moved back to New York, this type of art” — her less-is-more formalism — “was not acceptable. Abstract Expressionism was in fashion. I couldn’t get a gallery.”

Ms. Herrera said that she also accepted, “as a handicap,” the barriers she faced as a Hispanic female artist. Beyond that, though, “her art was not easily digestible at the time,” Mr. Zugazagoitia said. “She was not doing Cuban landscapes or flowers of the tropics, the art you might have expected from a Cuban émigré who spent time in Paris. She was ahead of her time.”

Over the decades, Ms. Herrera had a solo show here and there, including a couple at museums (the Alternative Museum in 1984, El Museo del Barrio in 1998). But she never sold anything, and never needed, or aggressively sought, the affirmation of the market. “It would have been nice, but maybe corrupting,” she said.

Mr. Bechara, who befriended her in the early 1970s and is now chairman of El Museo del Barrio, said that he regularly tried to push her into the public eye, even though she “found a kind of solace in being alone.”

One day in 2004, Mr. Bechara attended a dinner with Frederico Sève, the owner of the Latin Collector Gallery in Manhattan, who was dealing with the withdrawal of an artist from a much-publicized show of female geometric painters. “Tony said to me: ‘Geometry and ladies? You need Carmen Herrera,’ ” Mr. Sève recounted. “And I said, ‘Who the hell is Carmen Herrera?’ ”

The next morning, Mr. Sève arrived at his gallery to find several paintings, just delivered, that he took to be the work of the well-known Brazilian artist Lygia Clark but were in fact by Ms. Herrera. Turning over the canvases, he saw that they predated by a decade paintings in a similar style by Ms. Clark. “Wow, wow, wow,” he recalled saying. “We got a pioneer here.”

Mr. Sève quickly called Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, a collector who has an art foundation in Miami. She bought five of Ms. Herrera’s paintings. Estrellita Brodsky, another prominent collector, bought another five. Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, also bought several, and with Mr. Bechara, donated one of Ms. Herrera’s black-and-white paintings to MoMA.

The recent exhibition in England, which is now heading to Germany, came about by happenstance after a curator stumbled across Ms. Herrera’s paintings on the Internet. Last week The Observer named that retrospective one of the year’s 10 best exhibitions, alongside a Picasso show and one devoted to the American Pop artist Ed Ruscha.

Ms. Herrera’s late-in-life success has stunned her in many ways. Her larger works now sell for $30,000, and one painting commanded $44,000 — sums unimaginable when she was, say, in her 80s. “I have more money now than I ever had in my life,” she said.

Not that she is succumbing to a life of leisure. At a long table where she peers out over East 19th Street “like a French concierge,” Ms. Herrera, because she must, continues to draw and paint. “Only my love of the straight line keeps me going,” she said.

A Continental Dash

By Imprint-TV Contributing Reporter: Sarah Denlinger

Last week, Charlie Barkowski set out to run six marathons, on six continents, within five days. Though he did not complete all six marathons due to a late flight arrival in Cairo, one can hardly say that he failed. You could consider him a modern day Pheidippides (coincidental that he hails from Greece, New York too) and the challenge that he faced would be daunting for even the most talented of athletes. Barkowski referred to his run as the “Dash of Continents” and his sole trek began in Sydney, Australia with stops in: Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, London, Cairo, and finally ending in Jerusalem. When it was all said and done, Barkowski logged 100 hours of flight time from city to city; 131.1 miles by foot; a total of 18,642 calories burned; and an average run time of 4:59.

This ultimately begs the question of: why? As someone who can barely make it to the gym three times a week, I was curious as to the motives behind Barkowski’s feat (no pun intended). According to his website, he ran for the charity Run FIT, Inc., which stands for Run For Israel Together and was “started for the purpose of helping families in Israel who have lost loved ones in acts of terror.” The group’s main method of raising both funds and international awareness is through running in different events around the world. Barkowski is one of only a few people to ever attempt running that distance in such a short time period, and also the first American to do so.

The marathon distance was recorded via a global positioning system that Barkowski wore along with a heart monitor (for those cynics that may think that he skipped out on the running and just drove the myriad routes). You can read about his journey on his website and facebook pages: dashofcontinents.net and Run for Israel, respectively.

Christmas Miracle: Once Was Blind, Now Can See!

Brooklyn Mom, Blind for past Two Years, Has Eyes Repaired in Surgery


From the ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cassy Rivera calls it "a Christmas miracle."

A disease, uveitis, blinded Rivera two years ago. Now, surgery has repaired one eye - allowing the Brooklyn mom to see her toddler for the first time.

Rivera tells the Daily News it was like "touching the stars and the clouds and the moon."

Rivera's 7-year-old is her biggest fan. Alayza said she didn't need presents - she just wanted her mom to see again.

The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary donated costs not covered by Medicaid.

The chance of success was about 50/50. When the bandages came off, Rivera was so scared that she kept her eyes shut for 10 minutes. Then she screamed with joy.

"It was beautiful," she recalled. "I saw his (Doctor's) tie. I saw the computer. And then I realized, 'I'm going to get to see my kids today.'"

After Christmas, she'll have surgery on her other eye.

The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary donated costs not covered by Medicaid.

Copy & paste link for entire article plus video from the NY Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/12/18/2009-12-18_thanks_to_generous_surgeons_bklyn_mom_regains_her_sight__gets_to_see_true_meanin.html

Sacramento Man On A Mission: Volunteer For 20 Causes In 20 Days

Via The Huffington Post:

Erik, a Sacramento man, is on a truly giving mission: he's dedicating himself to twenty causes over twenty days.



He explains that he's never volunteered before, and that he'd like to challenge himself and live outside his comfort zone, which is part of the reason why he came up with 20 Causes, 20 Days.

Erik's calendar of causes has included delivering two Thanksgiving dinners to needy families in the Sacramento area, singing karaoke for senior citizens, and sorting donated coats for kids as part of a drive with the Salvation Army. He's thoughtfully chronicled each day of volunteering on his blog.

Today marked Erik's 14th cause. Erik volunteered with the Sacramento Area Emergency Housing Center to celebrate the birthdays of children whose families used to be homeless -- at a party complete with cupcakes and presents.

Founded in 1972, the Center is a program that helps families transition from being homeless and serves 500 people each day through 14 of its programs.

Follow Erik on Twitter and stay tuned for the final six days of of 20 Causes 20 Days. http://20causes20days.com/

K9 Connection: At-Risk Teens And Shelter Dogs Get A New 'Leash' On Life

Put these two groups together and unleash the healing power of the human-animal bond. That's what Katherine Beattie and Pat Sinclair envisioned when they formed k9 connection, a non-profit organization that educates and inspires at-risk teens through bonding with and training homeless shelter dogs.

k9 connection, located in Santa Monica, California, is a remarkable organization whose mission is to teach at-risk teens how to train homeless shelter dogs in basic obedience skills in order to increase their chances of adoption. Through the training they provide to the dogs, the teens benefit by learning how to be more responsible and accountable, the importance of goal setting, and how positive reinforcement offers an alternative to force and violence.

At lot of the lessons the kids learn by training the dogs can be applied to the various challenges they may face in their daily lives. In turn, the shelter dogs develop skills that allow them to smoothly transition into permanent, loving homes.

More information on the Huffingtonpost website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-patricia-fitzgerald/k9-connection-at-risk-tee_b_386702.html

The Spontaneous Smiley Project

Here’s a project Imprint-TV has always loved – Spontaneous Smiley - an art project that that lives on the internet and involves thousands of people all over the world collecting and sharing their photographs of the Smiley Face as it appears in everyday objects. Spontaneous Smiley launched 2 years ago.

Recently they’ve partnered with OPERATION SMILE (a network of volunteers working worldwide to repair childhood facial deformities). Smiley uploads earn donations for Operation Smile. On Friday 12/11/09 they launched their very first Smile-a-Thon. An entire elementary school is going on a Smile Hunt. Like a Walk-a-Thon the kids will get people to sponsor them, but instead of by the mile the sponsors will pledge by the SMILE. Hundreds of kids will spend their Winter Break finding and photographing Spontaneous Smileys. If this pilot school goes well, Operation Smile and Spontaneous Smiley will launch the Smile-a-Thon nation wide!

Spontaneous Smiley will be on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric one day this week. Definitely take the time to learn more about this project, become a fan on Facebook and join the cause. This is an amazing effort by Ruth Kaiser, the founder of the organization, who has a passion for creating positive change!

Buffalo Soldier War Hero Gets His Day

From the Spokesman-Review: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/16/war-hero-gets-day-of-his-own/
By: Alison Boggs The Spokesman-Review

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has proclaimed Thursday will be Vernon J. Baker Day, in honor of the St. Maries resident who is the only living African-American Medal of Honor recipient from World War II.

“I encourage Idahoans to honor this courageous citizen who is the embodiment of the true American hero and who ensures and reminds us of all that is wonderful about Idaho and this great country,” Otter wrote in the proclamation, signed Dec. 8.

Baker, who served for eight years on the state’s Human Rights Commission, turns 90 on Thursday. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997.

“Oh my Lord, thank you,” Baker said when he learned of the proclamation Tuesday. “I appreciate that very, very much. The only thing I can do about it is sit here and cry.”

Baker received the Medal of Honor for leading a two-day assault in 1945 against an Italian mountain stronghold occupied by German soldiers and securing it for American forces.

Baker also is the last survivor of the Buffalo Soldiers unit, the segregated 270th Regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division, the first all-black unit to see combat in World War II, according to a news release from the commission. Baker holds numerous other medals, including a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross.

In a personal letter, Otter told Baker that his valor and sacrifice “helped preserve the freedoms we cherish as Americans. You are an example to all of us, and Idaho is grateful for your service and humbled by your civic virtue.”

The proclamation was a great way to honor Baker, said Pamela Parks, director of the Human Rights Commission, the state agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws. “He added a great deal to the deliberations here … and was much admired,” she said.

Helping the Hungry - One Bowl At A Time

From CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/15/gif.empty.bowls/index.html

Washington (CNN) -- In a warm, fluorescent-lit clay studio at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, students, faculty and a soft-spoken priest are embarking on a mission. Their goal: Create 500 bowls for a fundraiser to help feed the hungry.

"There are over 9,000 homeless people in the nation's capital," says the Rev. John Adams, who has been trying to break the cycle of homelessness and hunger in Washington for more than 30 years as president of So Others Might Eat.

The interfaith, community-based organization, which is in its 40th year, serves more than 1,000 meals a day and provides nearly 300 housing units to homeless and hungry people in Washington.

"We are in sight of the Capitol and still we have many, many homeless people who need our help," Adams said. "We've seen over a 10 percent increase in the meals we are serving this past year. We've seen a 17 percent increase in the people coming to our medical clinic. Our housing we provide is 100 percent full.

"[The recession] is really affecting the poor."
Each year, So Others Might Eat hosts an Empty Bowls event where, for a $20 donation, guests are served a soup supper and given a handmade clay bowl. The events raise thousands of dollars for the organization, with local potters, studios and schools making and donating the bowls, and restaurants and shops donating the food.

This year, for the first time, the group is partnering with the Corcoran to help supply bowls for the fundraiser in March 2010. The bowls are intended as symbols of hunger.

"It's a wonderful event to have these artists come here today to help feed the needy in our city," Adams says.

However, making bowls is no easy task.

"We are working on a collaborative effort with So Other Might Eat," says Bob Devers, coordinator of ceramics at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. "We promised to produce 500 bowls for their charity fundraiser."

The studio is busy at work, with students and faculty -- and even Adams -- cutting, kneading and spinning the clay into works of art.

Corcoran student Jeff Herrity has been working with clay for 10 years, but he's still excited to sit down and create bowls that someone will put to use.

"It's great to spend an entire day making bowls and thinking about what they will be used for, Herrity said. "We get to sit next to our fellow students and learn their techniques. It's a fun activity for us at the clay program."

Herrity sits on his stool contently, gazing at the clay shape as it opens up into a bowl, thinking about what will go inside.

"It's going to have a life after it comes off this wheel, after it gets fired and glazed, it will be used for something."

As Adams takes a break from designing his first bowl, he looks around and talks with students and faculty. He can't help but be impressed.

"We have great artists and great people here who are interested in helping people in the city," he says.

Taking time to donate their creative energies, especially during the holiday season, means a lot to Adams.

"The holidays remind us of giving thanks for what we have, but also the opportunities we have for reaching out to others that don't have," he says.

Stephen King to pay for troops' holiday trip home

Author Stephen King and his wife are donating money so 150 soldiers from the Maine Army National Guard can comehome for the holidays. King and his wife, Tabitha, who are paying $13,000 toward the cost of two bus trips so members of the 3rd Battalion, 172nd Infantry Unit can travel from Camp Atterbury in Indiana to Maine for Christmas.

The soldiers left Maine last week for training at Camp Atterbury. They are scheduled to depart for Afghanistan in January.

Julie Eugley, one of King's personal assistants, told the Bangor Daily News that the Kings were approached about giving $13,000.

But Stephen King thought the number 13 was a bit unlucky, so the couple pitched in $12,999 instead. Eugley chipped in $1 to make for an even $13,000.

'Secret Santas' Give Instant Hope to Those Who Really Need

A group of 'Secret Santas' randomly give to those in need this holiday season. If you're lucky a town near you - these red-capped Santa's may just had you a hundred dollar bill.

The Santas insist on anonymity -- but they're part of a growing network of wealthy business people, CEO's mostly, who together plan to hand out about $300,000 this year -- because they all share the same crazy notion: to make the world a better place.

CBS Evening News "Assignment America" has the full story below:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Girl's Fight to Stay Alive

CBS News us the phenomenal medical story of Tiana Tillman. The toddler is one of many children waiting for heart transplants but she has hope because of an experimental device called the Berlin heart.

Tiana had been fighting what everyone thought was a cold. It turned out that her heart was failing. The doctors' grim prognosis hit harder than any tackle on the football field. They weren't sure if she would make it through the night.

The device takes over the heart's work of pumping blood. Tubes are implanted inside the heart. They emerge from small openings in the skin to enter the pump, which sends blood directly to the blood vessels that go to the rest of the body.

The Berlin Heart has been used more than 160 times in the U.S. since 2000. Each time, doctors have to get permission from the FDA, and have it flown in from Germany. It was the only hope for Tiana and her family.

CBS News brings us her story the video below:



Watch CBS News Videos Online

Imprint-TV Original Story: New York City's Kids Ride Club

You may have seen this group of kids whizzing by you down the streets of Manhattan. They’re members of New York’s Kids Ride Club. The organization takes many kids beyond their neighborhoods, by bike, for the very first time. Check out this Imprint-TV original story to learn more.

Youth Advocate Earns National Praise For Good Deeds

From the Tampa Tribune: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/dec/07/na-boys-good-deeds-earn-national-praise/

By YVETTE C. HAMMETT

yhammett@tampatrib.com
A 12-year-old boy with a heart for the homeless and downtrodden in this world is among an elite list of humanitarians nominated for Most Inspiring Person of the Year.

Beliefnet, a Web site devoted to saluting people whose actions inspire others to live better lives, has named Zach Bonner as one of 10 nominees for the award. People can go online to vote for their favorite through Dec. 12 at www.beliefnet.com.

"It's simply breathtaking how one true act of selflessness can inspire and encourage an entire nation - sometimes even the world - in empowering and life-affirming ways," said Beliefnet managing editor Michael Kress.

"While this year has been a tough one for many, each of our 10 nominees has revealed an amazing inner spirit and sense of caring and concern for others," Kress said.

Zach, who is home-schooled, has collected more than $350,000 in donations through his Little Red Wagon Foundation, started when he was 7 years old. He has helped homeless youths and raised money for hurricane victims. His latest contribution went to A Kids Place, a new group home for foster children in Brandon, for construction of a playground.

Last year, the youngster made a 1,200-mile "My House to the White House" walk to raise money to house homeless youths. This year, he is doing a coast-to-coast walk in increments to benefit a Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles.

Zach, who could not be reached for comment, is thought to be on a leg of his walk to Los Angeles, a Beliefnet spokeswoman said.

The youngster was honored in October with a Caring Award from the Caring Institute, whose mission is to promote the values of caring, integrity and public service.

The 10 nominated for this award, including US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III, who safely piloted a plane into the Hudson River, and Kaleb Eulls, a Mississippi football player who tackled a gun-waving girl on his school bus, were first nominated by Beliefnet users.

Members of the Beliefnet community, which is much like the social network Facebook, submitted names, which were reviewed by Family and Inspiration Editor Laurie Sue Brockway and the editorial staff, then narrowed down to 10.

Other nominees include:

•Jill and Kevin's Wedding Dance, an inspirational video used as an anti-domestic violence fundraiser

•Jorge Munuz, a Queens bus driver who cooks for the hungry each night

•Boston Hospital CEO Paul Levy, who slashed his own salary and encouraged his staff to keep people working

•Air Force Maj. Tobin Griffeth and Capt. Katie Illingworth, fans of football rivals who rallied in support of Afghanistan families

•Michael J. Fox, the "incurable optimist" who advocates for a cure for Parkinson's Disease

•Danny Cottrell, a recession-weary Alabama pharmacist inspired by his community to pay it forward by handing out bonuses to employees with the understanding it had to go to charity and local businesses

•Iranians for Freedom, who took to the streets to protest what they perceived as an unfair presidential election

GreatNonprofits CEO Making a Difference This Christmas

From USA TODAY: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/kindness/index

My family had about $100 when we immigrated and countless nonprofits helped us. If you look at photos of me when I was a kid, practically everything I wore – from my green corduroy jeans to my holiday dresses - came second hand from nonprofits. My cavities got filled for free at a nonprofit community dental clinic.

So I know how much the help of a charity can mean. This Holiday season, I'm giving donations in the names of my family and friends, in lieu of gifts. I'm saving myself the trip to the mall, the wrapping and shipping. And I'm giving my family and friends the joy of being connected to a cause larger than themselves.

To find charities that are making a difference and are highly-regarded by their community, I use a website that I run – GreatNonprofits . The website has listings of over 1.2M nonprofits listed and 18,062 reviews. The reviews are submitted by people who typically have had direct experience with the nonprofit – people served by the nonprofit, people who have volunteered there or donated there.

Some of the charities that I've found that I'll be supporting this year include:

Global Links: People in other countries are literally dying for what we throw away. Global Links takes old wheelchairs, IV poles and other hospital equipment and refurbishes them and sends them to hospitals in Latin American and the Caribbean. Global Links has collected over 3,000 tons of medical supplies and donated over $155 million worth of goods to clinics in 70 countries. One photojournalist writes: "I have seen with my own eyes and documented numerous times, actual lives being saved and bettered due to materials and equipment that Global Links has provided."

Project Homeless Connect: A one-stop clinic for homeless people where they can get groceries, free eyeglasses, see a doctor, sign up for SSI benefits, get legal counseling, and job placement. It has 4.5 star rating based on 86 reviews. One volunteer writes, 'I worked on a medical project to help homeless with lice problems. We were able to identify about 8 people with infestations. They received advice on how to get rid of them as well as treatment onsite under the direction of a physician. It was extremely worthwhile. I will be back."

Girls Write Now: A creative writing and mentoring non-profit, matching bright, creative teenage girls from the city's public high schools many of which don't teach creative writing, with professional women writers. One girls says, "It has completely changed my life in both implicit and explicit ways. I have become a noticeably better writer through workshops, but especially through the relationship I have built with my wonderful mentor who shares her talent and passion with me."

These are just a couple of nonprofits that are making a difference. To find nonprofits that may inspire you, GreatNonprofits offers Top Charities list by city and by cause at www.greatnonprofits.org.

Spare a Robber's Life, Get $50

A story from July keeps getting better. Deli owner Mohammad Sohail was held up by a man weilding a baseball bat. Sohail pulled rifle from behind his counter and forced the would-be robber to drop his weapon. The robber pleaded for his life, saying he had no choice but to rob to feed his family, Sohail gave him some bread, $40, and sent him on his way.The story would be astounding enough if it ended right there, but the robber surprised Sohail again just this last week, with a letter containing thanks and $50

The letter discussed how the robber's life had improved since the incident:

"Now I have a new child and good job make good money staying out of trouble and taking care of my family. You gave me forty dollars thank you for sparing my life Because of that you change my life."
Sohail joked that the robbery ended up bringing him good fortune. "When you do good things for somebody, it comes back to you. I gave him $40 and he sent me back $50. It was a good investment."

Singer Maxwell's Challenge - 40 Cents A Day

From CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/01/maxwell.aids.africa.solutions/index.html

Editor's note: On his current tour, R&B singer Maxwell is highlighting the impact of antiretroviral medication in fighting HIV-AIDS.

(CNN) -- Among the many blessings I've encountered in several years in the music business is the ability to use my voice to raise awareness for issues and to help others.

My greatest joy is in expressing compassion for others. It's so important to take time away from your own circumstances and try to walk in someone else's shoes or see the world through someone else's eyes.

As part of CNN's Heroes event last week, I got to see some of the most supreme examples of this from around the world. Tuesday is World AIDS Day, and I encourage all of us to put ourselves in the shoes of those battling this disease and especially consider some of the parts of our global community that are hardest hit.

Consider this: in many countries in Africa, AIDS is the leading cause of death. This is a preventable, treatable disease, but still of the 33 million people living with this disease globally, 22 million are in Africa, and it continues to kill 3,800 people a day on that continent. But the more important thing we should consider is that this is not hopeless. There is something that can be done, and there is a way to do it.

With two pills a day that cost as little as 40 cents, a person dying in Africa from complications from AIDS can be raised from near death and given a renewed chance at life. This transformation is called the Lazarus Effect.
These two antiretroviral (ARV) pills a day are more than just medicine. They are a person's chance to get up on their feet, go to school or go to work and contribute to their communities. This treatment helps people reach their full potential and allows communities and countries to create a future.

The issue now is how do we get this medicine to all who need it. When most of the people in these locations make less than a dollar a day, 40 cents is not easy to come by. And the trained medical staff and facilities are not abundant.

This is where (RED) and the Global Fund come in and why I tip my hat to U2's lead singer, Bono, and others like him who look outside themselves to see where there are problems in the world and how they can make a difference.

(RED) works with the hottest brands, such as Armani, Gap, Apple and Converse, to make unusual (PRODUCT) RED-branded products and direct up to 50 percent of their gross profits to the Global Fund to invest in African AIDS programs, with a focus on the health of women and children.

Since (PRODUCT) RED launched in 2006, it has generated about $140 million for the Global Fund. This money has been generated simply by giving shoppers a choice and asking them to choose (RED), at no cost to them. It's millions of small choices around the world adding up to big change.

This $140 million flows directly to AIDS programs in Rwanda, Ghana, Lesotho and Swaziland, the country with the world's highest HIV infection rate. It supports programs that not only provide ARV treatment free of charge, but creates access to testing and counseling and provides treatment to HIV-positive pregnant women to help ensure their babies are born healthy. These programs give people a chance for productive lives and children a chance to start life on the right foot.

This one small thing reverberates a cause with effects greater than humanly imaginable -- you should choose (RED), but there are so many other ways to give as well: educating ourselves about the issue, spreading the word or getting involved in whatever seems most personal to each of us. But what is most important is keeping in mind that there are worlds out there beyond our own and there is so much that can be done if we take a moment to walk in someone else's shoes.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Maxwell.

Short on Cash? Ways to Give Back When Times are Tough!

From CNN.com/MONEY Magazine
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/30/pf/charitable_giving.moneymag/

(Money Magazine) -- Nancy Mccauley Branstetter, a former communications executive at Ford Motor Co., is passionate about a cause that feels especially urgent lately: helping disadvantaged children and families who live in the economically stricken Detroit area.

For the past decade she has donated a few hours a month and up to $2,000 a year to Starfish Family Services, a nonprofit agency an hour from her Highland, Mich., home that offers everything from a free Head Start program to temporary shelter for teens in crisis. She's even on the board. Says the married mother of two: "I want children to have the best shot at life that they can."

But last year Ford gave Branstetter a pink slip -- leaving her scrambling to find ways to continue her support. While she has ramped up the time she spends doing volunteer work for the charity as she job hunts, "I don't know how much money I'll be able to donate this year," she admits.

Even if you didn't lose your job in the recession, chances are you're worried about the economy and about your battered investment portfolio. Like Branstetter, you're wondering whether you can continue the level of giving you managed when times were flush. What makes the situation especially heart-rending is that charities need help more than ever. And nowhere is that truer than in Detroit.

As the metro area's unemployment rate has soared to 17.8% vs. 9.8% nationally, the amount of money that most charities there collect has plunged. For example, contributions to United Way for Southeastern Michigan fell 21% in its latest fiscal year. (That compares to a 5% drop for the average United Way.)

"There's definitely more competition among us for fewer dollars," says Kevin Roach, executive director of South Oakland Shelter, which assists homeless families in the region.

The good news is that plenty of people in Motown have risen to the challenge, coming up with smart ways to benefit worthy causes without digging any deeper into their own pocketbooks. You can get a lot of great ideas from what they're doing -- and apply them to the charity that means most to you.
Maximize your own resources

Dish out professional know-how, not just soup. While it's helpful to wield a ladle at a nearby local homeless shelter or stuff envelopes for a fundraising campaign, a charity could benefit much more from the professional skills you've accumulated. If you're an accountant, volunteer to help with the books; if you're a lawyer, offer to negotiate the charity's next contract.

Branstetter is using her public relations experience to help Starfish raise its profile among potential supporters, spearheading a marketing and communications committee comprising a half-dozen professionals.

"To hire a company to do the same thing would have cost Starfish thousands of dollars, easily," she says. (Remember to keep track of your travel to and from the charity: You can deduct it from your taxable income to the tune of 14¢ a mile.)

Clean out the garage, attic, basement ... Late Aunt Ethel's unused end table, the boxes of baby clothes for a kid who long ago ditched Barney for the Black Eyed Peas -- donate them to a local charity that distributes household goods to the needy. (You might also consider a branch of a national organization such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army.) You'll help families that could desperately use those items, and you'll get a tax deduction for their fair market value.

Why not just hold a garage sale and donate the proceeds? Because a thrift store does a much better job attracting those in need, says Michelle St. Pierre, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Michigan Division of the Salvation Army. "Many people who hold garage sales end up donating to us anyway," she says, "because they couldn't sell the items."

Put your plastic to work. Plenty of credit cards promise to send a particular charity a cut of whatever you charge. But most give a measly 0.1% to 0.5%. An exception: the Capital One Visa Platinum affiliated with the American Fertility Association, which gives 1% to the nonprofit plus a $25 donation after you make your first purchase. Bank of America's World Wildlife Fund Visa Signature gives that charity a generous $100 when you sign up, plus 25¢ for every $100 you spend. To find such cards, Google charities' names and "credit card."

If you charge up a storm and pay your bills religiously each month, you may be better off getting a cash-back card and using those rewards to make a deductible donation. One of the best: Schwab Bank Invest First Visa Signature, which gives 2% cash back (you must be a Schwab One brokerage customer).

Pick the right bank. You can do good and make money by parking your cash in a community-development financial institution: a bank or credit union that works with underserved people in a particular area or social group.

For example, First American International Bank in Brooklyn, N.Y., which offers a money-market account yielding 1.0%, aims to help develop the area's Asian community. "When you can do good so easily," says Jennifer Lazarus, a financial planner who specializes in socially responsible investing, "it's a no-brainer."

Find a directory of CDFIs at communityinvestingcenterdb.org. Then check bankrate.com to make sure an institution's Safe & Sound rating is at least three stars.
Get your employer to help

Snag a match. Charitable matching-gift programs haven't all gone the way of office ashtrays. About 30% of large corporations offer them, according to Hewitt Associates. Check your employee intranet or human resources department to see if yours does.

If the answer is yes, fill out some simple paperwork and you can double the amount of money your cause collects. Most such programs will match your donation dollar for dollar up to a ceiling of $500 to $5,000 a year (religious institutions and fraternal organizations are generally excluded). Some will match donations that occur only during a certain time of year, usually year-end. So get moving!

Ask for dollars for volunteer work you're already doing. An increasingly popular employer program -- available at about one out of every six companies that offer matching gifts -- is what's known as "sweat equity" or "dollars for doers," says Marianna Funk, senior researcher at fundraising advisory firm HEP Development. You put in a specified number of volunteer hours per year at a charity of your choice; your company matches your labor with cold hard cash for that organization. The usual formula: $250 for 20 hours of work, or $500 for 50. Ask HR for details.

Suggest your pet charity for a company project. When it comes to team-building exercises, nonprofit experts say many companies have jettisoned Outward Bound courses and "trust falls" in favor of having employees spend a day working together on a charitable project.

Don't just wait around for an activity to be assigned: Step up and suggest that the team work with a charity you support. While at Ford, for example, Branstetter helped establish a program that matches organizations seeking assistance with employee groups looking for projects -- and made sure Starfish was listed. One payoff: a group of Ford employees repainted a wing at the nonprofit's headquarters that is used for children's programs.

Your company may be willing to give you more leeway than you think. To raise money for the Michigan chapter of the ALS Association this fall, Tony Nuckolls, 36, a vice president at Quicken Loans' Livonia, Mich., office, found some creative ways to solicit donations from fellow staffers.

In return for a $10 contribution, employees could escape the corporate dress code for a day. Or they could have an executive valet-park their car in the company lot. Campaigns like this generate awareness as well as money, says Nuckolls, whose office raised more than $30,000: "It's a topic of conversation, like viral marketing."

Toot your own horn. Lots of companies honor employees' volunteer efforts by giving awards that include a cash gift to the winner's charity. Lundrell Harris, 36, scored such a prize from her employer, MGM Grand Detroit, in September. The charity for which she volunteers -- Think Detroit PAL (she coaches cheerleaders for a youth league team) -- won $1,000. So don't be shy: Check with HR to see if those kinds of awards are given at your company and how you can get nominated.
Rope in friends & family

Rethink your holiday wish list. This season, when your kids and pals start asking whether you'd prefer Santa's portrait or Rudolph's on your new sweater, ask for donations for your favorite charity instead. "Most people appreciate that," says Robin Ferriby of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. "You're helping to impress upon them what you value."

Throw a fundraising party. The next time you schedule a shin-dig, give it a charitable theme. Ask your guests to bring an appropriate donation, such as an old suit for Dress for Success (dressforsuccess.org), which outfits disadvantaged women around the country who are trying to enter the workforce. Or spend a few minutes talking about your favorite cause and gently put in a pitch for guests to volunteer their time or money.

That's what Susan Gailey Vincent, 52, general counsel for an insurance company, did. Last winter she co-hosted a wine-tasting party that raised $5,000 for the Detroit area Junior Achievement, which teaches kids financial literacy and other skills. Between the Merlots and the Cabernets, she and her co-host spoke about JA's mission and their involvement with the organization. "I think our friends enjoyed it and hopefully didn't mind being hit up a little bit for a contribution," says Vincent.

Lace up your walking shoes. It may be three decades since you last participated in a March of Dimes walk-a-thon, but it's never too late to raise money with a little physical endurance. For a list of walk-a-thons nationwide that you can join, go to charitywalksblog.com. They all work pretty much the same way: You ask people you know to "sponsor" you, promising to ante up, say, $5 for every mile you walk (or a lump sum for completing the entire challenge). Prefer to roll rather than hoof it? Google "bike-athon" or "charity ride" and the name of your city.

Create your own "a-thon." If the cause you support doesn't sponsor a run/walk/bike-a-thon of its own, set up your own mini-version. In October, Mike Juchno and Brad Feldman -- board members of the Detroit-area Junior Achievement -- raised money by running in a half-marathon. They solicited sponsorships from family, friends, even clients. "You've just got to be bold," says Juchno, 38, a consultant. "You say, 'Believe me, I'm extending myself to do this, so I'm asking you to extend yourself.' " Their haul: $6,400.

Certain Web sites can make such projects easier to organize, though they'll take a not-insignificant cut of the proceeds. Juchno and Feldman used Firstgiving (firstgiving.com), which makes it simple to set up a personal site complete with a photo and fundraising tools, such as messages from givers and the classic thermometer graphic showing how close you're getting to your goals. In return, Firstgiving takes 7.5% of online donations. Another service, Network for Good (networkforgood.org) -- which is used by the Causes application on Facebook -- charges a more reasonable 4.75% but offers fewer features.

Speaking of Facebook, if you're raising money you would be foolish not to tap your contacts in social-networking sites. Feldman, 36, a life insurance adviser, solicited donations on his Facebook page, adding a link to Firstgiving to make it easy for pals to give. "Twenty-five percent of my donations came from Facebook friends," he says.

Ask pals to roll up their sleeves too. Assembling your friends and family to volunteer together is another great way to magnify your impact. That might mean gathering several of them to work on a local Habitat for Humanity project, for example (go to habitat.org and click on Volunteer Locally). Or it might just mean recruiting the one person who has the perfect skills to help.

That's one of the most valuable contributions that Branstetter ever made to Starfish Family Services. Two years ago, it occurred to her that her then-colleague Ann Kalass, a top-level sales and marketing executive at Lincoln Mercury, might be a good fit for the nonprofit. She's now its CEO.

Beth Braverman contributed to this article. To top of page