Christmas fundraiser with charity designed cards becomes increasingly popular

A Christmas fundraiser that began eight years ago continues to grow in popularity as a choice for sending festive greetings.

DontSendMeACard.com launched a pilot of its system in November 2015 with a handful of charities on board, to test their idea of a platform for donations in lieu of Christmas cards.

Since then over 1900 organisations have joined up and have uploaded a huge library of e-card designs to choose from. These designs are then offered to supporters by charities as an alternative to sending printed cards. Both static and animated cards are supported.

The charities participating in the fundraiser range from small to large, with well-known names such as The Salvation Army, Dogs Trust, and Stroke Association investing the time to generate designs that can be sent electronically, saving paper as a result.

DontSendMeACard Co-founder Alex Furness said, “The range of designs on offer now is superb. When we started off our content was minimal, as we only had a few dozen charities on board who agreed to the pilot. However we saw the potential for our model with people still using our initial offering.

For our platform and brand to have grown in popularity the way it has really is in part down to how brilliantly creative the designs that charities have come up with. You wouldn’t typically think of charitable organisations as inherently creative, but they really do have it in them. You can clearly see this by looking at the designs on offer."

In addition to designing e-cards, charities are engaging with artists, illustrators, and running Christmas e-card design competitions to add to their e-card collections.

Patrons that have offered artwork to fundraise with include Sir Quentin Blake, Harry Hill, and Nick Park creator of Wallace and Gromit.

You can browse the designs on offer on DontSendMeACard by occasion e.g. Christmas, and by searching through the listed charities and viewing their designs on offer from their landing pages.

With first-class UK stamps increasing by 15p in October to £1.25, the third increase in 18 months, more consumers and businesses who typically send physical Christmas cards may well be looking at alternatives such as DontSendMeACard for Christmas 2023.

Make Christmas Christmas for everyone

Christmas has many different meanings to many different people. Obviously, there's the celebration of the birth of Christ, obviously. But for many people Christmas has become a time to not only mark the birthday of Christ (even though the decision to use December 25th was fairly arbitrary and involved politics to an extent) but to celebrate family togetherness.

However, the COVID-inspired global recession means that for many people they still really cannot afford the type of traditional family Christmas that they were used to in the good old pre-COVID days.

But! There are ways to try to make sure that everyone gets the type of Christmas that they would like to have, the type of Christmas that they deserve.

Many supermarkets have schemes whereby shoppers can help to provide foods and gifts for families who are in need of help obtaining Christmas foods, gifts and the like.

Supermarkets such as Morrisons and Tesco have a system where their customers can go into the store and donate food. Morrisons and Tesco both have a different scheme when customers pick up a plain brown or white paper bag which contains foods, toiletries, etc which they will buy with their regular shopping and then place in a special colleting point behind the checkouts. In conjunction with a local charity the branch will ensure the donations go where they are most needed.

Also in the months running up to Christmas stores like Asda, Morrisons, Tesco, etc, collect new toys and other gifts to distribute to families in need of help. 

One organise that provides special help at Christmas time is Crisis at Christmas 

https://www.crisis.org.uk/crisis-at-christmas/what-is-crisis-at-christmas

There are also food bank charities which you can get involved with 

https://www.givefood.org.uk

https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk/pantry-listings

https://foodcycle.org.uk

https://www.trusselltrust.org

https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/foodbanks

https://www.feastwithus.org.uk

https://www.bankuet.co.uk/find-a-foodbank

https://www.stgilestrust.org.uk

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/using-a-food-bank

https://feedingbritain.org

https://fareshare.org.uk

You can check for food banks and church operated food pantries and charities involved with providing support to those in need during Christmas in your own local area by searching with Google, Bing, etc.

Imaged used courtesy of JaymzArt from Pixabay)