Don’t Forget To Give This Holiday Season

The holidays are a time for getting together with your friends and loved ones and of course, the ritual of giving and getting presents. While you’re out enjoying the egg nog and the shortbread cookies, I’d like you to think about the people who have neither cookies nor egg nog. Or for that matter, no home in which to enjoy either.

A couple of weeks ago, the Dot Com Pho Crew headed down to the Union Gospel Mission where we heard some amazing stories and saw what this great charity was doing to make things just a little more festive for so many people in the Lower Mainland. Here’s a video from our visit:

As you can see, the the Union Gospel Mission does a lot of good. What’s even more amazing is what they can do when people are willing to give a little extra.

Unlike a lot of other big charities out there, they rely heavily on word of mouth, ensuring that all donations get maximized. That’s why this holiday season I’d like you to think about putting the Union Gospel Mission on your shortlist of charities to give to when you can do without that double latte. In fact, the Union Gospel Mission can provide a Xmas Dinner for only $3.29. That means that $32.90 can feed 10 people and $329.00 can feed 100.

What If You Have Nothing To Give?

With the slowdown of the economy, things might be tight this holiday season. You might still want to give, but you can’t. So what can you do? Well, I would say, give when you can. However, I’ve got another solution for you to consider this Xmas.

In the video above, John Chow paid it forward and gave away an unexpected $5000 US check to the Union Gospel Mission. This money came from Richard Lau (no relation to Lazy Ed) and his new TinyURL site. John recently reviewed this URL shortening service called XR.com on his site. Because this service is only two letters, it creates some pretty short URLs. It’s also very helpful for making the best of those 140 characters that you get on your Twitter Account. If you’re into shortening more URL’s, you can take it for a test run right here.

After the review, John never expected anything to materialize from it. Sure enough, a check appeared in his mailbox and he decided to pay it forward and give it away to his favourite charity. So wouldn’t it be great if someone gave you $5000 US to give away to your favourite charity? That’s exactly what John is doing!

John convinced Richard to give him another $6000 to give away to one of his readers. $5000 of that $6000 will go to a charity of your choice, while the remaining $1000 could provide you with a very Merry Xmas. If you don’t need the extra cash, you could even give away the whole thing. You’ll find more information on this great contest right here.

So if you enter John’s contest, you could have a LOT to giveaway this Holiday Season. I know that my favourite charity, BC Children’s Hospital, could really use that cash. Combined with my Tiger Direct Charity PC Race winnings (crosses fingers) this coming January, there could be a lot of potential smiles there this holiday. And yes Buzz, I haven’t forgotten about Team Diabetes