40acts Lent campaign generates over 2.9 million acts of kindness
Howard Lake | 7 April 2015 | News
This year’s 40acts challenge, a campaign by charity Stewardship over the 40 days of Lent, has resulted in over 2.9 million acts of generosity.
The campaign began on Ash Wednesday in February and invited people to undertake on simple generous or kind act each day over Lent. This year 75,000 people too part, the highest participation in the five years in which the annual campaign has run.
#Chocolatetuesday proved popular
One of the most popular challenges of this year’s campaign was #chocolatetuesday, on which thousands of people slipped chocolate bars into people’s handbags, gave out free chocolates on trains and buses, or bought in sweet treats for their class at school.
Other good deeds included cleaning graffiti from buildings, writing letters of encouragement to those in prison, surprising strangers with flowers or a free coffee in cafes, and inviting neighbours round for ‘pudding parties’.
40acts was created to encourage people “to make living generously a daily habit”. It explicitly highlights that generosity extends beyond money to include people’s time, skills, words and even hugs.
The 40acts campaign concluded on Holy Saturday last weekend, when participants were challenged to carry out one last anonymous act of generosity that took them “beyond their comfort zones”.
Inspiring participation in 40acts
Participants signed up to receive the daily 40acts emails and were invited to join the 40acts community on Facebook ), Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. This year the 40acts Facebook group more than doubled in size from 12,000 to 25,000 and its Instagram community tripled from 900 to 2,700 sharing their photos online. In addition, 2,000 new Twitter followers joined the conversation.
Stewardship provided tailored materials to ensure schools, churches, groups, students, families and individuals could take part.
Alexandra Khan, part of the 40acts team at Stewardship, said:
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“It’s been a phenomenal year. The 40acts community is an incredible mix of people from all over the world. We’ve loved hearing their stories, seeing new friendships forged, and watching a ripple of generosity happen throughout Lent. For the last 40 days, the motto was ‘do Lent generously’. But now? Now it’s time to ‘do Life generously’.”
Last year the campaign won the Christian New Media Awards 2014 for ‘Innovative Use of New Media in Outreach’ and ‘Most Creative Use of Social Media’.
Watch Stewardship’s report on the 2015 40acts campaign:
[youtube height=”450″ width=”800″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Zx2hEYoWU[/youtube]
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.