c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ For Dr. Linda Hedlund, it seems the perfect Christmas-shopping solution.

She and her family look through the annual”Gifts of Hope”catalog they receive at their Lutheran church in McLean, Va., and they pick out gifts they’d like to give to their Sunday school teachers and family members.

This year, her son chose $15 worth of medicine for a needy family in El Salvador as his teacher’s gift. Last year, the Arlington, Va.-based physician gave a $25 goat, for her step-father, to add to the herds of poor farmers in Namibia.”I like the fact that there’s a wide range of choices, so you can support things that are in the local metropolitan area or internationally,”said Hedlund of the program of the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.”It’s so hard to find gifts that aren’t real expensive and yet aren’t going to clutter up someone’s house or add more clutter to their holidays.” Whether it’s buying a goat, a well, or meals to help poor people survive, this particular form of alternative gift-giving is growing in popularity, observers in charitable fund-raising say. Several religiously-based groups _ whose global gift catalogs have been offered for at least the last 5 or 10 years _ say they have seen an increase in donations in the name of friends and loved ones through these programs in recent years.

Instead of a present in fancy holiday wrapping paper, recipients get a card that often features a small paper insert informing them about the specific donation to a charitable cause that has been given in their name. And the donors can get a tax deduction while helping out the needy of the world.”People realize that we need to help poor people, they need to reach out to others, it’s better to give than receive,”said Miyon Kautz, director of development marketing for World Vision.”All of those messages are wrapped up in that.” Last year, the Federal Way, Wash.-based Christian relief and development organization raised almost $315,000 through its alternative gifts program, up from the $275,000 raised in 1997.

Donations that go a long way for a relatively small cost seem to have the most appeal, Kautz and others say.

Goats _ which range in cost from $25 to $120 depending on the organization _ provide milk for poor families to drink and extra milk that can be used to make and sell dairy products. And, some charities point out, their manure provides great fertilizer.

A $15 gift of a rabbit through World Concern, a Seattle-based Christian relief and development organization, helps widows who have taken in orphaned children in Rwanda.”This type of project enables them to breed rabbits and sell them and have enough to feed their children and even send them to school,”said Sondra Perkins, media director of World Concern.

Perkins said her organization saw donations through the”Global Gift Guide”double in a year, from $93,396 in 1997 to $118,677 in 1998.

World Relief, a Wheaton, Ill.- based agency that is the relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, also has found giving through its”Catalog of Hope”increase dramatically, from $80,000 in 1997 to $180,000 last year.

Pamela Barden, vice president of resource development for World Relief, has traveled to places where needy people have received the benefits of the unique Christmas presents. She cited the case of a Honduran woman who received a $50″micro-business life loan”and used it to open a small bakery that now employs 16 people.”It’s really changing their lives,”she said of the eventual recipients.

Although many of the charities offer gifts that reach the poorest of the poor across the globe, some include donations to meet local needs in the United States.

The Washington-based Gifts of Hope program benefits elderly residents of Lutheran-affiliated senior-citizen housing and social service agencies in addition to international church organizations in Namibia, Slovakia and El Salvador.

Last year, recipients included homeless people being trained to work in a restaurant not far from Washington’s Judiciary Square by Community Family Life Services.

The Rev. Tom Knoll, agency director, said $875 in donations were received for the polo shirts worn as uniforms for the four-month training program. Additional gifts, totaling more than $6,000 helped serve breakfast to the homeless and sent kids to camps they couldn’t afford on their own.”I think people are realizing that we as a country and we as people have been blessed in many ways but there’s still a large chunk of the population out there who are extremely poor,”he said.

Susan Clark, the coordinator of Gifts of Hope, said the program has seen donations climb from $42,700 in 1992, when it began, to slightly higher than $119,000 last year.

Depending on the organization, donations can be made through 800 numbers, a mail-order form, or via a Web site. Donors can get a card _ with an insert about the specific gift _ to give directly to the person in whose honor the gift is given; some have the charity send the card.

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Added touches: World Vision offers star-shaped ornaments hand-crafted by Hondurans in a microenterprise development program that can be sent along with the card for $2. World Concern sends a package of cards featuring photographs of the group’s worldwide work to donors.

Heifer Project International’s catalog gives donors the option of buying an entire animal _ a $500 heifer, for instance _ or a share of the beast _ $50 for a share of a heifer.”We send the whole animal _ don’t worry,”joked Anna Bedford, communications director for Heifer Project, a Little Rock, Ark.-based organization that started in 1944 to work against hunger and poverty and is rooted in the peace and justice traditions of the Church of the Brethren.

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The Center for a New American Dream released a poll in late November that found that 91 percent of Americans think the holidays are too commercialized and 58 percent have taken steps to simplify the often-hectic times. When asked if there were no pressure to give gifts, 8 percent of those surveyed said they would donate all or part of the money to charity instead.”I would say that alternative gifts are a great way to simplify the holidays,”said Eric Brown, communications director of the Takoma Park, Md.-based group that promotes responsible consumption.”It really typifies what a lot of people think the holidays should be about _ giving, thinking of others and less about buying stuff and spending money on things that won’t have lasting meaning or value.” In some cases, the gifts supplement the traditional presents that go under the Christmas tree or into a stocking. Some donors use them as stand-alone gifts for business colleagues and elderly relatives who may not want tangible presents.

But alternative gift-givers need to bear the gift-getter in mind, those familiar with the process suggest.”What is difficult, sometimes, is people’s charitable choices can really differ,”said Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a Washington-based publication.”You could really care about fighting cancer, not about fighting poverty in a developing country. … If your passion is one and you’re given the other you might not like that so much.” Despite the popularity with charities and customers, alternative gift-giving isn’t likely to cut too deeply into the $184 billion projected for holiday sales this year, a retail expert predicts.”There are a lot of different types of gifts. … There’s plenty of room for everyone,”said Scott Krugman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation in Washington.”Retailers don’t look at this as a threat.”

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