This is the first of two posts about donating to charity. To learn about how to volunteer from the comfort of your computer chair, click here

It’s that time of year, when outside your favorite store there stands a person wearing a red apron, ringing a bell, and pointing you to a red pot. In your office or at your school there are angel trees and people coming around to ask you to donate to a good cause.

Most of us want to participate in the giving. We’ll give what change we have in our pocket, or pick a child the same age as our own, figuring one less gift under our tree won’t mean anything, whereas one gift under this other one will make a world of difference.

In my experience, most people want to help those less fortunate than they are. But what happens when you are barely hanging on yourself? When there will only be one gift under your tree as it is, or the change in your pocket is destined for the jar that will buy you the new tires for your car- the ones you really needed 6 months ago?

How can you give when you have nothing to spare?

 

We try to give throughout the year. Every time I go in to PetsMart, I choose to pay $1 extra to go toward helping homeless animals. But that still costs me money.

Two to four times a year, I go through my closet and clean out the clothes that I am no longer wearing. Most go to Goodwill. Some of my more professional outfits go to a charity that is dedicated to helping people with interview clothes.  But that requires that I have more clothes than I need, that there isn’t someone else in my family who could use those hand me downs.

We recently went through our linen closet and pulled out a bunch of old towels and took them to the Humane Society. Still, this required that we had an over abundance of towels, that ones we no longer used (because we didn’t like them) were still in good shape.

In both cases, donating what you already have costs money because there are replacement costs, even if you already have the replacements.

 

How can one give without it costing any money? Well, it may not make as big of a difference as being able to drop $100 into the Salvation Army pot, but if you have access to the internet, giving is just one click away.

Because my focus is so often on pets, the sites I click on every day are Freekibble.com, Freekibblekat.com, and The Animal Rescue Site. The first two ask that you attempt to answer a trivia question. It doesn’t matter whether you get it right or wrong, simply clicking an answer donates food to shelters. The third just asks that you click a button. And if you want to give more, you can click the button of one of their sponsors.

The Animal Rescue Site is also part of the Greater Good Network, where you can click to give to causes such as world hunger, breast cancer, literacy, child health, veterans and more.

So pick you cause, visit a website- you can get there from work or school or the library, or home, if internet is part of your budget –and give to charity, as often as every day. The only cost, maybe a minute of your time.

 

We can’t all afford to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Some of us are not even certain how we can spare $5 or even $0.55 from the budget. But we can all take 30 seconds and click a mouse button.