Biddy Baxter helped make me a fundraiser
Howard Lake | 26 March 2026 | Blogs
Biddy Baxter, long-serving Blue Peter editor, is one of a small number of people in my childhood who, with hindsight, I can say helped steer me to becoming a fundraiser.
I didn’t know her personally, of course, but I knew from the biweekly credits at the end of the BBC TV children’s programme Blue Peter that she was in charge of the programme. And her alliterative and unusual name stayed in my mind.
The millions of children who, like me, grew up with Blue Peter in the 1970s and 80s were inspired by its creativity, enthusiasm, fun, storytelling, and the engaging personalities of the presenters, and their fequently daredevil activities. For many children, the animals that were part of the programme were their only substitute for having a pet. We all knew the animals well, and we can probably all recount many of their names, including Petra, Shep, Goldie, Jason, Bonnie, Jack, Jill and Freda.
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Baxter reminded the presenters that “fur and feather are more important than flesh” to the viewers.
Christmas appeals
Each year we were all invited to join together to raise funds and donate to support the work of charities and their work in the UK and around the world.
Not money, but items that could be recycled or sold to raise funds. A cash appeal would not have been as inclusive – too many viewers would not have felt they could join in.
The idea of a Christmas fundraising appeal to the viewers and their families, for a particular charity and project, was Baxter’s. Born in May 1933, she grew up during the Second World War, and recalled in interviews how she and her friends held bring-and-buy sales to raise funds for Spitfire aircraft, and put on concerts and plays to raise funds for the British Red Cross and Aid for France.
Blue Peter’s appeals asked children to donate used postage stamps, coins, scrap metal, linens, buttons, paperback books, postcards and the like.
These were remarkably successful. For example, Blue Peter appeals raised enough to fund 28 RNLI lifeboats alone.
Biddy Baxter’s contribution to fundraising
I grew up with fundraising appeals that I could join in and help with throughout my childhood. For causes and needs that expanded my view of the world. They became a normal activity that my friends would talk about and get involved with.
Yet throughout my childhood, at school and university, no-one ever mentioned to me that fundraising could be a job, let alone a career.
With decades of experience as a professional fundraiser I can look back and see that Biddy Baxter introduced many elements of fundraising – both for supporters and for those running a campaign – via Blue Peter. And some of us acquired that knowledge through watching the process run again and again, every Christmas.
So here are some of the reasons why Biddy Baxter was a remarkable fundraiser and fundraising leader – terms I suspect she would not have recognised if applied to her – and how, more than 50 years ago, she inspired me.
Ambitious inclusion through non-cash giving
The most fundamental decision Baxter made, and one that shows real fundraising instinct in knowing her audience, was never asking for money. Children were urged to collect old clothes, used stamps, paperback books or milk bottle tops Nostalgiacentral instead.
This wasn’t just a practical workaround for the fact that children didn’t have bank accounts. It was a deliberate choice to make giving accessible to every child regardless of their family’s income.
In fundraising terms, this is the difference between a campaign that raises a lot from a few people and one that builds a mass movement. Baxter chose the movement.
The results were extraordinary. Across 49 appeals, children raised the equivalent of over £100 million in today’s money, collecting among other things over 948 million stamps, 19 million aluminium cans, and 800 tons of wool.
The focus on recycling and make-do-and-mend was not quite so revolutionary in the 1960s, but its underpinning as the idea for all Blue Peter appeals no doubt helped bring a combination of practical can-do and environmental concern to several generations of children.
The annual campaign rhythm
The appeal was usually launched in late November and ran through to February or March of the following year. Baxter recognised that Christmas, as the moment of peak generosity, was the time of year to focus on. She also recognised that the campaign could gain momentum well into the new year.
Children would anticipate this Christmas tradition year after year. What would they want us to collect to turn into cash this year, we wondered.
Alternating local and international causes
The appeals always supported a UK charity in odd-numbered years and an international charity in even-numbered years. I didn’t notice this at the time, but now I recognise this as a hallmark of the Blue Peter appeals.
I thought the programme team were just reacting to the latest crisis or need. But it is a sign of sophisticated audience management. It meant the programme never felt parochial, but also never felt so distant as to be abstract. It expanded children’s sense of the world — and their sense of their own power to affect it — in a measured, sustainable way. Each year the campaign’s focus was different, but familiar.
I see elements of what they did echo in the communications over the years of Comic Relief and its Red Nose Day campaigns.
The totaliser: making progress visible
During appeals we could watch the the sum of money or objects collected grow each week. The total was presented on a totaliser — a display that lit up to show the amount collected. It was often visible in the opening credits with the presenters welcoming the viewers standing in front of a flashing total. Again, there was a sense of anticipation – how much had we children helped them raise this week? Had we got to the total? Or would that be next week?
And there wasn’t just the overall target of the total. There were sub-targets or totals to reach and celebrate too. We watched generosity and action grow each week.
According to the Blue Peter Wiki, for some appeals a second totaliser was introduced immediately after the original target was met, with the aim of providing an incentive to keep on donating.
In crowdfunding terms we’d describe this as a stretch target. And who is most likely to give at that stage? Someone who has already given of course – us! And off we’d go, raiding the cutlery draw, finding more stamps to cut off envelopes or sorting through items we could donate to the bring and buy sales.
A stretch goal rekindles motivation that might otherwise flag once a target is reached. Baxter was doing this on a children’s TV series on national television in the 1960s.
Storytelling and the film report
Each appeal was brought to life through filmed reports showing the people and situations the money would help. Children didn’t just collect stamps; they understood why.
This is the fundraising principle of connecting the donor to the beneficiary, making the cause vivid and human rather than abstract. They didn’t shrink from involving emotion, although my recollection was that it was mostly a practical and rational appeal. And I’m sure that many of the phrases might well not seem appropriate now, with elements of ‘white saviourism’.
The bring-and-buy sale: peer-to-peer fundraising before its time
In 1979, one of the most popular forms of raising appeal money was introduced, encouraging viewers to hold Blue Peter Bring and Buy Sales, at which buyers were also encouraged to bring their own bric-a-brac or produce to sell. Now we would call this call peer-to-peer or community fundraising, asking supporters to run their own events and recruit their own donors.
Of course ‘jumble sales’ were common in the 60s and 70s, often held in churches and community halls. So the basic idea wasn’t novel but those events tended to raise funds for the organisation hosting them – the church, the Scouts or Guides troop, the children’s nursery. But the Blue Peter Bring and Buy Sales (note the branding) were for one single campaign.
Baxter took one idea and pioneering it five decades ago, in a way that embedded it in school and community life.
Tangible outcomes, not abstract totals
The appeals didn’t just raise “money for charity.” They funded specific, nameable things.
From 1966, Blue Peter began an appeal to fund lifeboats for the RNLI. The donated paperback books campaign was so successful that Instead of just one lifeboat, four new lifeboats were funded. In addition, three former lifeboat stations, at Littlehampton, North Berwick, and Beaumaris, were re-established, and a Blue Peter lifeboat placed there on service. On top of that a wholly new station opened at St Agnes in 1968.
A child who collected and donated used books could grow up knowing that somewhere off the coast of Britain, a lifeboat bore the name Blue Peter because of what they and their friends had done. This is the principle of restricted funding.
Charities as part of everyday life
Blue Peter partnered with a wide range of charities that worked in the UK and internationally. As such we children grew up knowing of the existence and something of the work of charities like Oxfam, RNLI, Guide Dogs, Save the Children, Riding for the Disabled Association and many more.
You know the phrase “household names”. Biddy Baxter and her colleagues had no small role in helping many charities achieve this in the minds of children and their families and carers.
You can read the list of the Blue Peter appeals, saved for posterity thankfully by archive.org. The Blue Peter Wiki has a list of more recent appeals, from 1990-2003.
Stick with what works
Biddy Baxter did not aim for novelty for each appeal. When something worked well, she took the lessons and ran it again.
The 1966 appeal for RNLI secured far more second-hand paperback books than expected. So Blue Peter ran the same ask in 1972 for RNLI.
Simplicity
Baxter’s appeals were not complicated, although the systems involved were often vast. The programme needed trucks to collect and deliver donated items to the locations in which they were processed – sorted, analysed for value and then recycled in whatever way.
The programme’s appeal updates featured these systems, so we knew we were really part of a massive initiative.
But to the audience, the Blue Peter appeals were appropriately simple. And that’s hard to get right. Baxter knew her audience. You can tell that from the very first Blue Peter Appeal in December 1962.
It asked children to donate toys for those who would otherwise have no presents. It connected children directly to other children, arousing a sense of empathy and a way to take action.
It was Baxter’s instinct from the very beginning to make the cause feel relevant to a nationwide audience of children in very different settings, and the action feel meaningful.
That has taken me a whole career to recognise. But Biddy Baxter sensed all of this and acted.
I suspect I’m not the only person to have achieved and enjoyed a career in fundraising, inspired in some way by the Blue Peter appeals.
Biddy Baxter died in August 2025 aged 92. She worked on Blue Peter from 1965 to 1988. You can read the BBC’s obituary of her, and listen to Matthew Bannister’s Last Word on BBC Radio 4 which includes a profile of her.
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.