By Hazel Parry, DPA,
Hong Kong : It’s never easy choosing the right Christmas present. Do you go for that new Louis Vuitton bag, the Philippe Patek watch or perhaps a 10-metre stretch of road in China and a new loo for a family in Nepal?
A growing number of gift-givers are finding the solution to their Christmas present dilemmas lies not in the glitzy shopping malls but on the websites of charities – and in doing so, they’re discovering the feel-good factor of spreading goodwill to all men.
In the past, supporting charities at Christmas involved buying greeting cards and calendars or just making a donation.
However, the ever-increasing number of worthy causes competing for the same decreasing pot of money has forced charities to become more creative by offering donors more control over where their money goes – whether that be a section of road or a new loo for that family in Nepal.
In recent years, the trend has developed into a gift service whereby instead of buying birthday, Christmas and even wedding presents for friends, you can opt to donate the money to a specific charitable project on their behalf.
Surf the web and you find all manner of gifts on offer from a broad spectrum of charities. Oxfam has its Unwrapped gift programme, ActionAid its Gifts in Action, and Save the Children has its Wish List.
Around $40 will buy a gift of footballs and sports equipment for a school in Tanzania, while $670 will train a midwife in Sierra Leone.
Alternatively, with $50 you can buy a gift that will help rescue a bonobo ape in the Congo while $20 will help reduce your carbon footprint by off-setting one ton of greenhouse gases.
Oxfam Hong Kong deputy director Kanie Siu Mei-kuen said a growing trend for philanthropy had fed the demand for charity gifts, especially ones which involved helping people help themselves.
“People have a lot of possessions but sometimes they like to have something special that comes from the heart, especially after the difficult times of the past year,” Siu said.
“And after two big disasters, the tsunami and the Sichuan earthquake, people are more aware of the need to support others.”
Siu said this year she had noticed how the Unwrapped programme was proving increasingly popular with corporations who were using it to top up traditional food hampers for customers or as gifts or souvenirs for clients.
However, the charity gift is not a complete solution to your gift-buying headache. There are still the questions of which charity you choose and then, which project: animals or children, the loo or the football?
Financial experts recommend you take the lead of Ebeneezer Scrooge when he woke up a reformed character on Christmas Day and ordered a turkey the size of a small boy for his long-abused clerk Bob Cratchit.
In doing so Charles Dickens’s famous character was focussing his philanthropic intentions on a cause close to his heart.
According to Melanie Nutbeam, director of International Financial Planning with advice and investment company IPAC, looking at your own values and what you want to achieve in life is one of the best ways to a choose a charity.
“Our chosen charities often reflect our values and our life experiences so where I have clients who had cancer in the family or an autistic child, they are more likely to involve themselves in those sorts of charities.”
But what if you are not sure what charity is close to the heart of the person you are buying for, as Australian Ashley Rosshandler discovered when he pondered buying a charity gift for a friend.
“It’s always a bit sticky when you buy someone a gift like that. What if you choose a well or a goat charity and they’re not into goats? What if they’re into whales or heart research?” he said.
That was when Rosshandler came up with the idea of charity gift voucher which allows the receiver to decide where the money should go.
Rosshandler went on to set up Karma Currency, a non-profit-making foundation that allows people to buy gift vouchers which the recipient can donate online to their chosen charity from a list of 150.
Two years on and Karma Currency has raised almost $600,000 for various charities – money which Rosshandler believes would have been wasted on unwanted sweaters, ties and unread books bought as presents and then left to gather dust in cupboards.
“About $1 billion of unwanted gifts end up in landfills every year when instead the money could have been used to help educate kids, clear landmines and find cures,” he said.
“Christmas sometimes get overshadowed by rampant consumerism but these are gifts that are suitable for anyone with a heart.”