2025 Back to School Giving Essentials

Back-to-school season is full of fresh starts—new backpacks, sharpened pencils, and a chance to reset routines. But it’s also a perfect moment to start something new: a family giving routine. Teaching kids about generosity, financial responsibility, and social impact doesn’t have to be complicated, it can fit naturally into the everyday moments you’re already sharing. Here’s how to make the most of this season to spark meaningful conversations and actions around giving.

Learning Moments Can Spark Big Conversations

Kids are constantly learning about the world, whether it’s in science, history, or social studies class. Each lesson is an opportunity to connect what they’re learning to giving and making an impact. This can be a great way to engage your kids in conversations about what they learned at school each day and use it as a gateway to explore different causes that charities operate in.

For example:

• Science: “I learned about endangered species today!” Talk about animal protection and conservation charities. Ask them questions about what animals they care about and how they might want to help.
• Math: Practice budgeting together by setting a giving goal and plan to achieve it through saving or deciding how much to give to a cause or creating a fundraiser to help them reach their goal.
• History and social studies: Explore charities focused on topics that come up in class, like reconciliation and economic hardship. Discuss what it means to your kid to support marginalized communities, for example.
• Health and phys ed: Discuss mental health, food access, or inclusive accessible sports programs and what your family can do to learn more or take action.

Even a short conversation about what they learned at school can grow into a habit of thinking about how they can contribute to positive change. Use these conversations to help your child begin to identify causes they are interested in and explore different ways to engage with them.

How to Start a Giving Routine as a Family

1. Weave Giving into Everyday Conversations.

Look for natural moments in your day to talk to your child about generosity. Discuss news stories you hear on the radio while in the car, classroom topics from their school day, or even things you see while out walking in your neighbourhood. These casual conversations help kids connect news and information going on around them with real world potential actions they can take to help out. This helps them see giving as part of life.

2. Pick a Giving Theme That Works for Your Family

When you are ready to start giving, themes can help guide you as you decide what charities to support. Use seasonal topics to give based on needs tied to a particular time of year. Or explore a cause area as a way to help identify a giving theme for your family. For example:

• Seasonal: Based on the time of year, explore cause areas with more urgent needs. For example, support shelters in winter, food programs around the holidays, or summer programs for kids.
• Causal: Dedicate the year to a chosen cause like animal welfare or helping children. Explore different ways to learn more about the topic and to find charities taking action in that area, such as a wildlife rescue centre, a conservation organization or a therapy dog program.

Use tools like AI to help you ideate or explore sub-categories for causes, then use this as a basis for identifying charities that support them.

3. Get Everyone Involved in the Decision

Deciding where to give as a family can be just as meaningful as the act of giving itself. There are a few ways to make sure everyone has a voice in the process:

• Rotation: Take turns choosing which charity to support. This ensures every family member has their cause of choice represented over time.
• Presentation and Vote: Each person presents a charity they’d like to support and explains why it matters to them. Then, the family votes together to make a collective decision.
• Narrowing the Options: If too many choices feel overwhelming, start by narrowing it down to two or three charities. This makes the decision simple, especially when introducing kids to giving conversations.

No matter which approach you take, the goal is to spark curiosity and engagement. Involve kids and teens in learning about each charity’s mission—through profiles, videos, or stories—so they connect their choice to real-world impact.

4. Make Research Fun and Accessible

Researching charities doesn’t have to feel like homework. Look at charity profiles together, watch a short YouTube video, or check out a social media story about the charity. Even a quick glance at photos or impact updates can spark meaningful conversations. You can also call or visit the charity to meet the team who works there and learn more about their mission.

5. Set Shared Giving Goals

Whether it’s saving up allowance funds, tracking impact over time, or choosing a monthly gift amount together, having a goal makes giving tangible and motivating for kids. This is also a great opportunity to teach them financial literacy skills.

Tools to Help You Get Started

To help you get started, we have three tools to support your family’s new giving routine. Here is a rough guide for which tool to use based on your family dynamic and children’s ages:

• Charitable Allowance
• • • A Charitable Allowance makes it easy for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or mentors to help kids and teens get involved with giving. Set up the allowance amount and frequency and then let the kid take the lead and manage the giving themselves or co-manage it with them. It’s a great way to teach financial and social responsibility, connecting charitable actions with things kids are already thinking, feeling or learning about.

• Family Impact Account

• • • Using a single Impact Account for family giving allows you the flexibility of involving your children without the need to manage a separate account. Sitting down as a family you can set a giving goal, add money to your account and decide which charities you want to give to. This is a great way to introduce younger kids to giving and financial literacy. 

• Giving Group 

• • Giving Groups are free and customizable fundraising pages that allow you to rally your family in support of a common cause. This flexible way of giving together allows you to do everything from giving together to the same cause that is meaningful to your family to agreeing on a certain amount to contribute and collectively deciding where to give the funds raised. 

Make This School Year More Generous

Teaching kids to give builds core skills like generosity, empathy, financial literacy, and social responsibility. By connecting everyday learning moments to acts of giving, you can help your children develop lifelong habits of generosity.

Start small, keep it fun, and let the school year be a launching point for meaningful family conversations—and actions—around giving.

Empower your kids to make a difference

Kids have an incredible ability to care and take action when given the right tools. A monthly Charitable Allowance gives them the opportunity to do just that. With your guidance, your kids can use the allowance to support any Canadian registered charity and discover how good it feels to give back. Along the way, they’ll learn about social responsibility, financial literacy, and how to make thoughtful choices. Learn more about Charitable Allowance.