Mumsnet Talk

We've all seen the mini chocolate snowmen in the shops and the cries for all Christmas-based threads to be moved out of AIBU to the Christmas topic - so that can only mean one thing! It's time for the MN Christmas Appeal.
Little bit of history for those who are new to the whole idea: in the past, Mumsnetters offered to donate gifts to other Mumsnetters in need over Christmas. And you also nominated Mumsnetters to receive these gifts. Each year, a particularly saintly Mumsnetter volunteered to match up the donors with the nominees and organise a mass posting of presents.

Two years ago, we felt the Appeal had grown so large that it was too much for one person to co-ordinate - so we moved it onto the MNHQ to-do list and this will be our third year.

Here's how it works.
You have until Monday 22 October to nominate a fellow MNetter who you think has gone over and above, offered you some lovely advice, might need a little help or someone who is generally an all round luffly person.

You can nominate here

You also have until Monday 22 October to pledge your donation for a fellow MNetter. Vouchers are easier to match but we have had all sorts in the past from Christmas trees to hampers and re-gifted items. Nothing is too small.

You can donate here

We then contact all of those nominated by the 29th October and ask them for their address and age/sex of their DC, this information will need to be back to us by Friday 9 November

Nominees and donors will then be matched and we will send those who donated, their matched nominees address by Friday 23 November so that gifts can be sent well before the final Christmas post. Parcels are addressed to the MNetter of the House (unless otherwise stated) to try to maintain anonymity.

This whole process is anonymous, we do not pass over RL or Talk names.

If you would like to get a gift for someone specific then it is better to arrange it with them directly. As much as we would love to facilitate all of your Christmas wishes, we simply don't have the brain power capacity <flutters spreadsheets>

Donors and nominees are given a number to quote to say thank you to one another following the gifts being sent out.

Any questions about the frankly terribly confusing process, please do ask.

May we be the first to wish you a very Merry Christmas

You can just do one or the other, that is fine. No pressure either way.

ChaosTrulyReigns

Could you confirm please, RebeccaMumsnet, is there a macimum number of posters we can nominate?

There's a right load of good souls on here and I'd find it so hard to whittle down.

And what would happen if a poster got nominated 173 times? That would be one pizzed orf Postbox Operative.

Any guidance would be great.

<<does not envy Rebecca Mumsnet next few months>>

In short, you can nominate as many peeps as you like. However, we would like you to think long and hard about who and why as there are a limited number of donations and we don't want to be in a position where we have more nominees than we do donations.

I will stress that this hasn't happened before, we normally have lots more donations than nominations.

10 nominations does not equal 10 gifts necessarily, we make sure that all nominated folks get something and then we take a look at reasons for nominations, number of children, number of nominations etc etc and allocate the remaining gifts.

Some people may get one small gift, others may get 10 small gifts or one large gift - it's all vair complicated.