Christmas Hamper Campaign in final push to meet 2024 goal
Christmas Hamper Campaign in final push to meet 2024 goal
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
More than two months after delivering its last hamper, the 2024 Quebec Community Christmas Hamper Campaign is still striving to reach its $50,000 fundraising goal. As of March 11, the campaign had raised $45,157.
“We are not too far off, but expenses are a bit more significant than in the past, so even with $50,000, we are a little bit in the hole,” campaign spokesperson Brigitte Wellens told the QCT. Wellens, who has been involved with the annual fundraiser for about a decade, said 2024 was “one of the first years” that the $50,000 goal hadn’t been reached by the end of the campaign, although organizers were still waiting for numbers from the last few fundraising events.
In previous years, she said, “We’ve always reached the goal with donations that have trickled in over the holidays.”
Wellens said the rising cost of living and the postal strike which kept people from mail- ing in donations through much of November and December might have had an impact on donors’ giving habits. Demand for food aid has also risen – more than 280 households received a Christmas hamper in 2024, a 12 per cent increase from the previous year.
What Wellens has witnessed echoes current trends – over the past decade, according to Canada Helps, the number of Canadians making charitable donations has gone down continually, while the number of people relying on the services of Canadian nonprofits has continued to rise. “With the current financial situation across the country, with everything costing more – food, rent, interest rates – it was kind of like a perfect storm,” Wellens said. “Things have not stabilized and people have been hurting financially a bit more than they have in the past. It’s a sad reality.”
She added that the number of people who donated to this past year’s campaign is about the same as in previous years. “Maybe potentially, some people had to give a little less because costs were rising. Those who were able to give more did give more, and others gave what they were able.” She said the difficulty the hamper campaign faced in meeting its goal was “maybe a wakeup call that our community isn’t doing so well” financially.
The CCHC is not the only lo- cal nonprofit which has struggled to raise funds amid the rising cost of living. “We had an objective to raise $100,000 with our [year-end] campaign, but we aren’t reaching it,” said Karina Painchaud of the SPA de Québec, which relies heavily on donations to care for more than 7,000 stray animals in the city every year. “It’s hard to say without a doubt why we didn’t reach our goal – the postal strike has hurt us, and the other thing is the amount of money in people’s pockets. The cost of living has gone up, the cost of food has gone up, and there’s a limit to what people can pay.”
Neither Painchaud nor Wellens intends to let fundraising struggles impact the support given to those who need it. “If the annual campaign doesn’t work, we’re going to have to think of something else,” Painchaud said.
“No one who has asked for a hamper has ever been told they couldn’t receive one, and that is going to remain our goal going forward,” Wellens said. “Things are not getting less expensive, but that doesn’t mean we’ll start turning people away. We’re going to have to strategize.”
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