In addition to volunteer work that we do, we also have charities we support that actually make differences in people's lives. We also do a "charity of the day" thing where we identify a need and make small donation every day.
If you want to help people and use the same money over and over, look into https://www.kiva.org/ where you can make microloans around the world to help people finance their small businesses. I lose around 2%/year and help around 50 people during the same time improve their lives. I've made almost 2,000 loans there using the same dollars over and over.