In Brief

By David E.Thigpen

GIVING STOCK Thinking about charitable giving this holiday season? Instead of donating that old coat, consider donating stocks. Donations of stock can beat coats or even cash. Charities can sell the shares of donated stocks tax-free, even if the price has doubled over your cost. And donors get breaks too: no capital-gains tax, and a write-off for the market value of the stock.

HELPING-HAND ORG. Sure you know how to trade stocks online, but when you want to give, where do you go? The hungersite.org makes free-food donations to the U.N. World Food Project every time it receives a hit. All you have to do is look at the ads. SECONDHARVEST.ORG distributes food to the needy in over 100 U.S. cities. And e-shopping sites like IGIVE.com allow shoppers to designate a portion of the purchase price to the nonprofit of their choice.

HIGH YIELD, HIGH GROUND The mutual-fund group Pax World has opened the first widely available High Yield Fund that invests only in socially responsible companies. That excludes firms that profit from firearms or tobacco. Although junk-bond funds in general have had a tough year, white-hat investing is gaining fans. Nationwide, dollars going into all socially responsible funds have risen 82% since 1997, to $2 trillion.

--By David E.Thigpen