We're already having a much busier December than last year. Although fewer people this year have signed up for The Alternative Christmas List (works like our wedding lists, your friends and family 'buy' one of the donations to charity rather than buy you a pair of socks) more people are actually using theirs when they do sign up - we've previously had lots of people who signed up for a Christmas list but then realised they were the ones who were going to be without presents so didn't actually use it. This year it seems that more people are realising that this is really the best sort of 'charity Christmas' to have, i.e. where you forsake presents YOU would have received rather than simply buying your family a charity gift they may not want (although obviously doing both, if your family approve, is even better!).
Having said that, we've also had quite an uplift of donations through our 'one-off' charity gift service Gifts 4 Good (where you make your donation instead of buying a physical gift and, instead of all the expense of gift cards, envelopes, postage etc, you just get a nice simple emailed PDF to send to the 'recipient'). The uplift started in November, and December's already our best month for the service so far. It's always been a bit of a 'sideline' as most people still seem to want something physical to show for their charity gift but maybe the whole 'green' angle is helping as well (having done the right thing why not go the whole hog and avoid wasting even more money).
My favourite piece of festive fare this Christmas has been from the charity Buglife, one of the recent additions to The Green Gift List. They've teamed up with children from St Augustine’s Junior School, Peterborough, to record a new version of a traditional Christmas song – ‘The Twelve Bugs of Christmas’. You can hear the song and see the accompanying film by clicking on this link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_4-Bomnkd1w. Well worth a listen!
Andy



