Every night a children’s choir sings carols to raise money for a whole sequence of good causes – it almost doesn’t matter which. These choirs are neither senior nor musically very adept; these are groups of primary school kids, wrapped up in their winter coats, brought in from their schools by their teachers to sing in public. Collectors, probably parents, walk around the crowd that inevitably gathers, with seriously jangling tins.

And they don’t have to dress up to do it. Or to eyeball you, or engage in hearty verbiage. They can just collect quietly in the knowledge that the kids have created the atmosphere in which you want to give.

And they don’t have to dress up to do it. Or to eyeball you, or engage in hearty verbiage. They can just collect quietly in the knowledge that the kids have created the atmosphere in which you want to give.

It’s not a religious atmosphere that they create. It’s just an aura of decency and hope and moist-eyed emotion. You’re watching an eight-year-old tot not quite making the descant in ‘Away in a Manger’, you’re watching the kids who are so tired that they’ve stopped pretending to sing, you’re watching the teachers trying to keep them in line.

Look around the crowd and you can see that everyone is beaming. The old-fashioned word for this is goodwill and the new-fangled term is probably the feel-good factor. All I know is that I have wandered over from the Costa Café to beam. And that, when the teacher comes round with the tin, I give a pound. And that, on occasion, I blub inwardly at the sheer niceness of it all. You should know that I am more Scrooge than Bob Cratchit when it comes to Christmas.

So never let anyone tell you that fundraising is finally anything but an emotional business. It always was. It always will be. 

This is article is taken from George Smith’s seminal work, Asking Properly, (The White Lion Press, London).