Giving

[catherineldf]

So I've been thinking a lot about gifts and giving lately, seeing as it's the season for it and all, and what between one thing and another, has to be budgeted for. As a rule, I don't run up hundreds of dollars in gift purchases, largely because a. I don't have the $$ and b. I wouldn't know where to start. I tend to buy gifts for my immediate family and close friends and call it good. Most of those are things that those people actually asked for or things I think they might find useful or interesting, like a three month supply of organic coffee. This year, Jana got clothes, Mom gets some useful odds and ends and other people get things I won't talk about here because they're hopefully still a surprise for the recipients.What I'll get back will probably be a new matte and frame on the Alicia Austin painting I bought in D.C. and odds and ends my mother thinks I need. Always exciting. :-)
The long and short of my personal gift giving is that I want to give my loved ones something they can use and want and that would be the extent of it.

Then there's charitable giving. This gets more complex as the $$ gets split out between ongoing contributions and crisis contributions. We donated some money to Planned Parenthood this morning because there were protesters out in front of the Highland Park clinic and it is the thing to do. I donated a couple of bags of things to the RNC 8 Defense yard sale last weekend. Before that, it was Second Harvest Heartland, which is one of the organizations that supports the local foodbanks, and and kicked in some bucks to the drive to save Pi, the local women's/trans/queer bar and dance space. I gave some books to Quatrefoil Library (the local GLBT library and resource center) and signed up for a library card about two weeks back. Then there were assorted political causes and the fight against Prop 8. Over the course of the year, I gave to a couple of environmental/green living organizations, at least one feminist organization and at least one LGBT organization, plus donations to auctions that support local sf conventions and queer writers' conferences, all two of them. I donated for general Iowa flood relief and to the Iowa artist fund.
Like most people, I think I start at the things that I have a personal connection to (local, specific, group-oriented) then work my way outward. This year I'm curious about everyone else.
What or who do you give to and why?

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