There is an annual telephone type thing here in the UK called Children In Need. It supports the children in the UK and i was amazed last year in 9 hours they raised £18 million. I always give something to that. Also im giving my spare PC time to cancer reasearch.

I gave time and money for 25 yrs to the Local Girl Scout Council, 11yrs on the Board of Directors (6yrs as secretary). Now I give mainly to the local food bank.

Lil .. I don't know if it is still the case, but I know that Oprah's Angel network had all of the overhead costs paid by Oprah separate from donations, and they had different corps that were willing to match all or a portion of donations received.

But I hear what you're saying about that, I know there were some big scandals a few years ago and some of the organizations were paying large salaries, etc., so that as much as 70-90% was going to "overhead". That's one of the reasons I like doing a lot of my donations through my church because in my church all of the overhead is paid from outside of the donations, and there are various ways that you can earmark donations for specific causes.

There is an organization to which we donate money called Food For The Poor, Inc., which focuses on the poor in the Caribbean. They have a documented delivery rate of 96%, with an overhead of less than 1%. I know there are many here at "home" who are deserving, but these are some of the most desperately poor people in the Western Hemisphere.

While I don’t recommend it to anybody, think about offering your unused bedroom for a night or two to someone who needs a hand up, rather than a hand out. We can make a personal contribution.

I like to help out Hospice since they helped when my grandpa was dying three years ago (this month).

We also helped out locally when some evacuees ended up in our town from Hurricane Katrina.