Need a little help finding the right gifts this year? Whether you’re shopping for your family, friends, colleagues, or all of the above, you can spread extra positivity by choosing gifts that make a difference. This year, more than ever, it’s important to be mindful of how we can bring cheer and happiness to others through our gift choices. For example, when you shop at small businesses, you’re giving local communities the opportunity to thrive. And, when you buy from female-owned and black-owned businesses, you’re empowering businesses that need your support the most. We all love giving (and receiving) gifts, right?! Why not spend your hard-earned dollars to help make a social impact while spreading gift-giving joy.
We’ve created a socially-conscious holiday gift guide that aims to bring you unique gifts while also supporting a diverse economy.
Self-Care
Jewelry: The Mischief Collective
A lifestyle brand for creative souls that translates a passion for art and adventure into wearable works of art, in hopes of inspiring that same passion in the wearer. Their mission is to make the world a more beautiful and harmonious place through creative change-making.
Yoga mats: Yogo
The objects in your life should be simple, beautiful, long-lasting, and made from the finest materials Earth has to offer. Each of YOGO’s products is thoughtfully created for performance and design while also be socioeconomically conscious. YOGO believes you should never have to compromise quality and beauty while making the most responsible choices! YOGO has planted over 28,100 ‘forest garden’ trees through their “one for one” Food Trees program. With every yoga mat you purchase, YOGO provides a food-bearing tree plus restorative agroforestry training for a low-income family in Africa. This provides multiple benefits: income, agriculture training, food, and education.
Virtual Yoga Classes: Bluebird Sky Yoga
Founded to bring yoga, art, joy, and a community space to their neighborhood, Bluebird Sky Yoga offers a diverse range of yoga classes with experienced yoga teachers. With over 15 different styles offered, they inspire students to grow on and off the mat, build a sustainable yoga practice, connect with their community, and live more mindfully. Whether your yogi friends and family are looking to study a long-rooted tradition such as Ashtanga, a flowing practice like Vinyasa, an upbeat practice like Rocket, a restorative practice such as meditation, or something else entirely, they will find classes and a community they love. Bluebird Sky Yoga offers live, virtual classes for people to come together, no matter where they are located.
Yoga mat spray: Mind Over Lather
Mind Over Lather began as a passion for yoga and continues to grow from that space. Owner Jen Coleman is a mother, a wife, a yoga instructor, and a chemical engineer by trade. Through the magic of chemistry and all-natural essential oils, Jen creates unique combinations that you won’t find anywhere else. Whether you are using their vegan soaps in the morning, or the mat spray during your evening sun salutations, you can find a little extra peace of mind in your daily routine.
Full-Spectrum CBD: Blooming Botanicals, Turmeric CBD Tincture
Blooming Botanical’s best-selling tincture, the Turmeric blend, combines the power of full-spectrum CBD with CO2 extracted turmeric and black pepper to create a robust anti-inflammatory blend. Turmeric is a powerful root that has been shown to help lower inflammation, reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and has great benefits for soothing arthritis. Adding black pepper increases the bioavailability of turmeric by 2000%, making this a supercharged turmeric elixir.
Life-style Products Subscription Box: BOM
The BOM Box is a subscription box filled with Black-Owned products to fit your every day lifestyle. By purchasing from BOM, you’re investing directly into Black businesses and getting quality products from Black makers to add to your everyday routine. What started as pop-up market to gather Black-Owned brands in New York has grown into a shopping destination for people to interact and shop with Black business owners. As the descendant of small business owners, founder Michelle Dalzon envisions a world where Black brands thrive.
For the Home
Plants: Stay Rooted
Paul & Jaz Anderson, two individuals with a passion for houseplants, truly believe in the power of being a plant parent and the ability to watch something grow right before your eyes. Stay Rooted Shop is an online shop, rooted in Lansing, Michigan, that offers houseplants and handmade plant accessories. They want to introduce people to plant parenthood and help guide them along the way.
Candles: IndiCO Candles
IndiCO Candles offers 100% soy wax candles, hand poured in Colorado. The recipes are carefully crafted to ensure they burn evenly and smell amazing. The hope of IndiCo (“Indi”- for individualism or independence & “CO” for Colorado), Candles is to bring some joy, comfort, and good smells into your home.
Beeswax Wraps: Feel Good Farms
Eco-friendly products you can feel good about! Reusable beeswax food wraps provide an eco-friendly, alternative to plastic that you can feel good about. Made from organic beeswax, sustainably produced tree resin, and organic jojoba oil, these wraps will help you reduce the plastic waste that plagues our planet. Plus, Feel Good Farms donates 3% of their total sales to The Honey Bee Conservancy.
Pottery: Hanselmann Pottery
Hanselmann Pottery is a legacy of craftsmanship, tradition, and design. Pieces are thrown on a wheel, fired twice, waxed and glazed, then fired again in a gas-fired kiln. Their palette of glazes have been collected and tested for years, and are continually tested and improved in order to maintain freshness and sustainability of their collection for years to come.
Handmade Soaps: Mekumibath
Based on self-care practices, Mekümi products promote relaxation and total body harmony. With natural, organic solutions for common health concerns, products are created to aide with alleviating depression, anxiety, and the overall mental health, and they smell divine too!
Art: Amanda Thomas Arts
Amanda Thomas Arts includes Realist and Surrealist paintings and drawings inspired by the beautiful places the artist has traveled/lived, spirituality, philosophy and emotional evolution of Self. Practicing and alchemizing new ways to play and explore on whatever surface feels inspiring, Amanda’s art takes many forms by mixing mediums like oils, watercolor, acrylic and charcoal together. Through Amanda’s craft and way of living, she is practicing the embodiment of “Heaven on Earth”.
Coffee: Blue Owl Coffee
United as a family and anchored in the cause of bringing lasting hope to the world around us, Blue Owl Coffee is working to build a strong community by supporting others who need it most. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they created a way for local businesses to give back to their community through providing free coffee cards to those who have worked towards a better and safe Lansing. Not to mention, their coffees, teas, and treats are amazing!
For Pets
Treats: Rikers Dog Treats
These all-natural pup treats are wheat-free, soy-free, and corn-free, and are handmade in small batches with 7 ingredients or less. Their mission is to provide a healthy and affordable treat that every owner can be happy to give their furry family members. Owners Leslie & Adam Cowell founded the business after Leslie’s loyal four-legged family member, Riker. In his elder years, Riker’s stomach could not tolerate the impurities found in many food and treat brands. Leslie switched his food to a homemade, all-natural diet, which help so much, it extended their time together. Fast forward a few years and Riker’s Dog Treats was born!
Pet CBD: Blooming Botanicals, Pet CBD
With high-quality, full-spectrum CBD oil and salmon oil, your pets will love this pet CBD! Whether you’re looking for joint support, calming effects, or just overall wellness for your pet as they age, Blooming Botanicals’ CBD for pets is a great addition to their daily regimen. Just drop 1ml onto their food each day to get them on the road to better health.
Sustainable Dog Products: Cycle Dog
Cycle Dog’s goal is to create the world’s best dog products with a focus on the environment and to raise awareness of the millions of bike tubes thrown into landfills every year. Hand sewn products are proudly made and tested in Portland, Oregon. Since 2009, Cycle Dog has reclaimed hundreds of thousands of discarded inner tube rubber targeted for landfills.
Bowties: Bark Tie Affair
As a small, home-based business in Rochester, NY, Bark Tie Affair creates handmade bows, bow ties, and formal collars for your furry friends. They believe that every pet should be able to have their own style that expresses their unique pawsonality. Before any of their products are shipped out, they receive a seal of approval from not only the owner herself, but more importantly, from her in-house canine quality control expert, Lexi.
Gifts That Give Back
Ten Thousand Villages is more than a store. They’re a global maker‑to‑market movement that breaks the cycle of generational poverty and ignites social change. They are a way for you to shop with intention for ethically-sourced wares—and to share in the joy of empowering makers in ten thousand villages.
4ocean was founded on the belief that businesses can be a force for good. Their principle belief is that individual people’s actions, collectively, have the power to change the world. They are funded primarily by the sales of their products and each product sold helps remove one pound of trash from the ocean, rivers or coastlines. Since 2017, they have recovered 11,328,449 pounds of trash.
FEED is an impact driven lifestyle brand with an enduring principle at the heart of what they we do—that people’s choices of what to buy and wear have the power to change the world. They offer meaningful ways for you to make a difference, from the bags you carry, to the places you gather, to the meals you share. With every product they sell, they provide school meals to the most vulnerable communities across the globe, through on-the-ground partners.
Gifts that Pay it Forward
Looking for a gift for your hardest to buy for friends and family? Consider making a donation in their name to a philanthropic organization.
What if everyone started giving back to the natural world in ways that restore the global forest? How fast could we make a difference in the face of climate change? Tree Sisters’ mission is to rapidly accelerate tropical reforestation by inspiring and channeling women’s Nature-based feminine leadership into local and global action. They focus on the creation of resources and experiences that empower women to step into leadership, in support of humanity’s identity shift from a consumer species to a restorer species.
Backline’s core mission has always been to meet the mental health needs of the music community prior to the point of crisis. Through their online resources, case management program, and support group offerings, music industry professionals can seek help in a variety of ways; anonymously online, by scheduling a personal phone call and assessment with their team, and by attending one of their virtual support groups.
Community Carbon Trees plants biodiverse, tropical forests to grow our global community. They connect you with the men and women of Costa Rica who are paid to plant trees. Their mission: Combat climate change, create resilient community economics, grow biodiverse habitats. They go above and beyond to ensure the establishment and growth of tropical trees. Work crews are trained in transportation, planting, and maintenance. They supervise trees for 4 years and collaborate with farmers for an additional 21 years. Empowering the local community in environmental and social transformation stops deforestation and keeps the trees we plant now to stand for future generations.
As the United States moves away from the criminalization of cannabis, giving rise to a major new industry, there remains the fundamental injustice inflicted upon those who have suffered criminal convictions and the consequences of those convictions. Through intervention, advocacy, and awareness, campaigns the Last Prisoner Project work to redress the past and continuing harms of these unjust laws and policies.
Over a billion people live without electricity. Access to clean, affordable light and energy is critical to improving health, education and prosperity. Unite to Light is dedicated to providing low-cost solar light and power to those without electricity across the globe. Every $10 donated means the difference between darkness and opportunity for a student, a midwife or a victim of a disaster.