6 Tips for Charitable Giving on the Cheap

If you want to give something that has a tangible, significant impact on someone's life, just look down. Your body is a potential gold mine for charitable giving, Boles says.

You can give blood to the American Red Cross. Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs a blood transfusion, and a single pint of blood can save the lives of up to three people, the nonprofit group says. Yet only 3 percent of Americans donate blood, according to the American Red Cross. Yes, it does involve a needle, but giving blood is free and it's fast.

Thinking about a haircut? Donate that hair to Locks of Love based in West Palm Beach, Fla. The charity makes custom hair pieces for children suffering from long-term, medical hair loss due to illnesses such as cancer. Custom wigs can cost as much as $6,000, an impossible cost for many families, but Locks of Love provides them for free.

Got milk? If you produce more breast milk than your baby needs, you may be able to donate it to the National Milk Bank in Escondido, Calif., where it will be given to premature and critically ill babies whose mothers cannot nurse. After going through a health screening process, donating moms will store expressed milk in the freezer then periodically send it to the milk bank.

Sometimes the stuff you already have can be great for charitable giving, Boles says.

If you get the Sunday paper, don't throw away the unused coupons. Clip them and send them to military families overseas who can save money by using them in the commissary on base. The Overseas Coupon Project matches individual coupon clippers with people on military bases who are anxious to receive coupons. All you do is clip and mail them. The only cost is the stamp.

If you have valuables gathering dust, auction them off and donate the proceeds to charity. If you sell via eBay Giving Works, a program that helps sellers list items on eBay to benefit nonprofits, you can donate 10 percent to 100 percent of the sale price to a charity. Or, you can sell the item on a website such as Craigslist.org and donate the money.

Put your veggie garden to better use this spring with Plant a Row for the Hungry. The program -- sponsored by the Garden Writers Association and GWA Foundation -- asks the green-thumbed to donate extra produce from their gardens to local food banks. Since it began in 1995, participants have donated 14 million pounds of vegetables. Demand at local food banks is high and fresh produce is often in short supply.

Even if you don't have time to volunteer, your computer does. The World Community Grid allows charities to use your computer's processing power when you aren't. The grid links your computer to thousands of others. Nonprofits can save money by reducing the time needed to conduct research on a variety of projects, including cures for childhood cancers and muscular dystrophy.

Next time you're online, why not surf for a cause? GoodSearch.com is a Yahoo-powered search engine that funnels money to your favorite schools and charities every time you do a standard Internet search. Each time you click on a link to one of the site's sponsored advertisers, 50 percent of the revenue generated from the click is shared with your nonprofit, to the tune of at least 0.01 cent per click.

It doesn't seem like much, but "all of those small contributions add up over time," says Shaunacy Webster, a fundraising consultant and owner of Philanthropic Edge in Lewis Center, Ohio. "Every penny is important."

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