Good advice from Ms. Cheap in today’s Tennessean:

Every day in this lousy economy, I hear or read about non-profits struggling to survive.

I was out at St. Luke’s Community House in West Nashville earlier this month and learned that they’re seeing the need for their food and services surging out of control. At the same time, donations from businesses and individuals are on a downward spiral because everybody out there is hurting – or at least feeling wobbly about their future financial well being.

But that doesn’t mean we’re totally powerless to help the agencies and organizations that help the less fortunate in our community – like St. Luke’s, Second Harvest Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity, Bethlehem Center and countless others.

So today, I’m offering up some ways we can help without having to dig too deep in our own skinny pockets.

• First, take advantage of your company’s charitable match program, if your company has one. If you’re not sure, double check with human resources because this is a wonderful way to stretch your dollars and literally double your support of your chosen non-profits.

• Get on board with your grocery’s community give-back programs. Kroger, Harris-Teeter and Publix, along with lots of other stores, invite you to sign up for programs where a portion of your spending is funneled back to schools or other nonprofits in your local community. I plan a more detailed story on this later, but in the meantime, ask your grocery how its program works.

• Volunteer. All this costs is time, and most of the agencies and organizations are hungry for volunteers to do everything from providing direct services for their clients to doing office work and menial tasks. They love it even more if you have special skills you can share.

• Organize a food drive at work, in your neighborhood, at your club or church or wherever you can. It’s so easy to do, and the food demands these days are staggering with so many families who are trying desperately to make ends meet. Second Harvest officials can help you set up a drive that’s easy to pull off.

• If you have a special occasion coming up like a birthday, wedding anniversary, retirement or whatever, consider asking your guests to donate money or in-kind goods to charity instead of bringing gifts to you. You could ask people to bring dog food or supplies for the Humane Association, like Patti Jones did for husband Michael’s 60th birthday party. Or you could have your guests bring books for a preschool or food for the food bank. There are endless possibilities, and you can tailor the idea to benefit any charity you’re interested in supporting.

• I know this may sound grim, but if you are preplanning your funeral (which I think is a good idea), consider asking that memorial donations be made to your favorite charity or charities.

• If you have a garden and you over-produce this summer, don’t even think about letting your extra veggies go to waste. Find a way to get them to a food bank or to families in need. www.secondharvestnashville.org/?q=node/5.

• Think about putting on your own fundraiser – and be creative about it. It could be the kiddos doing a lemonade stand, or you selling your handmade jewelry or crafts, or organizing a workplace bake sale and donating the proceeds to your charity.

• Join the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee’s $1,000 Twitter giveaway. You can follow them on Twitter, submit your favorite nonprofit and try to get the most Tweets. For more info, go to www.cfmt.org/twittergiveaway.

Our neighborhood has an annual designated day for yard sales, and our family thought we might participate this year. I decided to broaden our sale and make it a hybrid fundraiser where, in addition to selling some of our things for our own gain, we would mark lots of items “SL” for St. Luke’s and give them those proceeds.

I’m asking friends and neighbors who have random things to get rid of to donate them and mark their items for the “SL” portion of the sale.

So, we’ll do all the work of putting on the sale, and hopefully generate some much-needed funds for St. Luke’s. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Either way, it’s fun and super-rewarding to get the whole family involved in creative fundraising like this, and I think you may be surprised at how easy it is to make money for your favorite causes at a time when the need is so dire.

Stay cheap!