We have 1,941 children lined up with 919 donors. Pretty good!
Now the bad news: We have another 300+ children without donors. Three hundred kids whose parents may soon be getting letters that say "we're sorry, we won't be able to send your children Christmas gifts this year because we don't have enough donors."
Yes, it's been a bad year financially for many, many folks. That fact has been all too obvious to us because we have seen a significant increase in requests for help from working families.
We know we can't help everyone who asks but we hoped we would be able to help more. But it's not looking good.
So many of our donors tell us how much they enjoy our program; enjoy helping people in need. Over and over again we hear "this is getting back to what Christmas is supposed to be, what it used to be."
As we often say, we serve two sides of the community; the obvious being the families who ask for help but we also serve another side....those who want to do something, help someone but don't know how to do it. We give them that opportunity. The opportunity to get to get back to Christmas The Old-Fashioned Way.
