Shopping for a cause

Looking for a way to double your giving this holiday season, with presents that present their profits to charity? You can check our Special Needs Gift Giving index for online stores that raise funds and awareness, but here are three more ideas if you're looking for something a little different:

• Gifts: How Children with Down Syndrome Have Enriched Our Lives (see photo at right) offers a collection of essays by parents of children with Down syndrome; proceeds go to distribute the book to expectant parents who have received a Down syndrome diagnosis and may only be hearing the negative aspects of that.
• The Hollywood Cookbook: Cooking for Causes presents recipes from celebrities and celebrity chefs to benefit their own favorite causes, many of them children's charities.
• And for the relative who has everything, how about a motorcycle customized for the rock groups Def Leppard and Journey? VH1 is auctioning it off through November 22 to benefit Cure Autism Now. As of this writing, the bidding is up to $50,000, so it better be for someone you really like.

_{Cover image from giftsds.segullah.org/.}