What do you do with an empty toy sack that somebody sends your company 10 days before Christmas? Make like elves and fill it, of course.

About 100 Iowa companies received that challenge this holiday season from ME&V, a regional advertising agency based in Cedar Falls, which sent the bags to clients in Eastern Iowa as well as Greater Des Moines. Attached to each “magic bag” was a tag encouraging the client to fill it with gifts to local food banks, schools, the Salvation Army or other charitable organizations.

“The feedback has been tremendous,” said Dee Vandeventer, ME&V’s president, who said her graphic designers adapted the idea from an elf theme they had seen used elsewhere in the country and added the giving twist to it. “Several of our clients e-mailed us immediately and told us what they were going to do, and others had already made donations,” while others are waiting until after the holidays to use them, she said.

As an agency that provides fund-raising consulting for clients that include many charitable organizations, “we like to practice what we preach, that is, encouraging our employees to embrace the philosophy of philanthophy,” Vandeventer said. In Des Moines, several of the agency’s representatives collected stuffed animals that were donated to the Des Moines Police Department.

“We’re suggesting our clients use this gift to experience the magic of giving as well,” she said. And, to document the giving that results from the campaign, the agency has set up a Web site, www.elvesatwork.net, on which companies can tell their stories of giving.

Chris Miller, director of marketing for Dice Inc., an Urbandale-based company that manages an online technology jobs board, said the bag it received enabled one employee to deliver about 30 wrapped presents the company had already collected for a needy family.

“We thought it was a really interesting, meaningful gift,” she said. “We just really appreciated there was a business out there doing something truly in keeping with the Christmas spirit. We just thought it was a really cool gift that helped us help another family.”

A Nevada food processing company said it plans to hold a separate food drive following the holidays to replenish the local food bank’s shelves.

“We want to do something in addition to our normal gifting of food products,” said Liz Hertz, marketing manager of Burke Corp., which makes meat toppings for frozen foods such as pizzas. “Or we may do it in conjunction with a donation to the food bank. We want to do something that was direct to the community and get our employees involved.”

Hospice of Central Iowa used its bag to collect items that employees had already donated for several of the families with a loved one receiving hospice care. It also used the bag to pick up gifts that had been donated by a girl who annually donates all of her birthday presents to a local charity.

“It was another way for us to get involved in the elves theme,” Miller said. “Some of them were gifts for children; some, food items for a meal. They asked (the girl’s guests) that all the gifts be suitable for a family.”

Vandeventer said her agency will likely hold another giving campaign next December. “Being in the creative business, it may be different” from this season’s, she said. “But I think it will always be on the tenet of giving rather than getting.

“One neat thing I heard today from a client was that they were going to encourage a client to use this locally to start generating gifts for their organization,” she said. “We think that if this can spread, that’s great. We’d like as many people as possible to copy this idea.”