You're a wonderful person for helping your neighbors, and I commend you for that. A gift can be given to anyone or any organization. So long as that gift does not exceed $14K to any one person, absolutely no tax reporting of any type is required by either the giver or the recipient.
A donation is something given to a "qualified" charitable organization, and depending on the type of organization, either 30% or 50% of that donation is deductible.
