The Inactive Activist

I love that different companies are starting to get on board the “buy this, we give back” train.  Femail Creations is a catalog I get with lots of female-woman-empowering items for sale.  I noticed while flipping through the latest that a number of items have text underneath indicating that they give a portion of the proceeds to different organizations.  Here are a few that jumped out at me:

10% of the profits from this keychain support charitable organizations.

This bracelet was created by a US artist as her brother recovered from a devastating bike accident.  The bracelet symbolizes the journey one takes in recovery, and one third of the proceeds are donated to the Rehab Unit of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona where the artist’s brother was treated.

This t-shirt by Booda Brand is perfect for the budding Activist in your life.  With this Dream Tee, Booda Brand will donate one book to a child in need through Room to Read.

We talked on day four about sending cookies to the troops in lieu of stocking stuffers.  Well, here is another troop-related stocking stuffer idea.  I saw this one in the back of Us Magazine (who said that was a waste of time?).  For $10, you can buy a “bff bracelet.”  This site will send one to you and one to an overseas service member.  When you get your bracelet, you can go on the website and enter your unique bracelet number and be connected with a service member to show your support!  What a neat way to show the troops we care!  The reason it was in Us is that apparently lots of celebrities are on board (someone’s going to be way disappointed to get me as their pen pal and not Angelina, but whatevs).  The purchase helps support charities that help members of the armed forces and their families through the American Freedom Foundation.

Good Morning America recently shared some great ways to give back while giving this holiday season.  You can access the article here:

Gifts That Give Back – Good Morning America

Calling all oenophiles… you can now drink AND be charitable!  What???  Sign me up!!!  This is a great find for your wine-loving friends, your upcoming holiday parties, or just your Friday night.  Every day, CellarThief.com features three different wines – one special occasion, one every day, and one that could be priced high or low, but is unique in some way.  Then, they discount the heck out of it.  There are only a certain number of deals per day.  Here’s where we come in… for every bottle sold, Cellar Thief literally turns wine back into water by donating 100 days worth of clean water to folks who need it.  ONE HUNDRED days for ONE BOTTLE?!?  That’s incredible!  This is a deal that you can keep using over and over… because the deal changes every day, you can always find something new.  This is nothing other than a big time win-win.  Or wine-wine.  Ha.

We are readers in our family.   To imagine not having books… I shudder.  Therefore, I was thrilled to read about Out of Print Clothing.  They sell shirts with unique book art – perhaps out of print or just iconic – so you can wear your love of reading loud and proud.  But that’s not all… oh no, that would not be enough for us Inactive Activists.  For every shirt sold, one book is donated to a community in need through Books for Africa.  Books for Africa, as you might assume, send books to children in Africa.  To date, they have donated 22 million books.  Wouldn’t you love to be a part of that?  Out of Print Clothing makes it happen.

Today we are featuring a company who is making us Inactive Activists look very good.  Byrd Cookie Company makes delicious cookies in Savannah, GA.  While browsing the catalog the other day, trying not to succumb to the temptation, I found the perfect solution for my waistline and my lazy charitable instincts.  For a mere $10 (two lattes), you can order a tin of cookies through Byrd, and they will send the cookies to the troops overseas.  Byrd picks up the shipping costs, and all it takes is a few clicks (and your credit card number) to send a tin of cheer to our very deserving troops.   As if that’s not enough, Byrd takes it a step further and says if you donate four tins ($40), they will throw in an additional tin for free!

My sister-in-law, who kind of got me started on this whole Inactive Activist thing a few years back while I was Christmas shopping for her, did a cool thing last year that I copied using the Byrd Cookie offer.  They live in Wisconsin, and every year they send a giant box of gifts to us and we to them.  Well, instead of sending stocking stuffers, she instead donated the equivalent expenditure to an organization in our names.  I thought that was really clever, instead of trying to find a bunch of small trinkets for our virtual stockings.  So this year, I decided to donate four (but really five, thanks to Byrd) tins of cookies to our troops in honor of our Wisconsin family members (so Sara, if you’re reading this… surprise!).  This is something we could all consider doing – for as little as $10, you really will bring Christmas cheer halfway around the world.

Happy holidays!  I hope your holiday shopping is well underway, but if it is not, we are still bringing you ways to feel doubly good about what you are giving this year.  Today’s feature is Bead for Life, whose motto is “Eradicating Poverty One Bead at a Time.”  Bead for Life employs Ugandan women to create beads and shea butter to sell, which in turn creates income, food, medicine, school fees, and hope.  There are TONS of great gift ideas on this site, from necklaces, to earrings, to shea butter body products.  You can even buy loose beads if you or someone you are gifting is a jewelry maker.  Just click below to link into the store.  If you want to read more about Bead for Life, the information can be found at www.beadforlife.org.

The Inactive Activist would like to help you Give Back While You Give this holiday season.  By showing you how easy it is to find gifts that are not only perfect for your friends and family but simultaneously do good for the world around us, we will help make the holiday season fulfilling and rewarding.

Today we are featuring a water bottle that has a twofold goodness-quotient.  First, it is a reusable water bottle, so the Earth will thank you.  Second, for each bottle sold, nearly $10 (100% of the profit) will be donated to water.org to help provide clean water to the nearly billion people in the world who do not have it.  The bottles are a limited edition and designed by Matt Damon’s brother and his wife.   This would be a great gift for nearly anyone on your gift list, and at $18 each, it’s the perfect price point for easy gift giving.  Just click the bottle above to purchase and read more about water.org’s mission.

Here at the Inactive Activist, we’re thinking about Christmas and holiday shopping. (Who are we kidding… we started shopping on December 26th.) For us, this is holiday crunchtime, the time to shop for gifts before the real busyness of the season sets in. That way, we have time to appreciate the season, and not be stressed out running around at the last minute. (Guys, do you hear me?? Start shopping NOW!)

With that in mind, we are looking around for ways to give not only to friends and family, but give back to a cause while gift giving. This is relatively easy to do if you know where to shop. Throughout the next few weeks and months, we’ll share some of our favorite “feel good about gift giving” sites with you in hopes of making your holiday season a little easier, yet more philanthropic!

On of my favorite one-stop shops for this type of shopping is Uncommon Goods. Not only do they have totally cool, unique items, many of the items are handmade, recycled, or best of all, give back to a cause.  There is even a tab linking you to all of their recycled items.  Some of my favorite items from the site are:

Platters with a Purpose.  Buy one of these platters and 10 percent of the proceeds go to support local community organizations.  The organizations are:

Stars: AIDS Service Organizations
Heart: Habitat For Humanity (Pittsburgh Chapter)
Forget-Me-Not: Alzheimer’s Association
Trees: Court Appointed Special Advocates

This doormat is made of recycled lobster trap float ropes.  Because this type of rope can trap whales, lobstermen are required to turn in their float rope and begin using sink-rope.  This meant that hundreds of thousands of pounds of rope was destined for landfills… until someone came up with the brilliant idea to make doormats from the now useless rope.  Handmade in Maine.

These beer glasses are made from recycled windshields in Colombia.  How cool is that?  I gave these to my dad a few Christmases ago and to my knowledge, he uses one faithfully every night.  Sturdy and durable and a great gift for the beer drinkers in your life.