Make America Generous Again: 43% Plan to Do More Good Deeds in the Final Weeks of 2024

We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

According to a recent survey from Talker Research (commissioned by Avocado Green Mattress), 43% of Americans say they want to finish off 2024 by doing more good deeds to make up for a lack of doing so previously in the year. This doesn’t surprise me. It feels like there’s just a more positive feeling in the air lately, like most people are breathing a big sigh of relief. AmeriCorps even announced last week that the country is “witnessing a remarkable resurgence in volunteering.”

What might surprise you is that of the people surveyed, Gen Z and millennials were more inclined to volunteer and donate than Gen X and Baby Boomers, proving there is hope for the future. Fifty-nine percent of the younger generations’ members were ready to step up and help others compared to 37% of the older ones’. Regardless of age, people cited reasons like the satisfaction of giving, sense of purpose, and a desire to make the world a better place as reasons why they’re ready to give more during the remainder of 2024.  

With all of that in mind, I decided to share some of the good deeds I’ve read about this week. Hopefully, these stories will make you smile this Thanksgiving Day and maybe even inspire you. 

In New Orleans, first responders participated in their annual “Battle of the Badges” yesterday. It’s a competition between the New Orleans Police Department, New Orleans EMS, and the New Orleans Fired Department to see who can donate the most blood. This year, the NOPD won with 38 units donated.  

A Cincinnati man named Jay Owens wanted to honor his late wife, Jodi, who died of breast cancer earlier this year, so he decided to collect blankets for his local hospital’s annual blanket drive. Owens said his family basically spent two months at Christ Hospital and wanted to do something to give back. He started with a goal of 200 blankets, but he ended up with 700, the largest number ever donated to the hospital. 

It’s tough to think of dogs spending the holidays in shelters when they could be snuggled up in someone’s home, but a woman in Henderson, Nevada, made sure that the pups at the City of Henderson Animal Care and Control received a special meal this week. Jen Freet is a dog park owner and the president of the nonprofit Barx Parx Foundation, and every year since 2018, she’s created a “Pupsgiving” for the shelter animals. She puts together a dog-friendly meal of traditional Thanksgiving menu items like turkey, chicken, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin so the homeless pups can enjoy a special treat.  

A farmer in Illinois wanted to help the farmers and ranchers impacted by Hurricane Helene, so he called his neighbor who runs the Midwest Food Bank in McLean County, Illinois. They worked together to coordinate the transportation of over 600 round bales of alfalfa hay to North Carolina. a trip that’s about 700 miles. Midwest Food Bank CEO Eric Hodel said, “We quickly learned that this donation was going to be a huge blessing to those farmers and ranchers who have lost all of their hay and forage for the year.” 

Many college students may not have the the right clothing for a career fair or job interview — or the money to buy it — so Montana Technological University maintains a “career closet” to help solve that problem for its students. Recently, it found it was running low on many items, but a call from Jerry Rodriguez, the uniform manager at Yellowstone National Park, remedied the situation. The park ended up donating over 100 brand new suits. 

Some people spend their retirement traveling or relaxing, but Curt and Ann Neal of McKinney, Texas, have spent their golden years responding to natural disasters. The couple volunteers with a Southern Baptist group called Texans on Mission. They’ve been helping people in Tennessee recover from Hurricane Helene, but the Neals say they’ve been to about a dozen disaster sites this year and 60 since they started volunteering. They’ve been everywhere from Hawaii to Cuba to Poland and Israel. 

And last but not least, the Athens Volunteer Fire Department in Athens, West Virginia, was planning to sell an old reserve fire truck to help pay for a new one, but they heard of a fire department in Tennessee in need. The Hampton Valley Forge Fire Department was hit by Hurricane Helene, and its truck was suffering mechanical failures that prevented them from properly helping local citizens. The firefighters in Athens knew it would be put to good use, so they opted to donate the truck to the Hampton Valley Forge FD instead.