Some have a special gift

NEW YORK — Early on Thanksgiving mornings, Scott Jaffe bundles his kids into a rented van and heads off to pick up a couple dozen cooked turkeys and all the trimmings, from stuffing to mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

Once the van is loaded with food, Jaffe and his children — 11-year-old Lawson and 9-year-old and Nicole — travel across their hometown of Tampa, Fla. Before they’re done, they will have surprised two dozen families with holiday dinners they couldn’t afford on their own.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is when many Americans make charitable donations, and it’s critical to the nonprofit and religious organizations they support. Individuals donated some $188 billion to charity in 2004, three-quarters of total charitable giving in the country, according to the latest figures from the Giving USA Foundation. The other donations came from corporations, foundations and bequests.

A growing number of families like Jaffe’s are trying to turn their charitable giving into a holiday tradition. Jaffe, a financial consultant who started his Thanksgiving deliveries six years ago, said his family gets the names of struggling families from local schools. And while his goal is to help those families, he also hopes his children are gaining something, too.

“I want my kids to understand that there are a lot of people in the world who are not as lucky as they are,” Jaffe said. “And I want them to learn to share.”

Many other families plan their giving around Christmas and Hanukkah.

In early December, marketing consultant Theresa Drescher and her husband Michael Cleeff, an actor, get revved up for their annual project — responding to children’s letters to Santa that are collected not at the North Pole but at the main post office in New York.

“In 2001, I went to the post office,” said Drescher. “I figured I would pick out a letter or two, buy a Barbie doll or two, and that would be it.”

What Drescher found, however, was hundreds of letters from kids who weren’t asking for dolls or toys but for necessities like underwear, sweaters and shoes.

“A lot would write, ‘Please take care of my mom, or my brothers and sisters,’ and add something like, ‘And if you have anything left over Santa, my name is Cindy and I would like a coat.’

“I called my husband in tears, and we decided there was nothing else we could do but this,” Drescher said.

Since then, she and her husband — and friends they’ve drawn into the project — donate time and money to fulfill children’s holiday wishes. In addition to providing what the child has requested, the volunteers also try to find out what other family members need so they can deliver a holiday box with something for everyone.

And each child gets a personalized stocking with some candy, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a small red bear.

Last year Drescher’s City Santa project provided holiday gifts to 50 families and outgrew her living room, so they moved their operations into space provided by a local church. This year they completed the paperwork to qualify as a charity so they can handle 75 families and attract donations and volunteers to increase their outreach next year.

Her reward, she said, is watching a child rip open the personal letter from Santa that “makes them feel very special” at Christmas.

In Cincinnati, Joe Hale, chief communications officer for the Cinergy Corp. gas and electricity company, has long been involved in raising money for the March of Dimes. It has been his way of giving back to an organization that helped his mother, who developed polio a month before he was born and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Although Hale was personally involved with charitable giving, he felt that what he had experienced wasn’t rubbing off on his children.

So three years ago, he sat them down on Christmas Eve and gave each of them an envelope full of cash, Hale said.

“I told them, ‘Your mother and I are creating a small family foundation,”’ he remembers. “You can keep the money for yourself, but if you give it away by March 31 it qualifies you for a seat on the (foundation) board.”’

Hale’s challenge resulted in a long discussion about the pros and cons of charitable giving, he said. And by March 31, all of the money had been donated.

Now the Hales and their children — Catherine, 22; Grant, 27, and Britten, 32 — hold an annual powwow on Christmas Eve to select charities for the coming year’s donations.

“I think they’re really beginning to internalize the importance of giving something back, and that was our goal in the first place,” Hale said.