Charities of Choice for Holiday Giving

We’ve heard a lot of buzz this season about people requesting charitable donations in lieu of the food items and clothing usually exchanged between co-workers, friends, and relatives during the holidays. Whatever the reason, we think it’s a great idea! We’d strongly suggest visiting charitynavigator.org, which is a great tool for evaluating the effectiveness of the charities to which you are thinking of donating. A great place to start is with your local schools, museums, arts council, community foundation, churches, and public radio stations. Listed below are our employees’ charities of choice.


Through Heifer International you can give the gift of livestock and training to help families around the world achieve self-reliance.

Building with Books is an after-school program throughout the U.S. that empowers youth to build their own communities while building schools in developing countries.

Communities in Schools (CIS) connects community resources with schools to help young people successfully learn, stay in school, and prepare for life. CIS is the nation's largest dropout prevention organization.

Donors Choose addresses the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in public schools through a platform for private citizens to donate directly to classroom projects across the nation.

Human Rights Campaign envisions an America where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are ensured of their basic equal rights, and can be open, honest, and safe at home, at work, and in the community.

Teaching Tolerance, founded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations, and supporting equitable school experiences for the nation's youth through free educational materials for teachers and other school practitioners in the U.S. and abroad.

World Wildlife Fund's mission is the conservation of nature. Using the best available scientific knowledge and advancing that knowledge where possible, WWF works to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth and the health of ecological systems

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization, founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions, and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes, and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.


Inspired by nature, Sierra Club members work together to protect our communities and the planet. The Club is America's oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization.


As one of the largest health charities in America, United Cerebral Palsy Foundation is the leading source of information on cerebral palsy and is a pivotal advocate for the rights of persons with any disability. They strive to advance the independence, productivity, and full citizenship of people with disabilities through an affiliate network.


Fisher House Foundation provides comfort and housing to military families who must travel to visit their ill or injured loved ones at military hospitals.

Doctors Without Borders provide independent, impartial assistance in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters.