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Acts of Kindness Ideas

Communities/Neighborhoods

• Deliver fresh-baked cookies to city workers.
• Collect goods for a food bank.
• Offer a couple of hours of baby-sitting to parents.
• Volunteer at an agency that needs help.
• Donate time at a senior center.  
• Stop by a nursing home, and visit a resident with no family nearby.
• Leave a treat or handmade note of thanks for a delivery person or mail carrier.
• Clean graffiti from neighborhood walls and buildings.
• Have a clean-up party in the park.
• Give toys to the children at the shelter or safe house.
• Write something nice about your waitperson on the back of the bill.
• Send a gift anonymously to a friend.
• Organize a clothing drive for a shelter.
• Buy books for a day care or school.
• Slip a $20 bill to a person who you know is having financial difficulty.
• Collaborate with friends to bake cakes and pies, and arrange with a soup kitchen to deliver the desserts for Thanksgiving dinner.
• Roll an elderly neighbor.s garbage cans back up the driveway at the end of trash pick-up day. Purchase a copy of a book about kindness, put a smile card in the middle, and pass it on. 
• Shovel your neighbor.s driveway or mow their lawn.
• Stop to help someone on the side of the road with car trouble.
• If a friend or a neighbor is moving, offer to bring food.
• After loading your groceries into the car, return your shopping cart.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Workplace

• Take flowers to work and share them with coworkers.
• Write a note to the boss of someone who has helped you, praising the employee.
• Leave enough money in the vending machine for the next person to get a free treat. (Tape the change and a smile card tag to the machine)
• Have a food drive, ask employees to bring nonperishable food items to donate to food bank.
• Get to work before others and leave a piece of candy, brownie, fruit, flower, etc. at every desk attached with a Smile card.
• Leave a cake or other food item in a central area anonymously with a Thank-You note.
• Appreciate a co-worker by giving them a gift of service;
• For example, instead of a tie for birthday or Christmas, sponsor a cataract surgery in a developing country. Attach a note explaining how their gift affects someone else.s life.
• Gather a group of your colleagues and take them to a fundraiser.
• Email an article about an act of kindness to your group every week. (For examples, see www.helpothers.org)
• Give your manager or co-worker a thought-provoking book.

• Print an inspiring story and put it on your work bulletin board.                                                                                                                                         
• Schools / Organizations
• Ask students to perform an Act of Kindness for a stranger and then write an essay describing the experience . how it made them feel and the reaction of the person who received their kindness. 
• Send home a note telling parents something their child did well. 
• Help serve dinner at local soup kitchen.
• Have your class make and distribute kindness bookmarks.
• Ask student to pick someone who has done something nice for them and write a thank you note.
• Have a food or clothing drive for a shelter.
• Hold a teddy bear drive and donate the bears to police or fire departments for traumatized children or a shelter.
• Make and decorate holiday/Christmas cookies and deliver them to a children's home or family shelter.
• With your class, organize an ice cream social, a tea, or a bingo event for residents at an assisted living center.
• Bake sweets or assemble root beer floats for the residents, and stay and visit.
• Adopt another student who needs a friend, checking in periodically to see how things are going.
• Write notes of appreciation and take flowers or goodies for you teacher, custodian, principal, or secretary.)
• Write a note to your mother/father and tell them why they are special.
• Send a letter to some former teachers, letting them know the difference they made in your life.
• Send a gift anonymously to a friend.
• Surprise someone in your house with breakfast in bed.                                                                                                               
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• Have each member of your family choose someone outside the family who has made a positive difference in his or her life.
• Write short thank-you notes, and mail the letters together. 
• Bake cookies together, and take them to a neighbor who needs a lift.
• Pitch in and clean up the yard of a neighbor who is ill, has had surgery recently, or has had a family emergency.
• Volunteer with your children to help at a soup kitchen.
• Leave a bouquet of flowers on a neighbor.s front step anonymously.
• Start a Family Kindness Journal, about kind acts both given and received, and create a family scrapbook.
• Clean up litter on a stretch of road in your neighborhood.
• Surprise your wife/husband with breakfast in bed.
• Include a note or joke in your child or spouse.s lunchbox.
• Call your mom just to say, .Hello..
• When you.re out of town, have your friend drop off a home-cooked meal for your wife.
• Collect inspiring quotes and write them in a nice journal to give them as gifts to your family members.
• Place a flower in your neighbors. newspaper without them seeing it. Arrange a conference call for the entire family.

Anonymous Kindness

• Leave a bouquet of flowers on a neighbor.s front step.
• Slip a $20 (or whatever you can afford) bill to a person who you know is having financial difficulty.
• Select some people in your life who you feel need a special lift and send them a gift: flowers, tickets to a special event, or a gift certificate.
• Leave enough money in the vending machine for the next person to get a free treat.
• Purchase a copy of a book about kindness, read it, and pass it on.
• Pay the toll for the person behind you.
• Write something nice about your waitperson on the back of the bill.
• Send a gift anonymously to a friend.
• Get to work before others and leave a piece of candy, brownie, fruit, flower, etc. at every desk attached with a Smile card.
• Place a flower in your neighbor.s newspaper.
• Do an art project and leave it around town.