Conscious Giving Program

Our goal is to encourage conscious generosity and inspire children and youth to give frequently and with purpose to build a lifelong practice that fills their own buckets and allows them to take ownership of their potential to make a charitable impact.

The Conscious Giving program is designed to offer school age children charitable giving experiences from an early age, teaching them financial literacy and exposing them to the great feeling that comes with making an impact with a cause they care about.   

We believe the best way to teach our children to flex their giving muscles and understand their potential to make a difference, is to enable them to experience empathy for a cause and to give them the ability to choose to support it themselves.

How it works

Each year $150 of charitable dollars is allocated to each classroom and teachers then empower students to work together to determine how best to consciously donate it.

Individual students are afforded the opportunity to identify an area of their curriculum that inspires them, then encouraged to evaluate the organizations that best serve it. They are then given a platform to build and present a case for supporting this organization over others for the classroom’s charitable dollars.

Having argued for and voted on the classes charitable dollars allocation, students can choose to double down on their convictions by contributing their own time and money to their chosen causes.

Any student donations will be matched with up to $50 of additional donations to help classes understand the power of matching dollars and the feeling of personal return in the act conscious giving ones money and resources.

The ownership and responsibility of the decision to feel the empathy for so many worthy causes and to decide which to support is such a valuable experience. One that goes beyond the act of giving money, the process itself brings a wealth of positive conversations and learning opportunities to both the classroom and to families’ homes as students share this experience and the lessons it brings. 

Why it works

The program is designed to empower students with the opportunity to consciously consider the curriculum they are learning and areas that they can contribute to.

Students are then given the chance to advocate for a cause they have become conscious about, form arguments as to why their fellow classmates should choose to support it, and consider others arguments and their own reflections on if they agree.

Critical thinking is cultivated in considering which organizations best serve the chosen cause and diligence is practiced in evaluating how effectively funds are then used by the chosen charities.

When spurred to act for a cause, students understand their power to mobilize others and their ability to contribute whether through their own hard earned money, their resources or their time and effort.

Where it happens

We have partnered with Charitable Impact to facilitate a seamless donation process that allows an individual, family, group or the school to make an initial donation to kick start the program, receive a Canadian tax receipt for the full amount, then allows teachers and their students to experience the process of allocating the funds to any registered charity in Canada. 

The program process:

  • The founding donor/donors creates a Charitable Impact account and deposits the initial donation amount. We recommend $150 x the number of classrooms in the school. A charitable tax receipt for the total amount donated is immediately provided to the funding donor/donors.

  • Each class is set up with a Charitable Impact Account and is given $100 of charitable dollars by simply transferring from the founding donor/donors account to theirs.

    Teachers are encouraged to visit our resources section to find age appropriate inspiration and tools to introduce to their students as they see fit.

  • Together students and their teachers then:

    • absorbe content that informs conscious giving and attunes them to what they want to look for as they study curriculum throughout the year

    • once inspired to act by a cause found within their curriculum, research the charities that serve it

    • evaluate which organizations that can most effectively use the funds to create the change they would like to see in the cause

    • elicit support from fellow students to allocate class funds to the charity they advocate for in their pitch presentation

    • make the donation to the charity and track its impact

  • If individual students or classes are inspired by the experience and the causes and organizations they have funded they can flex their charitable muscles further by raising their own money for the cause or by giving their resources or time to benefit it.

    Any student given money can be matched, our recommendation is up to $50, to help understand the power of matching dollars and the experience of consciously giving one’s own hard earned money for good.

  • Repeat the program each year and allow students to build their muscles in evaluating what drives their donation decisions and how they can build their skills in evaluating causes and ideating how they can contribute to them.

Get Involved

If you are interested in becoming a catalyst for The Giving Generation, there are many ways you can get involved to bring a Charitable Giving program to life in your community.

  • Receive a charitable tax receipt for funds donated to:

    • The Giving Generation to support schools using the program who require additional funding to keep their annual giving education and experiences going.

    • A school or education board in your community who needs founding donors to start the Charitable Giving program in their classrooms.

    • A classroom whose teachers need funding to kick off the charitable giving program with their students.

  • Give your time to help organize the administration of a program or support classroom activities related to students charitable giving choices, or simply spread the word about the importance of teaching children about charitable giving.

  • Dig into some of the resources we and our partners have collected and start a Charitable Giving program in your family or friends circle. Explore conversations at the dinner table or out with friends about what drives you to give, how your charitable dollars are used, and ask yourself and your friends and family, what impact do you want to make with your charitable efforts in your lifetime? Enjoy the conversations that follow and share these resources so others can join you in creating the generation of conscious giving.

Reach Out

To learn more about how you can get involved, fund or implement a Charitable Giving program in your community, drop us a note. We are happy to answer any questions and provide you with more information about how to implement our program at your school.