Give Simple believes that gifts that benefit good causes are two presents in one! The recipient gets a great gift, and a little bit of goodness goes back into the world around us. With that in mind, we are adding products to Give Simple that donate a significant portion of their proceeds to charity.

Giving great gifts is only one element of the Give Simple philosophy. We believe in taking positive strides toward making life better for ourselves and those around us. We will be adding many new items that benefit a variety of wonderful causes in the next few months, stay tuned. If you have any recommendations for us, please share!

Our first big effort supports a cause close to our hearts. We are the guardians of three much beloved Golden Retrievers. Champ is the 13 year old genius of the family, Stormy is our spirited but sweet 5 year old girl, and Cody is our gorgeous 3 year old monster. We chose Saving Animals as our first focus charity for Gifts that Give Back.

The Saving Animals mission is to eliminate financial, geographical, and cultural barriers that cause animal suffering. Saving Animals provides the highest quality sterilization and veterinary services for dogs and cats and promotes their physical and emotional well being through education and adoption.

Saving Animal’s Fix Houston is a five year plan to create a model major American city where there are no homeless dogs and cats. More than $2 Million has been committed to build and equip five new spay and neuter clinics in Houston. An additional $3 Million must be raised to achieve the goal of sterilizing 60,000 dogs and cats each year to end animal homelessness by 2013.

As supporters of several animal rescue groups, we can see that no matter how many people adopt animals (and we believe 100% in adoption instead of buying pets from breeders), we can’t adopt our way out of the problem of hundreds of thousands of homeless animals across the United States.

We believe Saving Animals can lead the way to improving the quality of life for dogs and cats. They add so much to our lives, it’s important to do something in return.

Learn more at http://www.savinganimals.org
When we learned that Laura Gibson, aka Metalsgirl, the most successful Jewelry maker on Give Simple, was involved in Animal Rescue, it just gave us one more reason to love her! Laura is involved with Blue Dog Rescue in Austin, Texas, a group that has saved over 1200 lives through adoption. She shares her studio with 11 (yes eleven!) dogs and 2 cats. This makes Laura a hero in our eyes.

Laura has designed a special version of her best selling hammered sterling silver Inspirational Bangle to benefit Saving Animals.

On the cat bangle, the sterling charm has a paw print and the words "Cat's Meow" The purple resin charm has a bit of spearmint for happiness.

On the dog bangle, the sterling charm has a paw print and the words “For the love of dog” The red resin charm has a bit of clove for love and protection.

$3 from every bracelet will be donated to Saving Animals.

AT LONG LAST! Give Simple has been waiting for months to get our hands on the Murval Truly Green tote bags. We saw them the first week of February in New York, and we’ve been waiting ever since (So have some of our customers!)
I’ve been on a personal “No bag, thanks” campaign for some time, since reading in 2006 that paper bags may be as big a problem in landfills as plastic, and take more energy to produce. It’s fascinating how easy it is to get your sacker at Whole Foods to use the bags you brought, and how it totally befuddles the sackers at Kroger. The Kroger sacker will even bag things like the gigantic bottle of liquid detergent that takes up an entire bag. I try to tell them nicely to use as few bags as possible, but I wish someone would train them just a little.
It’s amazing how many bags I can avoid just on my weekly errands. Card store, book store, drugstore, cosmetics counter… My “no bag, thanks” has also expanded to other things I just don’t need. I know it’s free, but I don’t need it. The look on the face of the Neiman Marcus cosmetics salesperson was priceless. You don’t want the free tote? No, I have plenty.
The Murval totes are great in three ways:
1) They save bags from going in to landfill
2) They are themselves TOTALLY organic. From the cotton to the button to the ink in the thread, and the hang tag, all carefully selected to not harm the earth. The bags are even shipped to us in recycled paper envelopes instead of the usual plastic.
3) Proceeds from the bags go to the Environmental Media Association a driving force in educating people about environmental issues.
Actually, four ways, because these are the official gift bag of the VH1 Rock Honors. At home, we’ve watched as some of the most talented musicians on the planet pay homage to The Who this week. It’s fun to think that we’ve got the same bags at give simple that the really cool people have!