May 7, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Charities are trying to help people celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend — and raise money — with solicitations that tie their missions to motherhood.
“Did you know that Mother’s Day was originally called Mother’s Day for Peace?” asks the Ploughshares Fund, which works to prevent conflict and the use of deadly weapons.
Its Web site tells the story of the woman who proposed the holiday and asks for gifts to the charity’s Mother’s Day Peace Fund, which supports projects to “make the world safer and more peaceful.”
For a gift of $50, the fund sends a handwrittten card to the donor’s mother (or somebody else they want to honor) and the charity will deliver an organic bouquet for a gift of $250 or more.
Share Our Strength, the hunger-relief organization, is sending out an e-mail appeal for online gifts, telling recipients that one out of three single mothers in the United States cannot reliably provide the nutritious food their families need.
Donors are urged to contribute $35, $85, or $270, and can click from the appeal to a Web site that explains how much each sum will do to help a mother buy food.
GlobalGiving, an international-aid group, is collaborating with Johnson & Johnson for an online Hand-Me-Down Auction in which people can bid on items donated by celebrity mothers, including the actresses Julianne Moore and Mariska Hargitay.
GlobalGiving will distribute 100 percent of the proceeds to charities that help “care for the health and well being of mothers and children” worldwide.
Let us know what ideas you have tried to tie solicitations to Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Just click on the comments link to tell us your fund-raising ideas.
