The environmentalist
We all have that one friend. The one, just like Leonardo DiCaprio, who likes to educate people about climate change and has gifted their own share of Before The Flood and Inconvenient Truth DVDs. This Christmas, you can show your environmentalist friend that you are listening by making a donation to WildEarth Guardians on their behalf.
WildEarth started in 1989 to fight logging in New Mexico, but it has since expanded its efforts to protect and restore wildlife in the American West. Using your donation, the organization will plant native cottonwoods and willows at one of their river restoration sites. Each Hamilton (a $10 bill) will pay for one new tree. WildEarth will notify your friend about the donation by sending a personalized card.
Alternative #1: A donation to the Natural Resources Defense Council
Alternative #2: A donation to The Public Land Trust
The teenager
Shopping for teenagers is hard. Almost as difficult as having the birds and the bees talk. Why not kill two birds with one stone and subscribe your teen to Sex, Etc?
Sex, Etc is a magazine by teens for teens, whose mission is to help improve sex education among America’s youth. The magazine comes out three times a year and addresses sex, relationships, pregnancy, STDs, birth control, sexual orientation and more. Published by Answer, a national sex education organization at Rutgers University in New Jersey, each issue costs just $5, or $15 for an annual subscription.
Alternative #1: A donation to The Trevor Project
Alternative #2: A pack of Conscious Step Socks
The outdoors enthusiast/world traveler
Jetting around the world can be fun, but what’s even better is jetting around the world for a good cause. Sign up your wanderlust friend for a trip with Crooked Trails, which aims to make tourism “a positive force in the world”.
Crooked Trails designs some of its trips around the world to offer travelers an immersion of the local culture by participating in a wide range of social and environmental projects. For example, its next trip to Cameroon will focus on women’s health and education. Participants will help build a local coffee house and meet the women’s groups who will help run it.
Another organization that organizes trips with the purpose of improving communities is Habitat for Humanities. From January to September, Habitat has planned more than 50 trips to places like Brazil and Cambodia.
Alternative #1: A membership to Nature Conservancy
Alternative #2: A membership to American Rivers
The feminist
Struggling to figure out what to get the feminist in your life? Look no further than Thistle Farms. All the company’s products – from handmade lotions and soaps to t-shirts and jewelry – are made by female survivors of prostitution, trafficking and addiction.
A safe house set up by the Rev Becca Stevens brought together five survivors who went on to start Thistle Farms 20 years ago. Today, the organization employs about 50 survivors at its farm, cafe and studio, and helps employ more than 1,500 women globally. Thistle Farms also offers a residential program for women released from the Tennessee Prison for Women.
Alternative #1: A donation to Dress for Success
Alternative #2: A donation to Emily’s List
The Constitution defender
There has been a lot of talk about politics in 2016, especially debates over the Bill of Rights and US government spending. The Sunlight Foundation tracks the flow of money into politics and how the government spends taxpayers’ money.
Started ten years ago, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization set out to make government more transparent and hold it accountable. The foundation tackles government at all levels: local, state, federal and international. The foundation is also tracking comments and actions by president-elect Donald Trump that signal a conflict of interest between running his business and the government. Make a donation to the Sunlight Foundation in the name of the constitutional defender in your life.
Alternative #1: A donation to the ACLU
Alternative #2: A donation to the American Constitution Society
The animal lover
With nearly 500 endangered groups of animals in the US at the moment, consider donating to the Center for Biological Diversity on behalf of the animal lover in your life.
The center uses science, law and media outreach to fight for “a future for all species, great and small”. It incorporates videos, ads, apps and even endangered species condoms in public awareness campaigns. It creates memorable slogans to accompany the artwork on the condoms: “Before it gets any hotter, think of the sea otter”, “Wrap with care, save the polar bear” and “For the sake of the horned lizard, slow down love wizard”.
Alternative #1: Sponsor a penguin
Alternative #2: Sponsor an endangered turtle
The sportswoman or -man
A shirt or a fly fishing accessory from Casting for Recovery could be the perfect gift for the sportswoman or sportsman in your life. All proceeds from sales are used to fund fly fishing retreats for women with breast cancer. Since launching in 1998, the nonprofit has organized more than 550 retreats. In 2016 alone, it held 45 retreats in 42 states, serving more than 600 women.
Alternatively, you could just make a donation to Casting for Recovery. A $20 donation buys fishing flies for one retreat, while a $100 donation buys healthy meals for one woman.
Alternative #1: A membership to Trout Unlimited
Alternative #2: A membership to the Wilderness Society
The animal activist
Anywhere between 3% to 5% of Americans consider themselves vegetarian. If the vegetarian in your life has a soft spot for farm animals, you should consider sponsoring a farm animal at the Farm Sanctuary. Not only does sponsorship provide food and shelter for a needy farm animal, but the sanctuary, which has several locations throughout the US, also allows sponsors to visit their special farm friend during its visitors season.
Sponsoring a chicken will set you back $120 a year. It would be $180 a year for a duck, goose or turkey and $300 a year for a goat or sheep. While a one-time donation of $20 is not enough to sponsor an animal, it does come with a one-year membership to the sanctuary.
Alternative #1: A donation to Farm Animal Rights Movement
Alternative #2: A donation to Compassion Over Killing
The humanitarian
On behalf of a loved one who can always spare change for the homeless, make a contribution to the Empowerment Plan. The organization offers ways to sponsor food, clothing, shelter and transportation for the homeless. A $100 donation, for example, pays for a coat that can turn into a sleeping bag. The Empowerment Plan hires single parents out of shelters to work as seamstresses making the coats. According to its website, it has employed 34 homeless people and handed out more than 15,000 coats since 2012.
Alternative #1: A donation to Feeding America
Alternative #2: A donation to Coalition for the Homeless
The tiny human
This holiday, buy your child a plush animal that can help another tiny human. St Jude Children’s Research Hospital is selling a plush puppy named after a cancer patient, Abigail. Each puppy costs $15 and all proceeds after expenses will be used to further St Jude’s mission of treating childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases free of charge. The hospital also sells other items from its online gift shop: there’s Kiara the tiger cat, a selection of clothes and sketch pads.
Alternatively, why not give the little man or woman in your life a gift made from recycled materials? Vawn and Mike Gray make recycled glass nightlights with endearing details in their Cape Coral, Florida studio. They use recycled glass and an energy-efficient kiln to create fun, colorful pieces for children.
Alternative #1: Adopt a (plush) bird from Audubon
Alternative #2: Adopt a (plush) elephant from World Wildlife Fund
The news junkie
Independent, local journalism is critical for keeping elected officials accountable and connecting people within a community. Consider a local newspaper subscription for your news junkie friend. (Or, ahem, the Guardian.) If you aren’t sure about the subscription options, enter your friend’s zipcode here to find out if they are eligible. (It is best to subscribe to newspapers straight from their websites, however.) A good alternative to a local newspaper is a subscription to a regional magazine such as Boston Magazine, Texas Monthly, Texas Tribune, Chicago Magazine or Our State, a North Carolina magazine.
Throw in a few good DVDs about journalism, too. Spotlight, on the Boston Globe’s investigation of a sexual abuse coverup within the Catholic church, is a good one. So is Network, an oldie from 1976 about a fictional TV news program that uses entertainment to drive ratings.
Alternative #1: A donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists
Alternative #2: A donation to the Freedom of the Press Foundation
The conservative relative
Holding a civil debate with conservative relatives can be so challenging during the holidays. Let counter-programming do the work instead. Sign them up for a subscription to their local NPR station and ask them to give its content a chance.
Want to avoid politics? You can sign them up for nonpartisan collections of stories on NPR, such as the dog tales or cat tales. After all, who doesn’t love a good animal story?
Alternative #1: A donation to ProPublica
Alternative #2: A donation to Wikipedia
The bookworm
Delight your book lover friends by introducing them to tomes from a small publishing house. Almost 40% of books are published by five major publishing houses. Small, independent presses are an important source for a greater variety of voices and perspectives. Here are a few great small publishers who have fabulous books in fiction, nonfiction and poetry: Graywolf Press, Red Hen Press, Inkshares, and Melville House.
Books from small, independent co-op bookstores are also a great gift idea. Try Antigone Books in Tucson, Arizona, which also has the benefit of being 100% solar-powered; Powell’s in Portland, Oregon; and the famous City Lights in San Francisco, California.
Alternative #1: A donation to the American Library Association
Alternative #2: A donation to United Through Reading
