Random Acts of Kindness in Memory of Someone: 33 Acts and What to Write

The best random acts of kindness in memory of someone are the ones that person would have done themselves. If your dad always paid for the coffee, pay for a stranger’s coffee. If your grandmother fed every stray on the street, drop a bag of food at the animal shelter. Do the act, and if you want, leave a small card that says who it was for: “This was done in memory of Ruth, who never let anyone leave hungry.”

Below are 33 tickable acts, grouped by who the person was, by date (their birthday, the anniversary, the holidays), by who is doing it (you alone, a family, kids, a class, coworkers), and by how to invite others “in lieu of flowers.” There is copy-ready wording for a text, a funeral program and a social post, a way to collect the stories for the family, and 12 lines for an “in memory of” kindness card. Each act has an easier version, and the easier version counts. Most are free.

One rule for the whole list: there is no right number and no right way. One act on one day is a complete tribute. Some people find it helps to have something to do on the hard dates, and some would rather spend those days quietly. Both are fine.

How to choose acts that sound like them

An act that sounds like the person carries their name better than any card. Before you pick, answer three questions, on paper if it helps:

• What did they love? A food, a team, a place, a garden, a dog, a book series.
• What did they always do for people? The thing everyone mentions at the service: they drove people to appointments, remembered every birthday, fixed things for free.
• What cause did they care about? A school, a shelter, a food bank, a hospital ward, a team they coached.

Most of the acts below are templates; put their details in and the act becomes theirs. “Donate a book” is fine. “Leave her favorite mystery in the little free library on Oak Street, with a note inside” is her.

Acts of kindness in memory of a loved one, by who they were

Most people were more than one of these. Combine freely.

1. For the cook: make their recipe for someone who needs a meal. Cook the dish they were known for, the chili, the banana bread, the Sunday roast, and take it to a new parent or a neighbor living alone. Tape the recipe card to the lid with their name on it. Costs money, about $10 to $25 in groceries. Easier: Copy out the recipe by hand and give it to someone who will make it.

2. For the gardener: plant something where other people will see it. Plant bulbs along a shared fence, put a pot of flowers on a neighbor’s step, or volunteer one morning at a community garden. Bulbs planted in fall come up in spring with no more work from you. Costs money, about $5 to $20. Easier: Pull the weeds from one public flower bed.

3. For the teacher: help someone learn the thing they taught. If they taught math, tutor one kid for an hour. If they taught someone to knit, fish or change a tire, teach that skill to one person, and tell them where you learned it. Easier: Write a thank-you note to a teacher at their old school.

4. For the animal person: take care of animals in their name. Drop off food, old towels or blankets at the animal shelter, after checking its posted wish list. Or walk a neighbor’s dog for a week. Costs money if you buy food, about $10 to $30. Easier: Fill a bird feeder.

5. For the sports fan: give a kid a way to play. Ask a youth coach whether any player needs a fee, a pair of cleats, or a ride to practice covered. Or donate the gear sitting in their garage. Costs money if you cover a fee. Easier: Wear their team’s shirt on game day and buy a snack for whoever sits next to you.

6. For the reader: pass a book on. Leave a book they loved in a little free library or a hospital waiting room, with a note inside the cover saying who it is for. Costs money if you buy a copy, about $5 to $15. Easier: Recommend their favorite book to the next person who asks what to read.

7. For the one who always paid for coffee: pay for the next person’s usual. Order what they always ordered, then pay for the person behind you, or leave a few dollars with the barista for the next customer. Costs money, about $5 to $10. Easier: Buy a coffee for one coworker and tell them the story.

8. For the one who remembered everyone: send the card they would have sent. Find someone in their address book they kept in touch with, an old neighbor, a cousin, a friend from work, and send that person a card. Say you are doing it because they would have. Costs a stamp. Easier: Send one text to someone they were close to.

9. For the fixer: fix one thing for someone who can’t. Tighten the loose railing, change the bulb in the high fixture, shovel the walk. Pick someone who would have called them. Easier: Offer your toolbox and an hour, and let the neighbor name the job.

10. For the one who drove everybody: give a ride. Drive an older neighbor to an appointment or a friend to the airport. Rides are hard to ask for. Easier: Text a neighbor offering a ride to the grocery store this weekend, with a time.

If you are thinking of acts in memory of a pet, there is a short list in what to do for a friend who lost a pet.

Acts of kindness on their birthday, the anniversary, and the holidays

The hard dates come around every year. The guide to acts of kindness for a grieving friend covers how to support someone else through them. These acts are for marking the date yourself, in the name of the person who died.

11. On their birthday, do one act for each year they would have turned. Seventy acts for a seventieth is a lot, so split it across the family or across the month. The birthday acts of kindness post has the full how-to for the one-act-per-year format, including a message for friends who want to help. Easier: Do one act for each decade.

12. On their birthday, buy their cake and share it. Pick up the cake they always wanted and take it to the fire station, the nurses who cared for them, or the neighbors. Check that the place accepts food first. Costs money, about $15 to $30. Easier: Buy their favorite candy bar and give it to the cashier.

13. On the anniversary of their death, do the thing they did on an ordinary day. Plan one act in advance so the day has a shape: their usual walk, their usual phone call, the volunteer shift they used to do. Easier: Write their name and the act on a sticky note the night before, and do it before noon.

14. At Thanksgiving, set a place for someone else. Invite one person who would otherwise eat alone, or drop a plate at a neighbor’s door. Put their dish on the table, made their way. Costs a little extra food. Easier: Say their name at the table and tell one story.

15. In December, give the gift they would have given. If they always bought too many presents, pick one name from a giving tree or toy drive and shop for it. If they handed out cookies, bake their cookies and give them away. Costs money, about $15 to $30. Easier: Put one can or toy in a donation bin in their name.

16. On Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, do something for someone else’s mom or dad. Visit an older neighbor, call a friend’s parent who was kind to you, or drop cards at a care home front desk for residents who get few visitors. Easier: Send a card to someone who was a parent figure to you.

17. On a number day, use their number. Their jersey number, their house number, the age they reached. Do 12 acts on the 12th, or leave 27 notes for their number 27. Easier: Do one act on the date that matches the number.

Who is doing it: alone, as a family, with kids, or with a team

18. Alone and private: do one act and tell nobody. Do an act on their date and write it in a notebook or a phone note with their name. Easier: Do the act and say their name quietly when you finish.

19. As a family: split the list at dinner. Write ten or twenty acts tied to the person on slips of paper and let everyone draw a few. Agree on a date to report back, like the next holiday, and read the acts out loud then. Easier: Each person picks one act and does it the same week.

20. With kids remembering a grandparent: make it something they can hold. Young kids do better with something physical: baking grandpa’s cookies for the mail carrier, planting a flower grandma liked. Let them choose. Easier: Kids draw the grandparent doing something kind and give the picture to someone.

21. With a class or a team: do one group act in their name. When a teacher, coach or classmate dies, a class or team can run a food drive, clean up the field, or write cards for a care home in that person’s name. Check with the family about using the name, and with the school or club about what is allowed. Easier: Each student or player writes one kind note to someone in the building.

22. With coworkers: give the time they would have given. Cover the volunteer shift a colleague did, run the charity collection they organized, or keep up their habit of bringing snacks on Fridays. Ask their family whether they would like to hear about it. Easier: Leave a kind note on a coworker’s desk on the anniversary.

23. With their friends: meet at their place and do their thing. Meet at the diner, trail or bar they always went to, and each do one act on the way there. Then swap stories. Easier: Start a group text on their birthday and ask everyone to post one act they did.

24. In memory of a child: follow the family’s lead. If you are the parent, everything on this page applies, in whatever way feels right to you. If you are a friend, ask the parents what they want, and follow their wishes on wording and on whether to make it public. Easier: Ask one question: “Would you like us to use her name?”

If your family, friends or team want to keep a remembrance going together, a free kindness group lets everyone do the same daily act and see who has done theirs.

“In lieu of flowers”: inviting others to a day of kindness in their name

Some families ask for acts of kindness instead of, or as well as, flowers. Here is how to make it easy to say yes.

25. Pick one date and say it plainly. A single date, often their birthday or the first anniversary, gives people something to put in their calendar. “Anytime” tends to be forgotten. Easier: Use “the week of” a date.

26. Put one line in the funeral program or obituary. Keep it short and specific. Copy-ready:

In lieu of flowers, please do one small act of kindness in Frank’s name, the kind of thing he would have done, and tell us about it if you’d like.

Instead of flowers, Maria’s family asks that you pay for a stranger’s coffee, as she did every Friday for forty years.

Easier: Add the line to the online memorial page instead.

27. Send a text to the people who will want to take part. Copy-ready:

Saturday would have been Dad’s 75th birthday. We’re doing 75 small acts of kindness for him, the kind he did without telling anyone. If you want in, do one or two this week and text me a sentence about what you did. Nothing that costs more than a coffee.

Easier: Send it to five people, not fifty.

28. Post it once on social media, if the family wants it public. Copy-ready:

Today marks one year since we lost Jen. She was the friend who always showed up with soup. If you knew her, or even if you didn’t, we’d love it if you did one kind thing today in her name. Share it in the comments if you want us to see it.

Easier: Post it in one private group, like her running club, instead of publicly.

29. Collect the stories as they come in. Set up one place for people to send what they did: a shared note, an email address, a reply thread. Copy each act into a single document with the sender’s name and the date. Easier: Screenshot each text and save them in one photo album.

30. Give the family the collection. Print the stories into a binder, or send the document to the closest family members a few weeks later, and let them choose when to read it. Costs a little for printing and a binder. Easier: Read the list out at the next family gathering.

What to write on an “in memory of” kindness card

A small card left with an anonymous act tells the person who finds it why it happened. Write your own on an index card, or print the site’s free pass-it-on kindness cards and add a line by hand. For more general wording, see what to write in a kindness note.

Copy-ready card lines:

• This was done in memory of ______, who did things like this every day.
• Act #12 of 70, in memory of ______ on what would have been her 70th birthday.
• ______ always paid for the coffee. Today it’s on him.
• In memory of ______. Pass it on.
• Someone you’ll never meet loved doing this. Today we did it for them.
• This was ______’s favorite book. We hope it becomes one of yours.
• ______ fed every stray on the street. These are for the shelter, from her.
• Done in ______’s name, one year since we lost him. If you can, do something kind today too.
• A kind thing, in memory of a kind person.
• In honor of ______: coach, neighbor and fixer of everything.
• From a family remembering ______ on his birthday. Enjoy your day.
• No need to thank anyone. Just pass it on, for ______.

31. Write a small stack of cards before the day. Fill in the name on ten cards the night before, so you are ready whenever a chance comes up. Costs a few cents for index cards. Easier: Write three.

32. Leave the card with an anonymous act, then walk away. Tuck it under the coffee you paid for, inside the library book, or on the windshield with the parking ticket you handed over. Leave before anyone can thank you. The pay it forward ideas post has 40 more anonymous acts a card fits with. Easier: Hand the card over in person and say “this is for my mom.”

If you’re doing this for a grieving family

You may be the friend, coworker or neighbor who wants to do acts in someone else’s loved one’s name, or organize others to.

33. Ask the family first, then follow their wishes on the name. Some families want the name used; others are not ready to see it in public. Ask one close family member, with a clear way to say no: “Some of us want to do small acts of kindness in Sam’s memory on his birthday. Would that be okay, and would you like us to use his name or keep it private?” Then do exactly what they say. Easier: Do your act privately, without the name, and tell the family only if they would like to know.

This applies to every loss, including the loss of a child or a death by suicide: follow the family’s wishes on wording and on how public to make it.

What to skip

• Organizing without asking. A public kindness day set up by a friend without the family’s blessing can blindside them.
• Filming the act. A video of a stranger getting a free meal “for my late mom” turns the stranger into content and the loss into a post.
• Long stories on the card. The person who finds it is a stranger. One line and a name is enough.
• Setting a number you can’t finish. Seventy acts in one day can turn a tribute into a deadline. Split it, stretch it, or pick a smaller number.
• Spending money you don’t have. Most acts here are free. A ride to the doctor is as much a tribute as a paid tab.
• Telling other mourners how to remember. A sibling who wants to spend the anniversary alone is not doing it wrong.

Frequently asked questions

What are some random acts of kindness in memory of someone?

Pay for a stranger’s coffee in their name, cook their recipe for a neighbor, plant bulbs they would have liked, leave their favorite book in a little free library, or give someone a ride the way they used to. The best ones match something the person loved or always did for others. A small card saying who it was for is optional.

How do you honor a loved one who has passed on their birthday?

Do one act of kindness for each year they would have turned, or for each decade, and split the number among family and friends. Or pick one act that sounds like them, such as buying their birthday cake and sharing it with the neighbors.

What do you write on an “in memory of” kindness card?

Keep it to one line and a name: “This was done in memory of Ruth, who did things like this every day,” or “In memory of Frank. Pass it on.” If you are counting acts for a birthday, add the number, such as “Act #12 of 70.”

What can I ask people to do in lieu of flowers?

Ask them to do one small act of kindness in the person’s name, ideally something that person would have done, within a set date or week. Put one line in the funeral program, obituary or memorial page, and give people a place to share what they did if they want to.

Where to go from here

Pick one act from this list that sounds like the person you are remembering, write their name on a card, and do it this week. If you would like a small act to do every day after that, the free daily kindness challenge gives everyone the same act each day, with a streak, no account and no cost. If you are supporting someone else through a loss, start with acts of kindness for a grieving friend.

Get one small act a day

Reading a guide is easy; changing your habits is hard. The free daily kindness challengesends one small act at a time so kindness becomes a practice, not a bookmark.

Start the daily challenge