I have a confession to make…I’m a little bit of a “Scrooge.” While I do love to watch my kids’ excitement during this time of year, I also childishly grumble my way through the list of to-dos and general craziness that seems to have become “The Holidays.”

This week, however, I’ve been reading some things that are warming my curmudgeonly heart. A recent study revealed that despite the recession, 63 percent of Americans plan to make online donations to charities during the Holiday season this year; that is a 12 percent increase from last year! Another poll conducted by the charity World Vision reveals that 3 out of 4 Americans say they would prefer to receive a “meaningful” gift that “helps other people” than a traditional gift of clothes or electronics.

There could be a number of factors influencing this, but I suspect that increased participation in social media networks has something to do with this shift toward a true holiday spirit of giving. Social media is a great, cost-effective way for charities to raise awareness and drive donations in a very personal way. I know that I am more apt to pay attention to a charity that someone in my group of Facebook friends brings to my attention and holds dear to his/her heart. And this year, I notice a lot of creative uses of social media vehicles to help drive awareness and participation in charities – mainly by making it fun and easy to make a difference.

Some of my favorite examples:

• Twitter’s “Turn Twitter Red”Support of World AIDS Day
• The Chase Community Giving page on Facebook, where you can vote for how $5 million in charitable donations are allocated
• Animal lovers can use Facebook Connect to register with BringPetsHome.org, which connects with popular holiday shopping sites like WalMart, Macy’s,Sephora, Amazon and iTunes to help save pets’ lives with each purchase
• With Charity Choice, you can purchase a donation in the form of a gift card that the recipient can give to the cause of his/her choosing
• If you’d like some giving guidance, eHow has a Holiday Charity Giving Guide that can help

That’s some Holiday news we can all feel good about. I feel so good, I’m getting excited for other things I love about the holidays…like the seven-fish Italian Christmas Eve dinner my mother-in-law makes, David Bowie’s rendition of “Little Drummer Boy” and the sure-to-occur multiple airings of “Love Actually,” one of my favorite Christmas-themed movies ever. Bring on the Cheer!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Chit Chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.