Daddies down
The Christmas Daddies website trumpeted the not-for-profit organization’s latest telethon — which was broadcast on Sunday — as “another resounding success!”
And, indeed, it was. How else to describe a Maritimes-wide fundraiser that raised approximately $450,000 for children whose families are struggling? The hundreds of volunteers and thousands of donors are to be congratulated.
That being said, the telethon was decidedly less successful this year than in previous years. Last year, $720,000 was raised, which was down slightly from 2010.
And all indications point to a relatively new format featuring intermittent Cape Breton content for being partly responsible for the striking reduction in donations, despite the best hopes of organizers that overall donations would actually go up when they introduced the new setup in 2011.
The Christmas Daddies website states that the telethon raises “over $500,000” each year. Not so this year.
Cape Bretoners donated $185,000 in 2010, $214,900 in 2009, and $178,000 in 2008. That rough $200,000 average was maintained last year, but only after entrepreneur Parker Rudderham donated $100,000 to boost Cape Breton’s total to $202,000. This year, Cape Breton pledges added up to $80,700, which is still more than the combined pledges coming out of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
But, whatever way you look at it, that’s a reduction of around $100,000 in Cape Breton donations. The local Combined Christmas Giving telethon was also held Sunday. And the Cape Breton economy isn’t robust, though it hasn’t been in recent memory.
It appears as if many Cape Bretoners are turning off and tuning out Christmas Daddies.
Sydney’s portion of the telethon was first broadcast in 1973. And it quickly became a holiday tradition for Cape Bretoners to take in at least part of the show — to revel in a steady stream of local music, to be gently cajoled into making a pledge by the likes of dapper former newsman Bill Jessome and urbane American actor Alan Arkin, to watch awkward cheque presentations, and to keep an eye out for the names of friends and family members scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
Some commenters make the perfectly practical argument that Cape Bretoners should dig deep despite the format change because all the money raised on the island is used here. But telethons work because they — impractically — tap into our emotions. If people don’t get that warm, fuzzy feeling, they’re less likely to give, though perhaps they’re giving elsewhere.
It would be too easy to suggest that Sydney get its full Christmas Daddies show back, given the amount of airtime and volunteer hours that turning back the clock would entail. But the new format doesn’t appear to be working as well as the old one did.