Here’s an Armchair Do-gooding idea for people interested in making their bachelorette/bachelor party more meaningful and memorable.  Choose an organization whose cause is close to your heart and get a group of your best friends together for a day of service.  There’s no need to cut out good ol’ fun, either—start in the morning with a volunteer activity and end with an evening of tequila shots.  Or you could make a weekend out of it: How about a Nevada Habitat for Humanity build and then a good, old fashioned Las Vegas blowout?

My bachelorette party went a little something like this: Brunch at Madeleine Bistro (having eclipsed the age where I can still hold my liquor, I opted for beignets instead of booze), an afternoon volunteering at Animal Acres, and a picnic lunch afterward.  It was perfect for me and enjoyed by all.

Not sure where to start? VolunteerMatch is a good place to begin…

My friend Katherine up the street just clued me in about this fantabulous organization.  Be An Elf offers guidance on how you can read letters that have been sent to Santa by kids in need.  They’ve been collected by the United States Postal Service, and the idea is that you then purchase gifts for the family, and make sure the kids receive presents by Christmas Day.  Katherine is planning a dinner party around the project–we’ll all pick up our letters and buy our prezzies in advance, then get together to eat and wrap.

Here are the steps they offer on how to get involved:

Three ways to volunteer:

1. The best way to help would be to select one or more letters to Santa and buy a gift for a needy child. It may take some research on your part to find out if there is a postal branch in your city offers the Santa letters. Follow the steps outlined below exactly. If there is no branch where you live, we offer some great alternative suggestions below.

2. Another way to help, if you can’t go to the post office yourself, is to Donate Online to Be An Elf. If you prefer to give by check, see Giving by Check. Your donation to Be An Elf will further our mission and help us recruit new volunteers.

3. Another great way to support our mission is to let your friends know about our group. If you like, use our suggested draft of a message to friends to tell them about us. Feel free to rewrite the message any way you wish.

There’s much more on their site, including help for finding the participating post office branch near you, so be sure to click here.

Avid Oprah-watchers and dedicated bathing beauties are probably already well acquainted with Philosophy Cosmetics, one of the best selling lines of skin, body, and facial care available on the market today. What they might not know is that similar to Collective Wellbeing, which I posted about in March, a percentage of profits from various Philosophy products benefit charitable funds, organizations, and foundations.

They’re having a lot of fun with the project, some of which is excusably scatological: Their “Laughing Gas” room spray benefits the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance, and get this—Philosophy is donating 100% of its gross profit from the sale of this specially-designed bathroom spray to the cause.

Other charitable Philosophy items include their “Shower for the Cure” shower gel, which benefits the Women’s Cancer Research Fund, and the “Inner Grace” shower gel, benefiting the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

Cristina Carlino, creator of Philosophy and author of The Rainbow Connection: Seven Steps for Realizing Your Unlimited Potential (How to Use Color and Energy to Transform Your Life), has seen to it that animal testing is not done by her company, a relief considering just how many cosmetic companies still do.

That’s one good Philosophy.

It ain’t easy to effect good in this world, especially with a day job, a relationship, a dog, and assorted other time limitations. I would love to sign up as a Big Sister, volunteer with One World Health, or walk dogs for my local shelter, but it’s all I can do to make sure that my own dog gets enough exercise each day. Still…I’m determined to find ways, however small, to do my part. This past winter I did almost all of my shopping on The Greater Good Network and Green Glass, Inc., a company that creates recycled glassware from bottles. It felt good to know that in my own small way I was supporting organizations like The Animal Rescue Site, and helping to slightly reduce the immense waste of the holiday season.

This month, as a sort of Valentine’s gift, I got my mom a subscription to GOOD Magazine. I discovered GOOD in a Las Vegas airport sundries shop of all places. It was last September, and Matt had surprised me with an overnight birthday getaway to see the new Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil show, Love. We were in desperate need of reading material while we awaited our flight home the next day, so Matt took off to check out our options. I expected that he’d pick up an Us Weekly or some other fluff, but he returned with something much more interesting. It was the first ever issue of a magazine called GOOD, and it seemed to be both designy (I learned soon after that for each issue, GOOD asks an artist or group to set the tone for the magazine with a visual interpretation of the issue theme) and conceptually substantial. I grabbed it out of Matt’s hands and exclaimed something like, “Sweet molasses, let me get a look at that!” Yeah. This is the sort of thing that gets me excited.

GOOD proved to be super cool, and I was equally as (if not more) impressed when I discovered their mission and approach. Get this: When you subscribe to GOOD for one year, 100% of your subscription fee ($20) goes to the charitable organization of your choice. Subscribers choose from twelve organizations, which include Ashoka, Oceana and Unicef.

Awesome, right? So far I’ve purchased two subscriptions—one for me and one for my mom—and intend to keep giving them as gifts throughout the year. So there you go: it’s an armchair do-gooding option that keeps on giving.