So Christmas has been and gone. Are you now facing the New Year and wondering how you can keep up the Christmas spirit and goodwill for the coming year? Well, it certainly helps when you know how to do so for free from your own home.

There are so many simple ways to volunteer or donate to charity by giving up a small amount of your time or re-purposing some money you would normally have spent. So here’s a list of five of the best quick and easy ways to volunteer or donate to charity. Bookmark the list of charities and use it to do the rounds weekly!

Skip1.org

This is a great concept “” it’s a site which makes you think about how much money you waste on frivolous things. You nominate something which you will give up, say a lunch or newspapers for a month. Then you donate that same amount of money to feeding a hungry child.

Yes, you’re handing over money to charity, but it’s money you would have spent anyway. It’s also easy to share news of your donation with your friends via social networks, and hopefully convince a few of them to skip something for charity too.

Free Rice

Free Rice has been around a while, but it’s so good it’s worth making sure it’s on this list. Play a simple, addictive trivia quiz and Free Rice will donate rice for each of your correct answers. This is a free and simple way to give whenever you have a free moment. Read more on FreeRice here.

Causes

There are a number of things you can do using Causes, including raising awareness for your chosen charity and helping to raise funds for them. By far the easiest way to donate money with Causes is to set up a birthday or holiday fund. This way, instead of receiving presents from friends and family, you simply ask them to donate the money on your behalf. It takes about two minutes to set up, since you can log in with Facebook Connect – just choose the charity and you’re set!

Charity Gifts

Here’s another easy way to spend your money on charity instead of something you were already going to pay for. Instead of giving gifts to your friends, give them the knowledge that you have donated to charity on their behalf. The Donation4Charity website searches all the big charity gifting sites (such as UNICEF, WWF and Oxfam) and lets you search the gifts according to how much money you have available to spend. Buy a goat for charity for about the same price as a modest gift!

Sparked

Spend 5-10 minutes donating your expertise to charity: Give website feedback, brainstorm fundraising ideas or help design an awareness campaign. This is what they need help with – if you can spend a few minutes working on it then you’ve made a difference to a real charity with just a moment of your time. Read more on Sparked here & get going!

And many, many more!

There are so many great ways to donate your time to charity “” the sites listed above are just a few. Here’s some more great articles which introduce many more you might like to try.

• Introducing Jumo ““ The Social Network for Social Good
• How To Easily Coordinate Volunteers Using Volunteer Spot
• 5 Crowd Funding Websites To Support Your Favourite Charities, Bands & Projects
• Find Volunteering Opportunities Near You with VolunteerMatch
• 10 Search Engines To Help The Environment
• 5 Cool Edutainment Games You Can Play and Also Donate To Charitable Causes
• 5 Websites To Lend A Hand & Make A Difference To The World

What are your favourite sites for donating your time to charity? Do you appreciate charity gifts given on your behalf? Let us know in the comments!