Giving Campaign launches "Crap Christmas Gift Amnesty"
Howard Lake | 3 December 2003 | News
The Giving Campaign is encouraging the public not to waste money on often unwanted Christmas gifts for work colleagues and spend the money on a charitable donation.
According to a new survey for the Giving Campaign, each Christmas the UK public spends around £140 million on unwanted Christmas gifts for work colleagues such as a hole punch, line dancing music and garden gnomes. Yet 55% of them would rather the money spent on these gifts was donated to charity. The Giving Campaign, the national initiative to boost charitable giving in the UK, has humorously set up the “Crap Christmas Gift Amnesty” and encourages everyone to give a donation to charity instead of buying unwanted presents.
According to the survey by Tickbox.net, examples of some of the truly unwanted Christmas presents from colleagues included a bag of Bombay Mix, a hole-punch, a tape of line dancing music, a packet of condoms, a bottle of Tipp-ex, and a tartan wig. When asked what they did with these unwanted gifts, 42% said they gave them to charity shops, 26% gave them to someone else, and 8% chucked them in the bin.
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The survey is based on 2,272 adult respondents to a questionnaire posted on Tickbox.net during November 2003.
Phillip Mind, Director of The Giving Campaign said: “At Christmas, we support charity very generously – giving twice as much as during other months in the year – but the bottom line is that we could be doing a lot more. If all the money wasted on these gifts was donated to charity using Gift Aid, it could mean an extra £180 million for good causes”.
To illustrate just what a difference the Crap Christmas Gift Amnesty could make, The Giving Campaign has put together an Advent Calendar of Crap Gifts, revealing what the money could achieve if spent on good causes. Click on a gift and you’ll be told how you could have spent the same amount of money on a good cause.
For example, a pack of Bombay mix costs about £1; £1 could clear a square metre of a minefield. A 12-pack of condoms costs about £4; £4 could help pay to keep a helpline open for an hour. A hole punch costs about £5; £5 could be used to supply 80 litres of vital purified water overseas.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.