Mandatory charity (financial) in the form of tax or other structured contribution does not give much joy to the contributor. Voluntary charity on the other hand, gives the brain, satisfaction akin to - a good meal, a nice, fragrant smell, etc.
Small acts of kindness (non-monetary) for others, would also yield you some form of happiness.
But if you want a "higher happiness yield" (as I call it), you could aim to perform five small acts within one day. Small acts like holding the door for others, a word of encouragement, nice surprise for a co-worker. The researchers took two study groups, group A performs five acts of kindness Monday through Friday, while group B performs five acts of kindness on any of a chosen day, eg: Wednesday. Survey them after few months, group B's happiness ratio is 40% higher than group A's.
So, set a Kindness day and keep yourself happy. LOL.
Next.
People with lower self-esteem derive happiness mostly from materials, and it starts young.
The researcher studied a group of children aged 8 to 18. The kids were asked to make a "What makes me happy" collage. They can choose to piece together whatever images, no limitations. Before that, they were segregated into two groups after a questionaire along self-esteem theme. The kids then played a game where they write positive observations about the other kids onto a small piece of paper where they would drop the comments onto a plate with the subject's name. So every kid in turn receives a plateful of positive comments from all other kids. After this "plate" exercise, they were again told to make another "What makes me happy" collage. The result is that the group with lower self-esteem to begin with, halved the number of materialistic images on their second collage.
Okay, so far that's all I remember.
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