Every December at work, we do a Secret Santa gift exchange with our team. Put everyone's name in a hat, everyone draws a name, and buys that person a gift -- cap on the spending at something like $20. The gifts are exchanged at our team Christmas gathering.
Last year, we decided to do something a bit different. We still drew names from the hat, but instead of buying a gift for that person, we bought a gift that we thought that person would have liked as a child. Then, we "exchanged" the gifts -- had a good laugh about what everyone "got" -- and then all of those gifts were donated to the women's centre here in Calgary. (Of note, we also removed the cap on the spending, in case anyone wanted to spend more as the gifts were really all for donation).
The women's centre sets up a mini "store" each December. Women in need from the city are given tokens for each of their children, one for a small gift, one for a medium gift and one for a large gift (as I recall). They take these "tokens" and go "shopping" among all the donated gifts, to be able to put something under the tree for their kids. Those who took our donations to the centre said that they were blown away by the generosity of our group -- and we felt just so happy to be able to give a gift that meant something, rather than the usual secret Santa junk that just gets consumed or thrown away.
We'll be doing it again this year, and it's an idea that I'd welcome anyone to steal or adapt :-)
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