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Go All In this festive season

In the UK, the end of the year is a time when employees, communities and companies come together to make a difference. For businesses, it’s an opportunity to show purpose in action, strengthen employee engagement and connect with local communities in meaningful ways.

And Benevity is right there by your side! Use our Activation Kit to spark action across your organisation — whether that’s donating, volunteering or spreading the word.

Scroll down for templates and best practices to jump-start your campaign planning.

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Ideas to engage your employees and drive impact this festive season

'Tis the season where people want to come together and give back. Here are some ideas of how to keep up momentum and drive impact.
In-office activities

In-office activities

Host a toy appeal

Partner with a non-profit to collect popular gifts or children’s wish-list items.

Donate warm winter clothing

Gather coats, scarves and gloves for charities like Shelter or Centrepoint. Add a personal touch with uplifting notes.

Organise a charity market

Invite local nonprofits (e.g. Macmillan Cancer Support, British Red Cross) to sell crafts or baked goods in your office.

Stock a food bank pantry

Coordinate with charities like Trussell Trust or FareShare to collect non-perishable food, toiletries and essentials for families in need.

Fundraising event ideas

Craft and DIY fair

Invite your crafty colleagues to bring in their creations and sell them for donations to their favourite charities. You might even find nonprofits sharing instructions for projects, like the Brooke animal welfare nonprofit sharing patterns for crochet donkeys. To make it a fundraiser, ask participants to donate to a charity of your choice to enter the event.

Preloved gift swap

Say no to crowded shops and long lines and organise a gift swap event instead! Invite your colleagues to bring in pre-loved items that will make a fine gift for someone else. Ask participants to donate to charity to join in.

Bake sales and competitions

Gather all passionate bakers in your teams for a bake sale and donate the profits to a nonprofit of your choice. Or make it a competition and have the winning baker choose the organisation to receive the donation.

In-person volunteering

Community clean-ups

Organise team volunteering days in local parks or community spaces, connecting environmental care with this festive season.

Spend time with seniors

Partner with Age UK to host tea parties, games or simply friendly chats with older adults experiencing loneliness.

Support at a food bank or soup kitchen

Join Trussell Trust food banks or Crisis holiday centres to distribute meals and essentials.

Remote and virtual volunteering

Write cheerful and encouraging holiday cards

Spread some festive cheer and inspiring words with a holiday card, for example, for kids in hospitals, seniors in homes, and people facing loneliness.

Record audiobooks for kids

Audiobooks can foster a love of storytelling, help us understand our emotions, improve communication and simply provide comfort and entertainment. Record free audiobooks for nonprofits working with children or people experiencing loneliness to make more stories available to everyone.

Virtual in-kind donations and nonprofit online stores

Many nonprofits have online wishlists to help them stock their pantry or they offer items for you to buy for yourself while supporting their cause, e.g., branded
t-shirts, mugs and other items that make great gifts. Invite your colleagues to a virtual meeting presenting some of these nonprofits and then give them some time on the call to browse their websites.

Volunteer Acts of Kindness

Encourage small acts with a big impact

Little acts of kindness add up to a movement of community and compassion. Encourage everyone to do and share one act of kindness, for example, buying groceries for a senior neighbour or busy parent, inviting someone you haven’t spoken to in a while for a coffee or promoting a nonprofit in your social networks.

Best practices
to boost participation

Use multiple communication channels
Create friendly team challenges
Involve leadership — have executives deliver holiday thank-you messages.
Track progress and give updates throughout all of festive season
Give shoutouts to participants in your company wide channels
Invite nonprofits to send in videos thanking your colleagues for their contributions
  • Use multiple communication channels
  • Create friendly team challenges
  • Involve leadership — have executives deliver holiday thank-you messages.
  • Track progress and give updates throughout all of festive season
  • Give shoutouts to participants in your company wide channels
  • Invite nonprofits to send in videos thanking your colleagues for their contributions
RESOURCES

Resources to jump-start your campaign planning 

Organising a meaningful but lighthearted campaign takes hard work. That’s why we prepared some campaign essentials for you to leverage in your planning.

Communications planning
sheet

Personalise the templates from our ALL IN activation kit for your emails, social posts, internal messages.
Link

Template for nonprofit collaborations

Templates to reach out
and organise events
with nonprofits.
Link

List of
nonprofits
to partner with

Discover UK nonprofits and how to support their work.
Link

50 things to
do this Giving Season

Explore small and big acts of kindness to inspire your campaign.
Link

Benevity tools to elevate your festive season campaign

At Benevity, we support over 900 purpose driven brands with their festive season campaigns. Here are some of the tools our clients leverage this time of year.
A young woman with long red hair smiles at the camera outdoors. An overlay shows a donation confirmation for $50 to support suicide prevention, matched by a company, with payroll as the payment method.
Amplify your employees' contributions and multiply your impact.
A smiling person wearing a helmet and scarf rides a bicycle in a city. An overlay shows a leaderboard for Top Score Participants in sustainability, with Sam Lurks ranked first, followed by Kaitlyn Ros and Sam Feltz.
Drive more participation with small purpose challenges that make a big difference.
Dashboard displaying summaries for volunteering, employee engagement, and budget usage. Below are statistics and graphs showing cases, donors, donation metrics, years, and donation participation rates.
Track progress in real time and celebrate engagement, impact and outcomes.
A woman in a striped sweater sits at a table using a laptop. On the left, a graphic displays currency symbols, gears, and a tax receipt for $25.
Empower your employees to donate to charities worldwide, with confidence.
A young man hugs an older woman, both smiling. Overlay text shows: Volunteer hours: 8,779, Organizations supported: 162, and Transactions: 1,225.
Inspire more people to get involved or thank individuals with a meaningful reward.

Let’s make this festive season count

Whether you’re planning for Giving Tuesday or a full-season campaign, Benevity helps you create momentum — and keep it going.

See how Benevity can help you lead a trusted, scalable festive season campaign that protects what matters most - your people, your communities, and your brand.
Book a call