Your Good Deed in the Advent Calendar

24guteTaten e.V. supports fundraising for non-profit organizations with a donation Advent Calendar. The principle: Behind each of the 24 calendar doors are concrete social and environmental projects, all supported by a one-time donation starting at 24 euros. Behind each door, the participating organizations describe their 'good deed.' Detailed project information is also available on the website. The calendar is available in German and English.
Donations collected through the Advent Calendar are allocated 75% to charitable purposes and 25% to administration and marketing. After deducting the charitable costs of 24guteTaten e.V., the remaining donations are distributed evenly across the calendar projects. In the past, for example, one door has financed a cocoa plant for a small farmer in El Salvador, a day of internet access for a refugee home in Germany, or a tetanus vaccination for a child in the Philippines.

24guteTaten e.V. funds 24 projects worldwide each year in the areas of:

• Nature and environmental protection
• Provision & nutrition
• Health
• Education

The following organizations are funded:

• Organizations recognized as non-profit in Germany (or in the German-speaking, European region). Projects themselves can be implemented abroad.
• Organizations engaged in sustainable (development) cooperation.
• Organizations committed to a transparent, accessible presentation of their project work, funds, and impact (e.g., according to criteria of the Initiative for a Transparent Civil Society, the German Donations Council, Social Reporting Standards, VENRO quality criteria, DZI donation seal standards, or PHINEO impact seal). Possession of a donation seal is not required for inclusion in the calendar. However, signing and implementing the requirements of the Initiative for a Transparent Civil Society is mandatory for funding by 24guteTaten.

Explicitly excluded from funding are:

• Organizations with political objectives

What we are looking for:

• Projects that address a clearly identifiable problem.
• Projects with a clear objective.
• Projects where a 68 cent contribution per door can be allocated to a concrete purpose.
• Projects whose effectiveness has already been proven by proper studies or institutes are preferred.
• Projects that ideally have secured funding beyond 24guteTaten support.
• Projects funded by 24guteTaten should not be a single intervention but part of a larger concept.

We do not fund already completed projects or general administrative tasks. Projects may, however, be implemented by partner organizations abroad. These can be named in the application process.

Please note that according to recommendations of international aid organizations we do NOT collect donations for the support of orphanages.

Key selection criteria are transparency, impact orientation, and a coherent project concept. For project selection, we set various priorities to test whether the proposed project fits the general conceptual framework of the Advent Calendar and whether the good deed is impact-oriented.

Specifically, we check in the applications whether the organization can clearly identify its target group; whether it presents the causes and effects of the problem addressed by the good deed in a differentiated way; whether it demonstrates how the good deed creates medium- and long-term positive change for the target group; and whether it embeds its project in a long-term strategy.

Ideally, the organization has secured long-term financing from multiple sources. We also check whether the submitted texts are interesting, clear, and engaging.

We aim to make the selection process for good deeds as objective and transparent as possible. For this purpose, we developed an online form to select applications using a point system. Several evaluators can participate in the form simultaneously. Parts of the form are randomized, meaning it always selects a random section of an application for evaluation so that individual steps are assessed independently. This promotes objectivity in the evaluation.

Each application is evaluated multiple times by different people, then an average score is calculated from the various evaluations. The resulting ranking serves as the basis for subsequent team selection discussions.

The first application step is evaluated by the 24guteTaten team. In the second application step, however, all applicants from round 2 can additionally participate. In the online form, individuals can read parts of an application and evaluate them based on predefined criteria. One point is awarded for each fulfilled criterion. The online form is designed so that applicants cannot evaluate their own applications.

The final decision on project funding is made by the 24guteTaten team. A preselection is presented to an expert jury, with whom the applications are discussed.