You’ve done it again. For the second year running the Guardian and Observer charity appeal has outperformed expectations. A few stray cheques are still coming in but the final total raised by readers for the 2016 appeal in aid of child refugees, which closed on 9 January, is pretty much nailed down: a few thousand shy of £1.8m.
It’s a magnificent achievement and one that we are confident will make a real difference to the vital work with child refugees carried out by our three appeal charities - Help Refugees, The Children’s Society, and Safe Passage. This ranges from emergency aid in the camps of Greece to advice and support to those youngsters rebuilding their lives in the UK.
What were our expectations? In truth, we didn’t know what to expect. We’d raised a staggering £2.6m for refugee charities in 2015, but that followed several years when we’d typically raised £400,000 for our appeal causes. Could we raise a million? We believed passionately it was the right cause to choose, but would donors agree?
We learnt many lessons from last year’s appeal, so this time, we decided to concentrate our efforts on what was proven to work well. We made the appeal shorter, more focused, and more manageable (the editorial content, marketing and event coordination is carried out by staff alongside their day jobs). We hoped we’d do well, but, we told ourselves, we would try not to beat ourselves up if we didn’t.
Of course, we should not have doubted our readers, who responded with incredible generosity: just under 18,000 individuals gave to the month-long appeal. Of these, 3,504 were Guardian members, who between them raised £314,995. Overall, the typical donation was £50. The average donation from a Guardian Partner was £75, and Guardian Patrons gave on average £200 each.
There was a wide range in the size of donations, starting at £1.33 given over the phone by a caller to the appeal telethon (he said apologetically he only had £1.34 in his bank account). Four donors gave £10,000 each. Anecdotally, we know some older readers donated their entire winter fuel payment, between £100 and £300.
The telethon day on 17 December, where Guardian and Observer journalists took donations over the phone from readers, was the most successful fundraising day: over £50,000 was donated by 1,500 callers; another £100,000 was donated online. Leaving it late, over 750 donors gave £86,000 on the last day of the campaign, the third highest daily total.
Why did people give? For many it was a way of making a stand for compassion and tolerance in an increasingly harsh, mistrustful and cynical world. As one donor told us, donating was a no-brainer: “This is an appeal to humanity over alienation, to action over apathy.” Another said: “I feel so sad and disappointed that we are not looking after these incredibly vulnerable people more readily. The reason I am donating is to help the amazing people who are helping these people.”
But it was not just about the cash, vital though that is. Talking to the charities it was clear our campaign produced other benefits. It was refreshing, they told me, to see refugees treated sympathetically in the media. They know better than most how dispiriting the political hostility to refugees can be, and were grateful for the way the campaign stood out in a general climate of negativity.
On a practical note, a number of our readers volunteered with Help Refugees after being stirred to action by our campaign, and many responded to The Children’s Society’s request for Guardian members to email positive messages of welcome support to young refugees in this country.
The Guardian’s editor-in-chief Katharine Viner wrote that the appeal’s objective was two-fold: “To provide practical, humanitarian assistance to refugees; and to make a stand for compassion, tolerance and justice in the face of weariness and hostility towards those displaced by war and oppression.” We like to think, thanks to our readers and members’ support, that the 2016 appeal achieved its objective.