For various reasons, we leave some of our charitable giving to the last possible moment of the year. I know, I know, there's probably a scripture somewhere that says, "thou shalt not procrastinate". I've been meaning to look it up, but I never seem to find the time.
Ten years ago, all last-minute giving involved the tedious process of writing cheques, addressing envelopes, filling out forms, and trudging off to the mailbox.
About five years ago, charities started making it easier for us -- you could now make a phone call and donate over the phone, using a credit card. That helped. But you still had to figure out how to call each one, and give each one the information they needed.
Well, I went to make a donation to the Gideons today, and found out that they accept donations via an organization called Canada Helps. I checked it out. It's a really easy site that takes your donation information and stores it for re-use. But it gets even better.
Having successfully given my modest stipend to the fine people at the Gideons, I realized that this is a general site, and discovered to my delight that all my favourite charities, or so it seems, are on it!
What a great step forward! You can do all your annual charitable giving at one site. It will even store "Favorites" and things like that that make it easier next time you go back.
You can also set up for monthly giving. I'm not really into new year's resolutions, but this is one resolution I think I might actually keep -- move some of these over to a monthly giving plan.
How come I'm just discovering this now?! I'll bet those of you reading this site already knew about it. How come you didn't tell me?!
Canada Helps may be accessed at http://www.canadahelps.org/
And that's the way the Ball bounces.
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