There are things you can’t save yourself from at the end of the year: Christmas markets, stress about presents, calories and fundraising galas. One charity event follows the next, pop stars, comedians and television legends promote the good cause. The ZDF show “A Heart for Children”, which confidently describes itself as the most successful fundraising gala on German television and raised more than 24 million euros last year, has been around since 1978. Christmas giving is a tradition in this country.
“No one in Germany wakes up in the morning with the idea of donating,” says the German Fundraising Association, which includes associations such as “Amnesty International Deutschland” and “Aktion Deutschland Hilft”. It’s all the better that everyone remembers to donate in the run-up to Christmas: aid organizations, supermarkets, employers or even television.
The donation rush has long since reached the next generation: well-known streamers and influencers organize donation live streams with a professionalism reminiscent of the television landscape. Jan Böhmermann and Olli Schulz quickly renamed their podcast “Fest und Fluschig” to “Fest und Festlich” for a charity edition, the YouTubers Gronkh and Pietsmiet, who became known online for videos about computer games, are organizing the twelve-hour charity livestream “Friendly Fire”. The audience donates directly on the Internet – and can watch the live stream as the increasing sum is ecstatically celebrated between party games and guest appearances.
The online offerings cannot yet quite keep up with their television models in terms of donations. Last Saturday, according to the organizers, “Friendly Fire” raised a little more than a million euros.
Willingness to donate decreased compared to the previous year
It remains to be seen how successful the Carmen Nebels and Johannes B. Kerners will be in motivating people to give to “a good cause” this year. The “German Donation Monitor”, a market research study by the German Fundraising Association, predicts a worse donor rate for 2023 than in the previous year: Only 48 percent of the population is expected to donate something. Last year it was 53 percent.
There can be various reasons why people don’t donate: They may simply not have watched enough fundraising galas. Maybe they haven’t found the right project they want to support. Money is definitely tight in many households due to the energy crisis.
The average sum per donor is expected to remain slightly behind that of the previous year: 170 euros per year, three euros less than in 2022. But all of these are just forecasts: a large part of this sum will only be donated in the last quarter of the year – it is Christmas time Donation time. The German donation monitor expects 5.8 billion euros. That’s a little less than in 2022, but still a lot of money. This won’t fill the budget gap, but it will certainly fill a lot of hungry stomachs.