How to Make a Strong Christmas Assistance Program in Schools

Christmas Assistance Programs can be set up in multiple ways depending on your preferences and your community. We are blessed to have such a supportive and generous community. It truly makes it easier to have a program like this if you know you will be supported.

In the Past

We have operated our Christmas Assistance Program a little differently each year. Tweaking it just slightly to help the program grow and have it get easier each year. In the past, we have allowed sponsors to adopt a family and bring in pre-wrapped gifts. It works well, as long as you have an idea of who is sponsoring and who needs assistance.

Once that’s done, we’re able to play matchmaker and have certain families sponsored by specific sponsors. Closer to the due date all the gifts start coming in and it’s our turn to call the families and let them know they are ready for pick-up. Some years, they are gone right away and some years we have a few stragglers.

This Year’s Plan

This year we switched the process up entirely, because of COVID restrictions and not being able to have multiple people and gifts in and out of the building. We kept the same process as the years past, we just took monetary donations from sponsors and were able to use that to buy gift cards to kid-friendly places in our community that do not sell alcohol or tobacco.

This process was AMAZING! Out of all the years, this one was my favorite. Not because it’s easier to hand out gift cards… but because we knew exactly who was being supported and that each student/family were given equal amounts. Also, some of the excitement of picking out the perfect thing for a loved one can be a special experience.

Setting up a program like this can be time consuming at first, but once you get it set up, it basically runs itself with you being the facilitator. Either way you choose to set it up (accepting pre-wrapped gifts or monetary donations) here are some steps to get you started.

Step #1: Simple Christmas Site

The easiest way for us to get started with this process was to create a simple website that we can refer people to. We created a very simple one through weebly.com and attached our site to our districts site. This way families were already familiar with going there. Once they were on this site, they were directed to two choices. I want to help a family in need or I need holiday assistance.

Once they click on their option, they will fill out a Google Form with all their information. This save the counselors time because we don’t have to get this information over the phone and spend hours playing phone tag when we’re not in our offices. The whole purpose of this website is to house links for families to click on. They can fill out one of the two forms or they can go in the right-hand corner and click on area programs.

The picture below is an example of what our site looks like. There are two Google Forms linked to this site, one for each button. 

Step #2: Set Dates

The next step is to let your office staff know where to direct callers about Christmas Assistance. Then start setting some dates. When do you want to set the due date or the cutoff? This way you can gather the gifts or the gift cards and have them ready for pickup by a certain date. We chose to do two weeks before to get the gift cards and the next week to package them in holiday greeting cards and have them ready for pickup.

Step #3: Gather Sponsorships

This year we linked our I Want to Help a Family in Need button to a Google Doc talking about how we are accepting monetary donations for gift card distribution. This worked very well because they could print out the form and mail it into school. Another way we got the word out, is by posting it on Facebook! Here’s an example of what we said…

The bit.ly link you see in the post directs them to this document with further information. This is the same link that we put on our weebly site for sponsors. To make a copy of this document in your Google Drive CLICK HERE.

Step #4: Wait

Now is the time to wait! You’ve done the hard work… let’s see who contributes and who needs help.

Step #5: Gather

Once the gifts or sponsor money starts rolling in, you can start contacting families for pickup or making a trip into town to get gift cards. We packaged them nicely and had them ready for pickup pretty quickly.

Step #6: Thank You

Once we were towards the end, we spent some time writing Thank You notes to all our our sponsors. We wanted to make sure we expressed our appreciation and let them know how helpful they were to our students and families. Make sure to get them ready to mail out before Christmas Break!

Step #7: Wrap it Up

You have gifts or gift cards going out to families. Your Thank You notes are all written. Now is the time to shut things down for Christmas Break! Go onto your simple website and unlink the buttons. You can label one of the buttons or write a heading that says Christmas Assistance is Closed for this year. We hope you have a blessed holiday. Remember to check back next year!