Mumsnet Christmas Appeal/Secret Santa - your thoughts please?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,

It's that time of year again where we are looking towards Christmas and thinking about the annual Mumsnet Secret Santa.

For those of you who've no clue what we're on about, the Mumsnet Christmas Appeal is an annual (obviously) tradition in which MNers nominate other MNers whom they feel to be particularly deserving of support/reward/love to receive a Secret Santa gift. More about it here - and here's how it works plus some FAQs, too.

As we said, it has a long and honourable history on MN - but some have suggested that now we've got Giving Week we should think about retiring the Secret Santa.

So we thought we'd take this opportunity to ask you, before we launch it as usual, if you'd like us to continue with it. We do love helping with the Secret Santa and the thankyou thread is always a very moving read, but it's quite a mammoth thing to organise and there have been a number of complaints about gifts not arriving and/or a lack of thankyou messages which has put a slight dampener on it in recent years.

In short we're happy to stop if folks think it has run its course - and happy to continue if people still think it's worthwhile.

We'd be very grateful for any and all thoughts. Please do post them here.

I didn't think you could nominate yourself? I suppose you could always get your sock puppet to nominate you though

the "popularity contest" thing is a red herring. people who are nominated who are accused of falling into that category, have usually, if you look closely, put in hours of posting time supporting people through difficult times, perhaps in a particular category. or they might be heavily involved in a particular support group that has had a real positive impact on other posters. people who aren't directly involved might not always see this - they just see a high level of jokey posts in chat or whatever. even that's not really a big problem IMO - lots of people come to MN for light relief and don't want to get involved with heavier threads, and someone who has provided them with a few laughs may naturally inspire their affection such that they want to do something nice for them, but i suspect there aren't many nominations on that basis

it's possible that there are "nominating cartels" of some kind, where people organise nominating each other. but i doubt it's a real problem

are you allowed to nominate people at MNHQ? i assume not

Oh no, Petula. They'd only want gin.

Haven't read the whole thread so hope I'm not duplicating, but here's my suggestion.

The organisation I see people directed to for support on here most often, by a long way, is Women's Aid. Many threads feature posters being advised to contact them; quite a few over the years have resulted in pisters leaving harmful situations and going into refuges. Rather than the minefield of singling out individuals and all the matching-up work it entailes for MNHQ, we could have an appeal where posters could donate gifts for women and/or children, to be passed to Women's Aid for the women and children who are in their refuges at Christmas, or could donate money to go to support Women's Aid itself if they prefer. Surely there could be no quibbling that the recipients of gifts then would deserve something nice.

FYI I don't work for WA, have no connection with them, and have been lucky enough not to have to use their services myself, but I know from reading MN that they are helpful to many, and surely a cause most posters could wholeheartedly support.

i think biwi's cracked it

from now on it will be the MNHQ Christmas Gin Appeal

Ragwort - How did you know all this about the recipient of your gift? I thought the whole thing was anonymous?

Not being arsey - just curious.

I agree with Everything - I shall be donating to Women's Aid this Christmas (a financial gift) and if I was nominated for the 'Secret Santa' - I would graciously decline.

This is a cause that is regularly referred to on Mumsnet and years ago I was directly involved in helping them, in fact when I was at university and we raised enough money to buy a small house as a 'refuge' in a northern university town.

I can't exactly remember how I 'knew', magimedi - you are right, it is meant to be anonymous but it was in the early days so perhaps it was a bit less formal than it is now?

Funny though, despite being a cause regularly referred to on MN, when it was one of the charities nominated for the Giving Week, donations were not so quickly forthcoming.

I've now seen Sparkle has mentioned WA earlier. Think the giving presents aspect I suggested though could work well for people who like choosing, buying/making, wrapping etc. Others who don't can give cash instead. It also removes the whole 'getting a thankyou' issue since that just won't be on the cards at all.

One other thing I really enjoyed last year, which required no work from MNHQ, was the 'send a card to another MNer' thread. This was for people who either knew they wouldn't get many/any cards, or who just liked the idea of getting one from another MNer - and for people like me who really like sending cards, or who had three left over and thought it would be nice to use them up. We just swapped addresses by PM. It was really nice, cost very little, no hassle, no-one felt cheated, lots of good feeling.

I'd be happy to send a gift to Women's Aid or a food bank. I'm still accumulating a big box of stuff to send off to SSAFA Refuge.

a number of people have suggested donations to women's aid or your local refuge as an alternative

i do think for some people there is a desire for the "personal" that comes from nominating and/or sending something directly to a particular person (even if you don't know who that is)

if the MN thing goes ahead this year it just needs to be really clear what the scope is, what MNHQ can handle in terms of admin support and protection of privacy, and what senders/recipients should expect in terms of guarantees (none)

BIWI - I agree, it was disappointing that WA did not seem to raise that much during the Giving Week. I wonder if generally people do actually prefer to send a 'present' rather than a financial donation.

(and yes, I did contribute to the GW ).

PS: Those of you who have Christmas (or birthday cards for that matter) left over can always donate them to food banks as that is something that a lot of people struggle to buy at Christmas and having a small stock at a food bank can make a difference.

i think asking MNHQ to receive and store possibly 1000s of wrapped gifts is too much

far better to look up the contact details of your local refuge and arrange for them to receive them

I was on that thread, EverythingCounts, and the informal Secret Santa one (maximum a tenner), and I guess that as long as people don't mind swapping addresses by PM it could work really well again. No work for MNHQ in theory.

I love the Secret Santa, and think it should go ahead, you just need to make it clear that it is very much a Secret Santa for everyone these days and not an appeal. I think that's where people's bugbear lies - it used to be an appeal but these days it's not really, (and making it an appeal for people in need makes it much hard to check). So the rules for participating should be:

1. You are participating in a fun Secret Santa activity
2. If donating, give what you can, don't assume you're giving to someone 'in need' (although of course you might be).
3. I like the idea of a separate thread for people whose gifts haven't arrived so that they can check to say thank you.

I've been here for nearly five years, and have never felt inclined to be involved. It feels like it's to do with some mysterious area of MN I'm not part of.

Lots of nominees are irrefutably worthy of their nomination, but others are baffled and embarrassed. And then others are (however briefly) put out not to have been nominated. It's inevitable but that doesn't make it ok.

Giving Week, on the other hand, felt truly like a site-wide thing that everyone could join in with.

Any recognition of those posters who give so generously of their time and expertise, especially in sensitive topics such as Relationships, SN, medical topics, etc, must be a good thing. But the knock-on effects aren't.

I wonder if it would be possible to combine the two - nominate the posters with a great contribution (whether constructive or comic) and then those shortlisted posters nominate charities for MN as a community to support during GW.

I'm not sure why you think well known Mumsnetters shouldn't be nominated?

Many of them have shit things happen in their lives.

I think we should stick to the DIY Secret Santa thread, and a Christmas card one, and let MNHQ run a logistically simple appeal by asking for gifts or money to be sent to Women's Aid.

I'm sure they have had shit things happen in their lives, haven't we all. But those well known, prolific posters complained about seemed only to have been nominated by virtue of their popularity. Some by their own admission were baffled as to why they had been nominated.

anchorute it's really incredibly rude and unfair of you to pick on one poster and say they shouldn't've been nominated.

Anchorute, the OP in the bargain threads does what no bugger else wants to, FoC and others do step in when needed, were you the same person who tried to stir up trouble last year?

Why are you seemingly jealous of others who are popular/prominent/whatever?