Ralph Waldo Emerson: The only gift is a portion of thyself.

I received this in an e-mail yesterday, from the Hawaii-based Kokua Hawaii Foundation:



During the holiday season the most rewarding gift of all is giving back to your community. Did you know the average person will spend $530 on gifts and $90 on greeting cards this Holiday Season? That’s a combined $560 million spent on gifts and greeting cards in Hawaii over the Holidays.

If each of us took one out of every 10 gifts we buy, and made a donation on behalf of a friend instead, together we’d give $56 million to local charities. That’s enough to fund the average Hawaii nonprofit for 50 years. It’s also more than the combined budgets of all environmental nonprofits in the state.