Give on #GivingTuesday and Get Back Your Holiday Spirit
This #GivingTuesday, consider contributing directly and indirectly to the charities of your choice.
Today is #GivingTuesday, my favorite "internet" holiday, which closes out the four-day shopping flurry known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday and reminds us what the holidays are truly about: Giving. It's also a reminder to give what you can before the end of the year — many organizations count on end-of-year donations to support their valuable programming for the following year.
How should you give? Donating directly is the ideal option. At our parent company, Discovery, we're educating about Project CAT, our effort to ensure a healthy habitat for future generations of tigers, who are threatened by development. And at our sister network, Food Network, we're aiming to ensure that every child in the United States has enough to eat through partnering with No Kid Hungry. These are just some of the organizations we're giving to, but #GivingTuesday is a day to connect with organizations whose missions matter to you and giving them what you can. Find them, connect and give.
Giving indirectly, all year long, can't hurt either. At HGTV, we work a bit with Amazon, including curating products we love and sharing them with you. And Amazon offers a way for your purchases to give back through the AmazonSmile Foundation and the site Smile.Amazon.com. It's a parallel website to regular Amazon.com with the same products, but if you purchase while on Smile.Amazon.com, the Foundation donates 0.5-percent of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice. No Kid Hungry by Share Our Strength is an option on Amazon Smile, as are many top-rated organizations like World Wildlife Fund (also involved in Project CAT), American Cancer Society and many, many more. Your overall impact through Smile will be relatively small, so it's not a replacement for direct giving, but every little bit helps, and if you're going to make the purchases anyway, why not make them make a difference?
So on #GivingTuesday, sign up for Smile and start using it. Donate directly to the charities of your choice. Give from all directions — directly, indirectly and any other way you can. There are a lot of deserving organizations in need, and you deserve to feel good about your impact on the world. 'Tis the season.
