Three Great Ideas for Good Holiday Shopping

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-12-07 11:23:00 UTC
Topics:

Tis the season - not just for holiday parties, peppermint mochas, and Yuletide cheer - but for lists from the social good blogosphere about how to use your holiday purchases for good. Seriously, it's a mark of the growth of the digital conversation around social change that there are as many resources as there are this year for doing good with your holiday dollars.

Here are my favorite resources + tools so far:

1. Change.org's Holiday Gift Guide: Gotta give it up for the home team on this one. The Change.org staff has been hard at work for the last few weeks compiling ideas from our across our team for how you can spend money (or not spend money) to support the causes you care about. The end result is a five part series over on our Blog for Change that offers both advice and links to great resources for everyone from your vegan Grandmother to your climate changing cousin.

2. 20 Lists of Holiday Lists That Give Back: Britt Bravo shares a mass compilation of excellent lists. She shares that in 2007, her post was just 10 gift ideas, and there weren't many like it. Last year as the social good blogosphere grew, she had a list of 10 lists. This year, that has doubled to 20.

3. Causes Shopping: This is one of the simplest, best embedded philanthropy tools I've seen. Causes (from Facebook) has partnered with 1,600 online stores like Target and Apple so that when you shop from those retailers, they'll donate a portion of your purchase (up to 4%) to your favorite causes. All it takes is installing a Causes toolbar.

(Photo: robholland)

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Alan Khazei: the Public Servant Running for Ted Kennedy’s Senate Seat
NEXT STORY:
Facing Forward: The End of the Social Entrepreneurship Blog on Change.org

COMMENTS (4)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.