UK newspaper Christmas appeals raise more than £3.5m for charities

18 Jan 2019 News

UK newspaper Christmas appeals have raised more than £3.5m for charities so far, with some still running until the end of January.

The Guardian and Observer

The newspapers have raised £1.1m for five charities that support immigrants, it was announced last Friday. The money will be shared between charities that helped the papers expose the Windrush scandal earlier this year: Praxis Community Projects, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), the Refugee and Migrant Centre Black Country and Birmingham (RMC), the Runnymede Trust and the Law Centres Network.

This is less than the total raised by the papers in 2017, when 15,000 readers raised £1,531,000 for three UK homelessness charities (Centrepoint, Depaul UK, and the No Accommodation Network), 2016 when £1,750,000 was raised for child refugee charities and 2015 when the paper had their most successful fundraiser ever, with £2,500,000 was also raised for refugees.

However, the donations this year are still an increase on 2014, when some £400,000 was raised, and 2013, when around £200,000 of donations were collected.

A GNM spokesperson said: "The Guardian is proud to champion important and worthwhile causes and we are thrilled with the generosity our readers show every year in giving what they can to our charity appeals."

News UK

Different publications under the News UK banner ran various campaigns last year, raising a combined total of £1.3m.

The Times

Last year, the Times supported environmental charity, Surfers Against Sewage; a Yemen based humanitarian charity, Mercy Corps; homelessness charity, St Mungo’s; and Scottish homelessness charity, Cyrenians. They raised £828,840 to be split between the causes.

The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times has raised £384,700 for homelessness charity, Crisis.

The Sun

£105,000 was raised by The Sun for Bliss, a charity for families of premature children.

The Sun on Sunday

The Sun on Sunday raised over £6,500 for Children with Cancer.

The London Evening Standard and the Independent

Having teamed up with Sir Elton John to support Aids Free, an appeal to improve access to drugs among HIV and Aids sufferers, the London Evening Standard and the Independent has raised £1.3m so far. This was helped due to the government matching all donations up to £2m. The campaign will close on 31 January.

The Telegraph

The Telegraph are supporting three mental health related charities: Changing Faces, which supports people with disfigurements; YoungMinds, a child and adolescent mental health charity; and The Fire Fighters Charity, which offers psychological support to firefighters. The campaign closes at the end of January and the paper will not release official figures pertaining to its success until then.

It raised £560,000 in its 2017 campaign for Missing People, food waste charity, FareShare and Canine Partners.

Daily Mirror

The Daily Mirror raised £40,000 for foodbank provider, the Trussell Trust in its campaign, End Hunger, Feed a Family.

Jason Beattie, head of campaigns at the paper said: “We are incredibly grateful to Mirror readers for their kindness and generosity.”

The Sunday Mirror

The Sunday Mirror’s #GiveAnHour Christmas appeal raised funds for Teenage Cancer Trust, to provide specialist nurses and support workers. The official figures have not yet been announced.

The i 

The i aimed to raise £125,000 for the MS Society from readers’ donations. The campaign will close at the end of January.

The Daily Mail

The Daily Mail partnered with Helpforce, a health service charity that provides volunteers to the NHS. It asked readers to donate time instead of money to help the service flourish. They did not respond to Civil Society News’ request for information about how many volunteers had signed up to the scheme.

The Financial Times

The Financial Times supported Habitat for Humanity, a global housing charity. Every donation made was doubled by charitable organisation, the Hilti Foundation. They also held an auction to give people the chance to win a lunch with some of the paper’s writers. The campaign will end in January.

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