Choose charity
For those who'd like to give the gift of giving, there are gift cards and certificates they can purchase and then let the recipient choose which charity they want to donate to. The purchaser of the gift card, not the recipient, gets the tax deduction.

The CharityChoice card, which is available at Charitygiftcertificates.org, comes from the Special Kids Fund, a Lakewood, N.J.-based nonprofit that helps to promote other nonprofits.

"We raise money for other nonprofits," says Daniel B. Goodman, president of Special Kids Fund. "In the beginning, we had the concept to do general-public fundraising. We thought, why not use the Internet, an e-commerce engine, to produce charity products. We were doing e-cards for about two years and we saw that e-cards seemed to be not very highly rated by customers as a gift."

The popularity of gift cards, though, made them shift to plastic. Goodman thought, "Why not use commercial gift cards and make it go to charity." The CharityChoice card was launched in fall 2006 and immediately proved to be much more popular than the e-cards, Goodman says.

Recipients can choose from among 75 charities. The minimum order for the gift card is $50 (in denominations from $5 to $100, which means you can purchase 10 $5 gift certificates to make up the $50 minimum), with a $4.95 shipping and handling fee. (Expedited shipping will cost more, of course.) Special Kids Fund takes a 10 percent administration fee and $0.50 per card, and the charity chosen by the recipient gets the rest receives the rest. CharityChoice cards do not expire.

JustGive.org also offers gift certificates for charities that can be bought and redeemed on its Web site, where more than 1 million nonprofits from the Guidestar database are listed. Each gift certificate costs $5, but that drops to $2 per certificate if more than one is purchased per transaction. JustGive.org deducts 3 percent of the value of the gift certificate for administrative purposes. Gift certificates have no expiration date.

Spare change for change
Coinstar, the company that operates "the big green" coin-counting machines, has a program called Coins that Count, which started in 1997 and topped $20 million in donations in December 2006.

"You can go to a Coinstar machine with your change, and choose to get cash -- for which there is a coin-counting fee -- or you can purchase a gift card or make a donation to a charity of your choice," says Marci Maule, a spokeswoman for Coinstar. "Customers have the ability to donate change to specific charities that are on the machine." These include the American Red Cross, the World Wildlife Fund, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and America's Second Harvest. There is no coin-counting fee for charitable donations or gift cards. You can locate a Coinstar machine and see its capabilities on the Coinstar Web site.

"Ultimately our purpose is to elevate the Americans' gift giving," says Goodman. "What do you give the person who has everything? Charitable giving is very popular. It's such a good fit for the holidays; it's an appropriate gift."