Christmas Shoebox Charity Ideas for Work
The Christmas Shoebox Appeal 2024 is an excellent opportunity for businesses of all sizes to enhance customer and team relationships through working for a good cause. We can provide you with all the marketing material you need to make it a success: for example, shoebox stories, photos, leaflets and posters.
If you’re interested in taking part, please register your interest. We will get in touch to thank you and support your Christmas shoebox campaign.
What makes this Christmas Shoebox Appeal different?
- Your Christmas shoeboxes will go to the poorest people in Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania. We are always delighted to provide photographs and stories from recipients.
- Delivering Christmas shoeboxes helps our project workers to identify emergencies, and address them. For example:
- Maria, aged 74, was found sleeping on the dirt floor of her freezing home. Seeing this, Link to Hope also delivered a bed, blankets and pillows to Maria.
- A Christmas shoebox was delivered to a family who were grieving for their baby, who had died from cold because they had no money to heat the one room they all lived in. Link to Hope supporters raised enough funds to rehouse the family in a purpose-built container home.
- We believe that sending Christmas shoeboxes sends a powerful caring message from British people to those in war-torn countries or poverty-stricken circumstances, regardless of their background, colour, creed or religion.
- Unlike many other Christmas shoebox appeals, our scheme collects boxes for entire families and the elderly, so nobody’s left out.
- We are small, yet established enough to have personal relationships with the individuals in Eastern Europe who work hard delivering your boxes. For transparency, we also conduct spot-checks to confirm that the right people are receiving your boxes.
Although Link to Hope is a Christian charity, it does not include any of its own material in the shoeboxes or with them. This makes it neutral, and an ideal charity idea for workplaces.
How can the Christmas Shoebox Appeal 2024 benefit your business?
The primary benefits of taking part in the Christmas Shoebox Appeal as a business are that you can use it to generate:
- PR coverage
- cause-related marketing material
- camaraderie
- a reason to contact customers and share what you are doing or have done
- evidence of how CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) s embedded in your business’s culture.
If your customers see photographs of a large pile of Christmas shoeboxes on your premises or receive images of your online Christmas shoebox order being put together, this leads to a camaraderie that surpasses many other work-related fundraising ideas.
Also, the timing coincides with media planning deadlines for the Christmas period, which helps to optimise your promotional coverage.
In return, we publish stories and photos of Christmas shoeboxes being handed to the recipients in their homes. This impactful material is ideal for you to use on social media, in newsletters, and in the news area of your website.
If you have a CSR policy, this is an outward demonstration of your business’s concern for social and economic causes.
Implementing a 2024 Christmas Shoebox Appeal campaign in your business
B2B, B2C and e-business companies have different promotional opportunities. Here are some ideas that you could adapt to suit your industry or sector.
- You could create a giant Christmas shoebox in which people could drop an item from the list to be packed into shoeboxes. This works well near the entrances to retail outlets and reception areas in B2B and e-businesses.
- Most business premises are suitable to become Christmas shoebox drop-off points for other businesses and/or the public. It’s helpful to set up an example shoebox for people to look through.
- If you run a giant Christmas shoebox or become a shoebox drop-off point, it is a good idea to have a financial donation box so that anyone who comes in empty-handed can still donate and take part.
- E-businesses and retailers could give customers the option to buy an item for a Christmas shoebox or donate the £3 shipping costs before they check out.
- A lunchtime or after-work Christmas shoebox packing and stacking session with your staff can lift morale and help with team-building.
- Your employees could write greetings cards or a letter with a photo to put in each Christmas shoebox, to add a personal touch.
- If your business premises have large screens, you could play our movie files about the recipients of the shoeboxes. You would also receive our permission to add this to your website and share it through digital marketing.
Here’s a Christmas shoebox business case study by Rosedale Funeral Home, describing how their campaign took off. We would be delighted to hear about, and promote, your Christmas shoebox campaign.
Other ways businesses can support our Christmas Shoebox Appeal in 2024
Regardless of how well we plan each year, due to the unpredictable nature of where shoebox donations crop up in the UK, there are always unexpected costs and logistical challenges. Here are some options for those who can provide practical help or sponsorship:
- A financial donation, which will enable us to address any other needs our project workers find when they deliver Christmas shoeboxes to families and elderly people.
- Donate or sponsor cardboard shoeboxes and wrapping paper, as we often receive donations of bulk stock that our onsite volunteers pack and wrap.
- Help us reduce the cost of shipping by donating a service.
As you can imagine, coordinating our Christmas Shoebox Appeal is an enormous undertaking each year, so we start in May. We’re keen to hear from any businesses, of any size, as early as possible. We start shipping Christmas shoeboxes in November.
If you can help us, please complete the registration form below or contact us directly if you would like to discuss providing a service or bespoke sponsorship.