A reader emailed me the following testimony that I thought would be an encouragement to some of you:
We had the pleasure recently of giving a sizable gift anonymously to an acquaintance who is in great need, and it reminded me once again of how fun it is to give this way. We recruited an out-of-town aunt of a friend to hand-deliver an envelope for us. She didn’t know the exact contents of the envelope, but just that it was meant to bless the recipient.
Afterward, our emissary even thanked us for the chance to be part of the process. In addition, yesterday the acquaintance who received the gift chatted with me for a minute and told me about the gift, calling it “the biggest blessing of my life”. It was so fun to be able to rejoice with her, all while she had no clue the gift originated with us!
After several years of doing this type of thing, my husband and I agree that it’s our favorite way to give personal charitable gifts. The fact that we are anonymous means that our relationship with the receiver is not affected at all; there is no sense of obligation or superiority whatsoever!
We also reduce the chance of being approached for an additional gift in the event that the receiver would do such a thing. We truly can say that it has been a pleasure, and that we feel like we are God’s instruments rather than the ones really giving the gift!
I just did this. The Holy Spirit put this on my heart and I felt compelled – but in a good way. I mailed quite a bit of cash (No return address) to someone who is just a very good person and deserves to have something good happen unexpectedly. She posted on Facebook that her heart felt so full and so warm. Mine feels that way too. I am going to continue to do this anonymously to others. It is the greatest feeling to help people in this way. Even people I have never met are going to get surprises.
Something very similar happened to my family when I was a child, around 7 years old, and I have never forgotten. My dad was (and is still) self-employed and it had been a VERY lean year. On Christmas morning we were opening stockings (my parents were very creative that year to still make Christmas special for us) and there was a knock at the door. My dad answered and a lady we’d never seen before gave him a bag and a card. The bag had individual presents for each of the three kids and $50 cash for my parents. She just said it was a gift from a friend and said “Merry Christmas.” I truly believe that we were visited by an angel sent from God as an encouragement to my parents during a challenging time and over 25 years later it stands out in my memory.
I was able to do something similar for a friend when I was in college, and a few years ago someone dropped off a brand new guitar worth about $2500 to a pastor at our church to give to my husband who leads worship at the high school youth group. We have no idea to this day who it was, and that generous gift was such a blessing to our family and an encouragement to my husband in his ministry.
We’re surrounded by generosity and the biggest blessing for us has been in the giving.
I work as a volunteer with http://www.GivingAnon.org and we have so much fun helping people give anonymously to one another. The stories that come back from people who have received gifts are a constant motivation for helping facilitate this type of giving.
We find that when someone doesn’t know who gave them the gift they are nicer to everyone as everyone becomes the suspect anonymous giver. It’s building community and connecting people through generosity.
Thank you for your post and it was great reading through all the comments of so many excited about loving others in this way.
Someone did this for us a few years back after my husband lost his job. It was an amazing blessing, to know that someone was willing to sacrifice for us. It showed us God’s love in a very meaningful way. I’m still not sure who our beneficiary was, but I have my suspicions! I hope to be able to bless someone else that same way soon.
Love this! It is so much fun to bless someone else. A simple unsigned card of encouragement or a gift card for lunch or help when they may need it. Talk about feeling like a cheerful giver!!
I think one of the neatest aspects of couponing and frugal living is the greater ability it provides us to give. We are a single income family, yet as my stockpile grows with free school supplies, medicines, groceries, etc… I am able to bless those in need around me much more than I could have without being a frugal shopper. That is the heart of my blog and life; frugal living for the grace of giving (2 Corinthians 8:7).
Love this post. When I was a child, I took piano lessons for one year and then my family could no longer pay for them. I saw the piano teacher and she said she looked forward to seeing me again at lessons. Trying not to cry, I told her I wouldn’t be able to take lessons anymore. She had a huge smile and said, yes, you are, someone has paid for your lessons.
I was OVER the moon. We did later learn that it was our pastor’s wife so I guess it didn’t stay anyonymous 🙂 but I can’t begin to tell you what that meant to a little girl who 30 years later still loves to play piano. I ended up playing for church as I got older (my parents were able to pay in subsequent years) and it was such a beautiful reminder of how God blesses us so we can bless others.
Bless you for reminding me to get out there and look for opportunities to give!
My daughter was on the receiving end of this type of thing last year. DD and SIL fostered a sibling set of 4. A group of retired teachers get together every Christmas and give each other gifts. Last year they decided to give the $ normally spent on those gifts to my daughter. They tried to be secretative,but DD found out. It made all of us cry and we love those dear friends even more. It was a true blessing.
As a teacher and fellow couponer, I take note of any families in my school that either have lots of kids (especially if they’re a single parent) or are just having a difficult time making ends meet. Every early-December, I choose about 5 families, some of whom I’ve never met, and leave a wrapped zerox-sized box (big bow on top) packed to the brim with couponing items. I only leave drugstore-type items, not food. I leave a small note on top saying “For the _____ family. You are always being thought of!” As a teacher, I have access to their addresses, so I leave it on their doorstep very early in the morning. I chose early December so they will realize early enough that now they have extra money to have a nicer Christmas/holiday for their loved ones.
Last year, one of the receivers was actually in my class. The boy was being raised with his 3 brothers by his single mom. He didn’t know it was me, but couldn’t stop talking about “the Family’s Angel.” He told me his mom couldn’t stop crying. That’s the only feedback I’ve ever heard from this, but it made my whole season and I can’t wait to do more this year.
I’m sobbing onto my keyboard. What a wonderful idea! Thank you for sharing.
Me too. Amazing…..what a true teacher you are. Your students and the families you bless are very lucky to have you.
I’ve been on the receiving end of AMAZINGLY generous gifts due to our situation.
I cannot begin to express what an amazing blessing it’s been.
We have been on the giving and receiving end of this type of gift. My husband lost his job the week of Thanksgiving 2009. The next week, one of our elders from our church called and said that someone had given us $1000.00. That check bought Christmas for our 10 kids, plus paid bills and bought groceries.
The fun part was, we tithed off of that gift, and the same elder used it to pay a family’s electric bill that was having much harder times than we were!
We were also able to gift a single mother in our church with some cash to help out with the holidays. I just put it in a Christmas card, and left it with our church secretary, with the stipulation that she not say who left it.
I have an idea who gifted us, but would never ask. We just want to continue to bless others the same way!
It is so fun to imagine the look on their faces when they get the gift!!
This is such a wonderfully inspirational post. I just got an email last week with a related scripture: Give secretly; pray secretly; fast secretly; “… and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6:1–18). It is so pertinent-I had to share. Thank you so much for posting this-what an encouragement!
We were able to do this for dear family with very limited financial means. Being able to supply this family with this gift was such a blessing, and we feel so humbled that God allowed us to be the people that could bless this family in this way. We do worry a bit that the family may find out it was us, and that this could put a strain on our relationship, but we did our best to cover our tracks (including using an intermediary, and putting the warranty for the item in the recipients’ name), and after much prayer we chose to go forward with it and trust God with the outcome. What a joy it is to give anonymously!
We got to do this last year at Christmas and it was a huge blessing becasue on Christmas morning we learned the whole story. My grandma had come into money and did not need it so she sent it to my mom. She knew that we were having a hard time and passed the blessing to us. Then my dear friend came over and I was urged by God to pass it on to her. Come to find out it bought the only gifts her kids got that year. It went through many hands to get to the person it was ment for and touched each of us in a different way.
When we know a family is in need, we like to buy some groceries, leave them on their porch, ring the bell and run. We get to bless someone and ring a doorbell & run! Win for everyone 😉
What an awesome post!!!! We have been blessed on both ends of this – to give, and to receive. We were givers before receivers, and I think we just thought we would always be the givers. When we reached a point in our life when we received an incredibly generous anonymous gift, it was a blessing – and humbling too. I think God needed to gently remind us that is blessed to give AND to receive! And I agree – anonymous is the way to go. Thank you so much for sharing this!
We too have been on both sides of this–giving and receiving. And I have to say that I agree–it’s a lot more fun to be on the giving end and a lot more humbling to be on the receiving end! But both are a blessing. And being anonymous is so much better: “Don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing,” eh? God is good!
My husband and I received an anonymous gift when I was pregnant with our first child. We were heading out to church one morning and we found the infant car seat we had registered for sitting in a box outside our front door. There was a note taped to it that said “God Bless.” It was such a surprise, and we felt so blessed by whoever bought it for us.
My husband and I have been wanting to do something like this for someone we are close to. We’re afraid that they will come to us and ask us specifically if it was us. We don’t want to lie if confronted but we really want it to be anonymous. How can we do this? It’s not a matter of knowing how to get the money to them, it’s a matter of them figuring it out.
I’ve had this happen to me, and my reply was something like, “I WISH I had the money to bless you like that!” It’s true – I do wish it. They don’t need to know that I did, in fact, do it! 🙂
Almost ten years ago my mother died very suddenly in a horrible accident. My sister, her husband, and their five children all had to travel from out of town for the funeral. The stress of her husband being off work for so many days (over a week) was very wearing on my sister and her family. I wanted her to be able to mourn our mother without additional stress but I didn’t want her to feel indebted to me. I gave the funderal director an envelope with cash in the approximate amount of a week of my brother in law’s wages to give to my sister. I told the funeral director to tell her that someone who loves her left it for her. My sister tried and tried to figure out who left that money for her. She felt so loved and blessed. AND I felt loved and blessed, too.
Wow! That is wonderful.
Wow. That just brought tears to my eyes.
My mother always told me that to give a gift was a blessing (mitzva), but to give anonymously was a double blessing.
Before I was married and on a stricter budget, I would often pay for the food/drink of people behind me in a drive-thru line. It was so fun! I would just tell the worker in the window that I wanted to pay for their order in addition to mine. I ALWAYS drove off with a smile on my face, and the worker in the window was usually smiling, too. =)
That’s awesome! We had someone do that to us at a sit down restaurant once. Made our entire week!
Also fun to do that at toll booths.
Ooh, that’s a good one and would fit in my current budget.
Thank you for this post! My family was on the receiving end of several anonymous gifts when I was growing up, and they made such a difference in our lives, both spiritually and financially.
We all can do so much good in the world!
What a beautiful story. I’m so inspired by it that I will start doing the same thing. Thank you!
We’ve done this kind of thing, especially at Christmas. I’ve “snuck” a list from one of the family members and sworn them to secrecy. We buy the items on the list and drop them off on a doorstep, ring the bell and run away. It is a wonderful feeling to give. And like this author mentioned, doing so anonymously doesn’t affect your relationship with the people in the future. There is great joy in giving!
Please browse this site:
http://www.secretagentl.com/
Random Acts of Anonymous Kindness!!!
Love it! Have you heard of this site? http://www.givinganon.org/
I also love anonymous giving. I started a ministry to facilitate anonymous giving called Invisible Hands – a Barnabas Ministry. I also have a small food pantry and will do drive by grocery drops to church friends I know need some encouragement.
I love this! What a great way to bless others!
We decided to tithe by just putting cash in the offering about a year ago when we decided it was time to find a new church. Each week we went a different place and blessed them with cash. Now that we are settled in a church, we still tithe in cash. I love the thought of someone opening that envelope each month with hundreds in it, depending on on income that month. We don’t itemize, so it works for us!
Thanks for this reminder of the joy of anonymous giving, especially in our age of sharing-every-little-thing-I’m-doing social media. I think the greatest good of anonymous giving is that directs the praise toward God, not the giver.
I totally agree with everything you just said! 🙂
Our daughter is severely disabled and in a wheelchair. At least 3 or 4 times in the last year or two our meal has been taken care of at restaurants anonymously. I can only guess that it is our daughter that brings attention to us. Once someone even left us a $50 gift card to the restaurant that was given to us by our server. We are not really in need so to speak, but it really means so much when someone does it. Really it has shown me the goodness in people. One of the times, they left a “random act of kindness” business card from a church about an hour from us. I made it a point to write the pastor a thank you note for his congregation being such great witnesses through this ministry. I really wanted him to know that they were making a difference in people’s lives. We intend to pay it forward if we see a great opportunity.
My hubs and I have chosen a family every year to do Christmas for and with already having one in mind last year about this time of year, I was able to get good deals on things I would never have been able to afford had I not been watching for sales. Oct./Nov. is a great time to start watching for toy sales. The last few years Toys R Us has had awesome door buster sales for the three weekends leading up to Black Friday. Other than Black Friday itself, those deals are better than any I’ve seen after it.
http://www.givinganon.org is a great website to use to give. You can even leave a note, scripture, message, etc. We’ve used it once and it was such a blessing to receive a note back knowing that the person had no idea who we were.
I love doing things like this. I have never been able to give a sizable gift, but Lord willing one day I can. It makes my heart feel good that I have helped someone in need. I have always wondered though, where do you draw the line as far as your own family’s needs? We are not that well off, and sometimes I have helped someone else, and really didn’t have extra to give. Thoughts?
Melissa
I heard this once and have never forgotten it. It was an elderly lady, full of wisdom. She said, “Don’t you worry about giving God too much. Don’t worry. He’s honest. If you give Him too much, He’ll give it right back!”
What you are doing when you are led to give is giving to God… and it’s true. He’s honest and will give it back to you if it’s too much!
Carla,
Thanks for that little tidbit of truth! It really helped me settle down about giving when I don’t really have the extra, so onward I go to help and give.
I was on the receiving end of an anonymous gift once. It wasn’t as elaborate as the guest post writer discussed, but the gift was a blessing to my husband and I regardless. It was a week before Christmas in 2007, I was due to give birth any day, and we were finishing our shopping for presents. We stopped at a restaurant to eat and when it came time to pay the bill, our waitress told us it had been taken care of by someone who was still in the restaurant. We had no idea who did it but that simple act of kindness and generosity has stayed with me all these years since. You just never know how that simple act (big or small) can make the receiver feel!
This one got me! My eyes are full as I type. It was probably just someone who noticed how pregnant you were & that your family could use a little help right before your child’s birth (whose couldn’t at those times?). So sweet!
How exciting to hear your story.
Another way of looking at being anonymous is other don’t know that you are the one giving and don’t come to ask to help others.If you are known as the couple who gives then it not as rewarding and could become a burden .
I agree, that is the best way to bless someone!
Awesome!!!!!!
I LOVE this!! My hubby and I love to do the same. I love giving without a sense of what we think they should with the money or entitlement. I personally think sometimes God lays on our hearts to tithe this way as well!
Awesome.
This is whar keeps me frugal when I feel weary of couponing and yard saling. What a huge blessing it is to save money in some areas to be able to have the blessing of giving to others in need! Thanks for sharing!!
I’ve had the privilege of doing this before and it is the biggest blessing! I think I ended up being more blessed than the family was. : )
This is awesome. We’re almost to the point where we could do this and have been wishing we could find a way to make a house payment, pay an electric bill, or something like that without them knowing where it came from. We haven’t figured out how to do it yet… especially so they don’t double pay. Hopefully soon we can stary carrying out some of our plans.
It’s a wonderful feeling to bless someone else when only you & God know about it. When we’ve given this way, we ave felt the blessing.
We don’t have enough money to do this on the scale that you did but we have done this with gas gift cards, household products, etc for those that need it. We also do anon gift giving around Christmas time as it’s a family tradition. We pick people like someone my hubby works with, or the parish secretary, an elderly person that lives alone, teacher, etc…it’s tons of fun!
That sounds like a fabulous way to do this type of thing!
I have always wanted to be able to do this! Lord willing one day!
I love this.