Love this thread, and I love the variety of examples people put up--gifts both big and small.
My example requires a bit of background:
My wife had been involved with our local, small town food bank for some time. (She is very local in her giving, where I tend to look at global problems) We donated food items regularly, and always thought of them when it was time to clean out the freezer, whether seasonally or for a new start to a diet. Comes the time where "extreme couponing" was all the rage (2014?) and my wife picked it up as a hobby. Of course, that fad had plenty of example of excesses; gross consumption that bordered on waste. Who needs 40 toothbrushes?!? Unless you are shopping for ~60 families. Aha! So, for a couple of years, we took a $10 / week budget and leveraged it up to $100+ of items. We got quite sophisticated at it: one local Kroger store was really great to work with: they knew we were shopping for charity, and knew the kinds of things we were looking for, so we could chat with the Manager about likely stock we would want, and they would supplement their order for us. Well, as so often happens, this trend was loved to death. Eventually, that Kroger had to cut back their coupon policy as some kind of roving group from Ohio would drive 2+ hours, one way, to clean them out. Regularly.
So our bounty came to an end.
We took our cash budget and went back to "regular" donations, but we really missed the impact we used to have, so we started to brainstorm. Along this time, the organization had a change of leadership, and gained a real dynamo of a leader. She had a lot of ideas that shook up this sleepy little operation, and such a kind heart--very focused on impact for the community, as well as recognition of contributions of individuals in the organization. One such person was a man who brought fresh eggs every week, from his own chickens. (this is a benefit of a small organization; a lot of large organizations would not accept this) That got me to thinking about staples everyone would need, every week. Well, at the same time, Visionary Leader was also bemoaning that the organization was distributing juice--or rather, sometimes "juice," that is, something less than 100% natural--because it was a cheap drink. Ostensibly, it was for kids--something better than soda. But she ideally would like to give them milk.
Hmm...
So we started imagining how to do this, as close to our budget as possible. I had the idea to try and pick up a retail cooler; the kind with sliding doors. If we could get one of those cheap, then we just would have the question of how to fund ~60 gallons of milk per week. Still a budget-buster, but it was in the back of our minds.
So, one day my wife is at their building. I don't know exactly how the conversation went, as I wasn't there: my wife may have mentioned we were thinking on the milk problem, or the statement may have come out of the blue. But Visionary Leader casually mentioned that they could get all the milk they needed for free; they just didn't have refrigerator space to make use of it.
Bingo! We wrote the check that day. Or rather, we told them that day to tell us what kind of fridge they wanted. Turns out, the fridge they had (for fresh fruits and veg) actually had its coils encased in solid ice--it was near failure. So we wrote a check for $1,500 for two nice units, which can switch from fridge to freezer as needed. This ended up equaling 3 years of giving, but would pay off so much more.
So since that day, now 5+ years, and more than a year since we moved away, every family gets a gallon of milk with their food. No "juice" or other sugary drinks. Visionary Leader moved on, actually scaling up to aid work in Africa. But this gives me joy because it was a lasting impact. In fact, it really gets me energized to think about it, because it was an investment: a capital expenditure that pays "dividends" in milk every week, enabling a better service for the families that they are helping. It has also shaped my future giving, to look for similar opportunities where there is opportunity sitting on the sidelines, for lack of a particular capability or capacity. And I'm mindful that while a lot of people were very close to a solution, we really stumbled on the final connection of all the pieces--that I shouldn't shy away from asking the leadership about these kinds of opportunities, either to put them out in the open, or to get them thinking about them and looking for them.
