August Can Be a Tough Month for Charities

Aug. 29, 2005 — -- August is typically the most difficult time of year for food pantries and charities. Children in need generally receive free breakfast and/or lunch at school during the school year, so demand at food pantries increases in the summer. At the same time, the majority of food drives are held during the school year, so food donations drop dramatically during the summer. By August, pantries' supplies are depleted, and holiday food drives are still a few months away.

You can help by contacting a local charity to see what its needs are. Charities may need donations of food, used clothing or school supplies. Find your nearest charity by using an online search engine with your town and state's name and the words "food pantry." You can also check with local places of worship to see which area charity they support with food drives.

How You Can Help

Donate food

It's easy to donate grocery bargains with coupons using the "Cut Out Hunger" strategy on the Savings Mom Web site. Many items are free with a coupon. Keep a box in your house or garage for each week's bargains, and deliver it to the charity when it's full. Involve your children for a meaningful family activity.

Donate supplies

School supplies are selling at up to 80 percent off their regular prices at this time of year. Pick up a few extra items for your charity, and let your children select the items they'd like to give. Save even more money at store clearance sales, which typically start a couple of weeks after the school year is in session.

Donate clothes

As your children outgrow last year's school clothes, you can donate gently used items to your charity. This cleans out your closets and is much easier than holding a yard sale.

Other ways to help

If you itemize your taxes, you may even be able to deduct the value of the food, supplies and clothing donated (based on the cost you paid for new items or the used clothing value).

As children go back to school, you may have some extra time to volunteer. If you can spare the time, you will find that this investment will pay big dividends to your charity and your community at no financial cost to you.

Help military families

Do you throw away your Sunday newspaper grocery coupons each week? Your trash could help someone else save cash. Military commissaries overseas accept grocery coupons six months after they expire. Many overseas commissaries carry common U.S. grocery items, but the grocery coupon circulars are not available in foreign newspapers. Many military bases have well-organized programs of collecting and distributing grocery coupons to their families. For the cost of postage, your expired coupons could make a difference for several families.

You could even get your children involved by collecting unused coupons from neighbors and cutting them for mailing. You save time (cutting) and they learn an easy way to help others.

There are many military bases accepting expired coupons. You can find a comprehensive list by Clicking Here. We suggest you e-mail the contact name listed before mailing the coupons to make sure the program is still in place. You can find e-mail addresses for bases here Clicking Here.