Make Free Holiday Gift Baskets for Charity

So, your favorite charity is having a fundraiser auction and has asked for an attractive gift basket donation or your church has asked you to sponsor a needy family this Christmas. However, as much as you’d like to help, you’re worried about your finances, too. When you barely make ends meet, can you afford to help? That depends. Can you handle a little sales tax? If so, you absolutely can give a very nice gift basket to a charity or needy family.

Photo: Jana Kollárová/SXC

You’ll need to start by finding a nice basket for the gifts. I always seem to have a stack of baskets sitting around, but if you don’t have one, get creative. A new mixing bowl that you never used because it was too wide will do. In fact, if you have some pretty wrapping paper, you can simply cover a low cardboard box with paper to make your “basket.”

Next, start paying close attention to your local drugstore newspaper ads. This week alone, I can get an Oral-B toothbrush, Vaseline lotion and ChapStick from Walgreens and will get a Register Reward back on each item for the amount of money I spent. The Register Rewards can be spent on groceries I need on my next trip to Walgreens, which means that, as long as I don’t lose them or let them expire, I’ve gotten the items listed above completely free. CVS has several offers that will work for gift baskets that earn bucks you can use to pay for the groceries you want on your next visit. RiteAid has a rebate program that has several items that will be completely free after rebate that are suitable for a health and beauty gift basket, but I’d have to be willing to wait a month to get my grocery money back.

Once you have a few weeks worth of items gathered, you can put together  a very nice gift basket and, as long as you don’t let your Register Rewards or CVS Bucks expire and you remember to submit your Rite Aid rebates, all you really paid for the whole basket full of goodies is the sales tax.