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Charity giving involves much more than just dumping your handful of change into the collection bin outside your favorite retailer when a volunteer dressed up as Santa Claus rings a bell and offers you a polite greeting. Charities need money, that’s for sure, but they also require a lot of assistance to stay up and running. Collecting money or hard goods for the downtrodden is a serious business with a large amount of logistics behind each collection center and drop off location. One thing that virtually every charity organization requires to keep operating is volunteers. This year, instead of offering less than a dollar to the local charitable cause, you might consider offering something that doesn’t cost you money – your time.
There are many benefits to helping out your local charitable organization. For one, you’ll often meet other people whose hearts are bigger than their wallets. These are good people to meet –they’re often friendly, cheerful, and have stories to tell about diverse experiences they’ve lived through. As you do things side by side, rubbing elbows with these people is a good opportunity to make solid friendships. Besides the people you might work alongside when you volunteer, there are the people you’ll meet who donate to the cause you’re helping out with. These interactions are typically more brief in duration, but can be great for the psyche anyway. Humans thrive on quick, short, positive communication, and dealing with those who have come by to make a donation is the epitome of brief, and usually cheerful, interaction.
Depending on where you might volunteer, you may also end up helping out with distribution as well. This will bring you face to face with people who are suffering, in most cases, dire need for assistance. You may be surprised at how happy you make someone by handing them an item that they desperately need, but cannot afford.
