Secret Santa Appeal – Frequently Asked Questions

General Public:

The Appeal takes place between Saturday 29th November 2025 and Sunday 14th December 2025.

Mini Appeals:

Your Mini Appeal can start at any time leading up to Saturday 29th November 2025, but we need the gifts dropping off on Friday 12th December 2025.

Unfortunately, we cannot accept any gifts after the above deadlines as they will be distributed to the charities and other organisations very shortly after this date to ensure delivery for Christmas.

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You can donate a gift or run a Mini Appeal in your workplace or organisation. Please see “Where and when can I donate a gift?” for further details.

You could donate a couple of hours of your time to help collect gifts at our Secret Santa stand in Kirkgate Shopping Centre in Bradford. Please email us at team@secretsantaappeal.org.uk if you would like to be involved.

You could help spread the word using social media. Use Twitter handles @jcibradford and @secretsantajci, follow us on Instagram – secretsantaappeal, or like our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/secretsantaappeal .

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If you are interested in running a Mini Appeal, please complete our online registration form (link here). You will then receive an email from the Secret Santa team by approximately mid-November with further details once we have received all our nominations from our charities.

If you are an individual wanting to buy a gift to donate, you can collect a tag from a Secret Santa tree at the following locations:

• The Kirkgate Shopping Centre, Bradford – The stand will be open on Saturdays and Sundays between 11am and 4pm.
• Eureka – The National Children’s Museum, Halifax – Tuesday to Sunday 10am–4pm.
• Huddersfield (NEW LOCATION) – Fresh Futures, Charity Number 288125, Brian Jackson House, 2 New North Parade, Huddersfield HD1 5JP.

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You can drop your gift at any of the Secret Santa locations listed below:

• The Kirkgate Shopping Centre, Bradford – The stand will be open on Saturdays and Sundays between 11am and 4pm. However, if you bring a gift in any time that the Kirkgate is open and ask a member of security, they will assist you by putting the gift in our secure storage facility.
• Eureka – The National Children’s Museum, Halifax – Tuesday to Sunday 10am–4pm.
• Huddersfield (NEW LOCATION) – Fresh Futures, Charity Number 288125, Brian Jackson House, 2 New North Parade, Huddersfield HD1 5JP.

Please attach your tag to the gift. If you are bringing numerous gifts, please put your gifts in bin liners or bigger carrier bags. There will be a code on your tags and if you could identify this code on each bag, it would be much appreciated. The security team at the Kirkgate are often on hand to help if they are available, but please be prepared to carry your gifts and bring sufficient help with you.

If you are dropping off a large number of gifts, we may be able to arrange for you to drop your gifts off via the deliveries entrance at Kirkgate Shopping Centre (opposite McDonald’s). For security reasons you MUST register (CLICK HERE) to request access to drop off gifts, providing contact information, date, time and your vehicle details. We will need notice of your request so that we can confirm this with the security team at Kirkgate.

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Yes please. If you collect a tag from Halifax it must be returned to the Halifax collection/drop-off point. All gifts collected in the different areas such as Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees go to help children in those specific areas.

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Unfortunately we cannot offer collection of gifts. The Secret Santa team are all volunteers who work full-time for other organisations. We instead offer a central drop-off point at the Kirkgate Shopping Centre in Bradford, please see details above.

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We ask that you kindly follow our Donation Guidelines

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For safeguarding reasons, we ask that all gifts are left unwrapped. The gifts can then be easily checked by the Secret Santa team and the relevant charities to ensure that they are appropriate. Any gifts that arrive wrapped will unfortunately need to be opened.

If you would like to donate any wrapping paper, we can pass this on to the charities and organisations so that they can wrap the gifts once checked.

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That’s great news. If you manage to collect extra gifts, please kindly label these gifts if possible with a sticker stating an age and gender. We can then make sure they are allocated to charities with emergencies over Christmas.

If you are running a Mini Appeal and have collected additional gifts please email the Secret Santa team at team@secretsantaappeal.org.uk to let us know your final numbers collected.

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We partner with a number of local charities and organisations that work with disadvantaged families, young people and children, but we are always interested in hearing from others we may be able to help. Please complete our online registration form and we will contact you to discuss how we can help.

WE DO NOT HANDLE DIRECT REQUESTS FOR GIFTS FROM THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

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We only accept requests for gifts from charities and local authority agencies who work with disadvantaged families and children on a daily basis. The Secret Santa Appeal is fundamentally a secret appeal whereby families and their children hopefully do not know where the gifts come from.

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If you have any further questions which are not answered above, please email team@secretsantaappeal.org.uk. Our team work full-time so may not be able to respond instantly, but someone will come back to you as soon as possible.

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