16 Charitable Gift Ideas For Someone Who Has It All

Shop with these British and international charities to buy your loved ones gifts that make a difference. Because your mum doesn't need another scarf.

1. Centrepoint works to support homeless youth across Britain.

centrepointgifts.org.uk

Their gift shop has opportunities to buy a Christmas dinner (£5) or present (£10) for a homeless youth. For £25 you can get them a counselling session; and for £1,000 you can provide a uni starter kit for a needy young student.

2. The Children's Society has some wonderful gift ideas to support vulnerable British children this Christmas.

shop.childrenssociety.org.uk

You can buy a Christmas party for five children with £50, or a fun outing for £60.

3. Oxfam Unwrapped has 31 different charitable gifts to buy this year, each of which support Oxfam's various international development projects.

oxfam.org.uk

The gifts range from under £10 (to provide school supplies, a health check, or mosquito nets to those in need) to a £1,670 gift to help set up or maintain a school's clean drinking water supply.

4. The British Heart Foundation's online shop sells everything from Christmas cards to diaries to recipe books to cycling gear and skipping ropes – gifts that support the charity, and even help keep your heart healthy.

Thinkstock

5. Present Aid – a fundraising scheme for Christian Aid – offers a range of life-saving gifts to donate on your recipient's behalf.

presentaid.org

You can buy a maternity healthcare kit for expectant mothers in rural Kenya (£165), loroco seeds to help reduce malnutrition rates in Guatemala (£5), and a mobile volunteer doctor who visits Palestinian children with health issues whose movement is restricted by occupation. All gifts come with a card.

6. With the World Wildlife Fund you can adopt an engangered animal this Christmas.

abzerit / Getty Images / iStockphoto

If you adopt a snow leopard for £3 or more per month, not only can you help fight poaching and provide compensation to farmers who have lost livestock to the big cats, but you can also get a snow leopard fluffy toy.

7. World Vision's Must Have Gifts has an online charity shop with more than 40 gifts with which to donate.

musthavegifts.org

musthavegifts.org

musthavegifts.org

At the Must Have Gifts website, you can donate toward providing water filters (£50) to TB screenings (£6) to kitchen vegetable-growing kits (£24) where they are most needed, and send your loved one a personalised gift card.

8. Practical Presents is the charity gift scheme for Practical Action. From now until the 5 December, they have a donor-matching scheme that will double your gift.

practicalpresents.org

You can also support Practical Action by buying their Christmas cards.

9. Save the Children has a "Wish List" with everything from medical supplies to textbooks to seeds – so you can choose something on behalf of the doctor, educator, or gardener in your life.

shop.savethechildren.org.uk

10. The Good Gifts website has a huge catalogue of charitable gifts on offer for all prices and interests.

windujedi / Getty Images / iStockphoto

For £25 you can provide a Christmas gift hamper for a lonely old person who may not otherwise receive anything this Christmas; for £8 you can provide warm winter clothes for an Afghan orphan. If you're rich (or an excellent fundraiser) you can buy a school library in India.

Good Gifts is run by the same people (the Charities Advisory Trust) who do Card Aid, selling Christmas cards on behalf of dozens of British charities.

11. Barnardo's Real Gifts are a way to support Barnardo's work with 200,000 vulnerable children and young people across Britain who have dealt with abuse, poverty, and learning difficulties.

barnardosrealgifts.org.uk

12. Send a Cow.

sendacow.org

Does your friend or loved one have everything they could possibly need? Well, consider sending a cow instead. Not to them – but to a struggling farming family in one of seven African nations where Send a Cow operates.

Why cows? Send a Cow's website explains: "Dairy cows are a lifeline to struggling farmers, giving them fresh, nutritious milk and income, as well as rich manure to fertilise soil."

While it costs £650 to send a cow, the charity offers smaller-ticket gifts such as chickens (£7), donkeys (£9), and goats (£32).

13. The Cancer Research UK online shop can provide you with all your Christmas shopping needs, from cards to gifts to wrapping paper to Christmas crackers – with 100% of profits aiding cancer research.

giftshop.cancerresearchuk.org

14. The UK UNICEF shop also has a large range of charity gift ideas, including vaccines.

shop.unicef.org.uk

£11 can provide 100 polio vaccines; £45 can provide 1,000 tetanus vaccines; and £115 can provide a health worker with a bicycle, vaccine carrier, and supplies.

15. Greenpeace has plenty of, shall we say, unique gift options for the environmentalist in your life.

greenpeacegiving.org.uk

You can buy an orangutan suit for an activist protesting the destruction of rainforests, or a fake fracking rig to set up outside an MP's house (without their permission, of course.)

Oh, and you can also buy an activist a urine bottle to use the next time nature calls while they're occuping a coal ship.

Seriously, the Greepeace Gift Guide is worth a read.

16. While doing your Christmas shopping, download the Free2Work app on your smartphone, which "provides consumers with information on forced and child labor for the brands and products they love" with a simple scan of a barcode.

free2work.org

The app is a project of the Not For Sale anti-human trafficking campaign.

Of course, you can always make a gift out of donating to any charity in someone's name, even if they don't have a scheme like the gifts above.

We suggest the British housing and homelessness charity Shelter; the Mental Health Foundation – the UK's leading research, policy and service improvement charity; these local Liberian organisations working on Ebola and other health issues on the ground; the Disasters Emergency Committee's Syria Crisis Appeal or the UNHCR's Syrian refugee support fund; Partners in Health, who work to combat a wide range of diseases from ebola to HIV/AIDS to mental illness; or make GiftAid-eligible donations through a partnership between Giving What We Can and GiveWell aimed at donating the money of UK citizens to the best-performing charities in the world.