Lincoln youth giving gets much more useful once you stop treating “kids” as one category. Here are five sharply different ways a local donation can work in practice, including a haircut and backpack, a barbershop mentor, a safer night, a swimsuit, or a camp week.

The youth groups worth your money in Omaha are the ones built for the shaky hours after 3 p.m., including after school, after practice, after a new foster placement, and after court. These seven charities understand that the real work starts when the official day ends.

Mustaches For Kids Omaha should have been a one-year joke. Instead, Adam Perez's 2009 idea became one of the city's most reliable engines for children's-charity funding, moving more than $9 million locally while keeping the whole ridiculous ritual accountable to kids.