# 40acts Lent campaign generates over 2.9 million acts of kindness

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2015/04/07/40acts-lent-campaign-generates-over-2-9-million-acts-of-kindness/
- Published: 2015-04-07T10:49:52+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

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](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/2015/01/22/lent-generosity-campaign-40acts-returns/)
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.

## Advertisement

 [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/)

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 ](http://www.40acts.org.uk)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.

![40acts Lent generosity campaign](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/
2015/01/40acts-2015.jpg)

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:

> “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: