12 Months of Kindness 2013

We have finalized our 12 months of kindness list of tasks for 2013 and we are now ready to share.  It takes a few weeks to get down all of our ideas and hammer out the months that we'll be completing each act of kindness.  Our brainstorming took a few tries until we got it just right.

As you can see, its a little bit of a messy process to finally resolve on a plan.  As the worksheet suggests, we take into consideration quite a few things - like seasons, pre-planned events (birthdays, holidays, etc).  We also consider what we have done in the past that we've enjoyed.  It will be our 5th year in giving a scholarship at our high school alma mater.  And our 5th year organizing our annual Bee Olympics event.  We keep what works and try out some new things when possible too.

You can find a copy of our planning/brainstorming worksheet here to use for your own organizing of 12MoK.

After lots of discussion and moving something around, we've agreed on the following 12 Months of Kindness list for 2013!

January:  Become members of our local EMS department (membership fee & donation)

February:  Take our grandparents (great-grandparents to the kids!) out for Valentines dates.

March:  Bake cookies & deliver thank yous to the local volunteer fire department

April:  Let Greyson choose how he would like to donate some birthday money at Oxfam America Unwrapped.

May:  5th CV Studer Scholarship to a high school senior at our alma mater

June:  Donation to the Humane Society

July:  5th Annual Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics

August:  Serve food at the local soup kitchen & supply birthday cake (my 30th birthday month!)

September:  Donor's Choose

October:  Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF

November:  Organize the CV Alumni Turkey Bowl game

December:  Adopt-a-family through the Salvation Army

Some of our months are really big events (Beer Olympics, Turkey Bowl) and some of them will only take a few minutes (EMS membership, Donor's Choose) - but the truth is that writing them all down in one place and planning out a whole year of giving to others is what makes sure it happens.  Not a month will go by in 2013 that we don't take a few moments to remember how grateful we are for this life that we have.

Like one of my favorite quotes (from Grace Noll Crowell) states:

Because I have been given much, I too must give.


If you'd like a copy of our 12MoK calendar visit here.

If you are working on 12 Months of Kindness, please feel free to link up!  We'd love to read about it!