Kids Birthday Party Gifts: A New Approach

Watching your child’s eyes glaze over as they contemplate a huge pile of 15 or 20 presents from their party guests. Feeling a tad embarrassed as they rip through the wrappings at warp speed with hardly an acknowledgement for each gift. And later, putting away or giving away the unused and unwanted toys that didn’t make the cut with your child. This is the part of the birthday celebration where there is too much “I” in birthday.

And in these tough economic times, this scenario is just plain silly. It’s a waste of people’s money on unwanted gifts, and too much expensive wrapping paper. The lesson of appreciating what people do for you is lost.

The obvious way to get the most bang out of the birthday gift dollars is to pool those dollars to purchase one or two truly meaningful gifts, something the birthday child really wants or needs. Unfortunately, this is usually too much of a pain for people to actually do it. Hassling people to get their checks is uncomfortable and you never know when they’re embarrassed by the amount they can afford to contribute.

There are now two services available on the web to make this process much easier for kids birthday parties.

For a 15% fee, ECHOage will send your birthday invitation electronically and provide for your party guests’ parents to contribute to your child’s gift pool electronically with credit card payments. Then, half of the pool funds are directed to a child centered charity you choose from the ECHOage list, and the other half returned to you for the purchase of a nice gift(s) with the remaining funds. A GREAT idea!

many people are not going to want their child's birthday gift to be, in part, a charitable donation. Your child may be too young to be getting the very valuable lesson in giving that the charitable contribution entails, or (2) you may not be in a financial position to contribute. The giving lesson may also work better with your child for a charitable cause that doesn’t involve children. For example, an animal lover/Animal Planet junkie might accept the ‘lesson’ better if the charity involved animals. And by definition, a web list of charities taking online payments precludes any local organizations that would be just as deserving and perhaps more meaningful to your child. If the child has, unfortunately, been exposed to illness in the family or of a friend, perhaps a medical based group would be best. In sum, the possibilities are endless, and your choices shouldn’t be limited.

With these limitations in mind, Birthday Party Games Lady has created a birthday party gift pool service for pooling your childs’ birthday gift funds, at a cost that only covers the charges from the credit card processors for taking online credit card payments (5%). All funds collected are sent back to you (less the 5%), for use as you see fit. This gives the parent unlimited choice if they want to contribute some or all to a deserving organization and teach the valuable giving lesson. And all or the remaining portion can be used to purchase that “good gift(s)”. When setting up the gift pool, the parent can choose to make all contributions from their party guests anonymous, such that the birthday child’s family doesn’t know who gives what and eliminates any pressure on your guests. And instead of an email invitation, which deprives the kids of the thrill of getting something in the mail (which they rarely get), there’s a printable insert to slip in your paper invitation explaining how to contribute to the pool.

They’re convenient for your guests, allow you to teach an important lesson in giving, eliminate waste and give the special birthday child what they really want. It’s a Win-Win, and those are as hard to find as the perfect birthday party gift.