Power giving

Is there someone on your holiday shopping list who's especially hard to buy for? They've got the latest gadget, aren't interested in another sweater, have enough comfy slippers.

How about a monetary gift -- in your loved one's name -- that fills shelves at a food pantry, buys medicine for children with cancer, supports orphans in China, or provides solar-powered computers to connect rural Honduran children to the world?

Those are among dozens of domestic and international gifts offered by the nonprofit Alternative Gifts International, of Wichita, Kan., one of many groups around the country that is thriving by offering gifts with meaning and the potential to change lives.

"We have some very large responsibilities as Americans to protect the environment and help the poor," said Harriet Prichard, founder and president of the organization, now in its 20th year. It has donated $17.5 million to 80 projects around the world.

"People want to share ... and make some changes in the world. It's catching on like we can't believe."

Sales numbers of nonprofits indicate that a growing number of U.S. holiday shoppers are looking beyond the mall to include alternative gifts that target global poverty, help the environment, provide fair wages or raise funds for charity.

Heifer International, based in Little Rock, Ark., has seen its donations for animals and their care jump from $10 million to $70 million in 10 years. Donors buy a flock of chickens, or a cow, goat or other animal that provides milk, eggs, wool or livelihood for a poor family in one of 50 countries. That family, in turn, promises to pass on the animal's offspring, and training, until everyone in the village has a producing animal.

Kids are responsible for $1 million in donations to Heifer International, said spokeswoman Christine Volkmer.

"It's very tangible," she said. "You can wrap your head around it and see the end result.

"The biggest selling point is they're making a $20 donation for a flock of chickens, which will multiply to hundreds of chickens. They like that."

Plowsharing Crafts in St. Louis, a nonprofit store owned by the St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship, saw sales exceed $600,000 last year, $200,000 more than two years earlier, said Rich Howard-Willms, the manager. Plowsharing is part of a national Ten Thousand Villages network of 120 nonprofit stores that sell the work of skilled artisans in developing countries for a fair wage.

"We've met the people. We tell their story. We're not a big corporation. We're not some sweatshop. These are people whose lives are affected by purchases our consumers make," said Howard-Willms.

Plowsharing Crafts invites St. Louis-area churches and other nonprofits to sponsor an evening at the store during the holiday season, where their supporters can shop and eat holiday goodies. A percentage of the sales goes to the participating nonprofit.

"People do value the unusual clothes and craft items, with the added benefit that you're doing good for someone else," said Shellie Hexter, whose Springboard to Learning sponsors one of the shopping nights.

"There's something about holding something in your hand that was made by a craftsperson, not by hitting the push button and getting 200 identical shirts," she said.

Presents for Purpose in New York sells clothes and jewelry to raise funds and awareness for various charitable organizations. Founded by two women who successfully fought Hodgkins disease, it donates 25 percent of the proceeds from an online purchase to the buyer's selected charity.

"Everyone has a budget for a gift," cofounder Alayna Kassan said. "Why not have a portion of the budget go back to a great cause? This is not meant to replace straight giving, but to broaden it."

All of the groups send gift cards so the person in whose name the gift is made knows how it is being used.

For members of the Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, the perfect gift for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah is one driven by tzedakah -- loosely translated, the right thing to do, said Rabbi Susan Talve.

"We have a Hanukkah party here, and instead of coming and getting something, you give," she said. Depending on the need, the congregation's children and adults have given everything from mittens for poor city schoolchildren to plantings of olive trees for Palestinian and Israeli lands -- all in the name of someone on their shopping list.

They also do gifts of service, lighting the nightly Hanukkah candles while visiting residents in nursing homes. Last year, the congregation "filled a whole ark" with purchases of llamas, chickens, goats and other animals from Heifer International to help sustain poor families in developing countries.