The smallest act of genuine kindness has infinitely more value than the grandest and unrealized intention. That is a paraphrasing of Oscar Wilde. What he is basically saying is that actions speak much louder than words when it comes to helping people. That saying is also one of many reasons to prepare for Christmas charity in October.
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3 Reasons To Prepare for Christmas Charity in October
And statistically speaking, Americans are very charitable people. But they are usually charitable when it comes to straight donations.
Are you preparing to begin a charitable endeavor or project by the Christmas season? If you didn’t start earlier, you should definitely start now.
Here are three reasons to prepare for Christmas charity in October.
Stress Alleviation
One of the biggest reasons to prepare for Christmas charity in October is that there is always so much to do and little time to do it.
It is probably more preferable to begin planning for your charity work in the summer. Otherwise, you should start preparing as soon as possible.
Preparing to give your time and or money to Christmas charities requires a lot of coordination, planning, logistics, and brainstorming long before the act occurs.
Think about it. If you are going to volunteer your time at a shelter, orphanage, soup kitchen, or some other charity, you want to arrange your schedule as soon as possible.
The holidays are a hectic time when you and everyone you know will be traveling and planning their personal schedules. The holiday season is arguably the biggest travel time of the year.
You don’t want to create a travel or scheduling conflict with your personal time to affect your charity endeavors.
Many people who volunteer usually enlist friends and relatives to do the same. Well, you can’t know what your friends and relatives may be planning to do for themselves during the holiday season.
So, coordinate with them as early as possible to make sure they will be available to volunteer with you.
Don’t wait until the last minute, especially between Thanksgiving and before Christmas, to start making and scheduling your Christmas charity plans. The longer you wait, the more stressed out you will become.
Donation Research
Americans donated over $410 billion to charities back in 2017. And that was a 5% increase from the year before.
About 63% of Americans, or three out of every five people, usually wait until the last 14 days of the year to a charitable donation to an organization that helps disadvantaged people.
And while there is nothing wrong with that, the tendency to give money to an organization without prior vetting makes charity scams a big problem.
Another of the big reasons to prepare for Christmas charity in October is to make sure that you have time to vet and research charitable organizations.
Many people start their own charitable endeavors in coordination with other charities to raise money for charity. Or they pool donation money with others via donations drives and functions throughout the holiday season.
Take the time to vet how the donation money you are raising will be raised. Charitable organizations are known to update their operational procedures often or annually, so don’t be afraid to ask how donation money is spent or allocated each year.
Logistics
We talked about logistics and planning earlier mainly in the context of coordinating with others.
But you should keep logistics in mind if you have a do-it-yourself approach towards charitable endeavors.
Many Americans take the full initiative to perform charitable endeavors on their own. So, they make collect free clothing from stores, donation drives, and estate sales to later give away during a Christmas charity function.
Taking it upon yourself to perform such charitable endeavors requires a lot of logistics planning beforehand.
Not only that, you need to make connections. Then, you may need to pick up supplies, inventory them, and store them until the holiday season.
One of the biggest reasons to prepare for Christmas charity in October is to get all of the legwork and logistics out of the way early.
If you are taking on yourself to do as much of the charity work yourself as possible, plan ahead and get the work done early. Then, the charity work can proceed as planned during the holiday season.
Otherwise, you may be stuck trying to make connections, pick up donation supplies, and coordinate a charitable event during the holiday season, a time when everyone has their own plans and schedules.
Reasons To Prepare for Christmas Charity in October – Early Planning
Whether you donate money or coordinate a charitable event on your own is up to you.
What matters is planning ahead as much as possible so that your donations and charitable efforts are optimized to help as many as possible.
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Allen Francis was an academic advisor, librarian, and college adjunct for many years with no money, no financial literacy, and no responsibility when he had money. To him, the phrase “personal finance,” contains the power that anyone has to grow their own wealth. Allen is an advocate of best personal financial practices including focusing on your needs instead of your wants, asking for help when you need it, saving and investing in your own small business.
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