Change by Doing Explore the world of volunteering and service

Holiday gift ideas are starting to creep up…just like merchandise in stores…waaaaaaaayyyy to early. Remember when Halloween came and went before twinkly lights and fake snow filled the shelves? Now the glowing embers of the Fourth of July have barely cooled before Santa stakes out a corner of a store. This gift idea, however, is a perennial, and would make a great birthday, graduation, anniversary, etc. gift while also doing some profound good.

Wear Your Music gets guitar strings donated by some of the greatest rock and roll players in the world (Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, etc) and then crafts the strings into simple bracelets. 100% of the profits from this oh-so-simple enterprise, go to the musician’s favorite charity of choice. Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, for instance, chose Reverb, a non-profit focusing on musicians and fans taking a stake in a sustainable future. Peter Frampton chose the Music Resource Center of Cincinnati. Jason Mraz profits go to the Surfrider Foundation. Clapton—Crossroads Drug Rehab. Dolly Parton—Imagination Library. Santana—Milagro Foundation, and so on.

It is a great way to embrace music and further the charitable goals of the artists you respect (and find a whole bunch of new foundations and charities as well as you peruse the website).