During Hunger Day, we collect donations for the Disaster Relief Fund. With the help of donations, we can provide help quickly and effectively where the need for aid is greatest at the time. The box collection will hit the streets in Finland on 26–28 September 2024.

It is easy to make a donation, and you can choose between many different methods. Companies that make a donation will receive a link to communication materials.

Donate online

Account information: OP FI52 5000 0120 4156 73. Recipient: Finnish Red Cross. Reference number: 5186.

The Hunger Day collection is best known for the volunteer box collectors wearing red vests in the streets. Have you seen how happy they are to help and work together?

The Hunger Day box collection will hit the streets in Finland on 26–28 September 2024. You can volunteer conveniently in your own home town. Come and join us!

Find a Hunger Day event in your location

You can also set up an online collection for your company and invite members of staff, stakeholders and customers to help.

Set up your own online fundraiser

For companies, Hunger Day is an opportunity to demonstrate responsibility as part of their business operations. Companies can provide their customers an opportunity to participate in Hunger Day by making a donation in connection with buying a product or service.

Hunger Day is the most prominent and visible campaign by the Red Cross. It brings comfort to people in crises and extraordinary circumstances – both in Finland and abroad.

Campaign partnership is valued at a minimum of €50,000.

Contact us, let’s talk more about your company’s wishes!

contact details: Tuuli Lahti, Fundraising Specialist, +358 (0)40 359 3938 or yritykset@redcross.fi

The Hunger Day collection is best known for the volunteer box collectors wearing red vests in the streets. Next they will be taking to the streets to collect donations throughout Finland during the period 26–28 September 2024.

Why not deck your website out in red too?

With the addition of an overlay banner, your website can also serve as a volunteer box collector by asking your visitors when they arrive on your website if they would be willing to get involved in Hunger Day and make a donation. You can choose from Finnish, Swedish or English as the default language for your site.

Visitors to your site will only be shown the Hunger Day collection box once, and it will not prevent them from continuing to your site as normal. Afterwards, they can return to the donation page through a small button shown on your website. This button will be visible to visitors until it has been clicked on once.

Have a look at what the notice looks like (site in Finnish)

Add the code to your website on the morning of Thursday 26 September so that visitors see the donation request as soon as the box collection event starts.

Please make sure to test out the code on your site in advance, so that, if necessary, you are able to call upon support from technical partners or IT experts with implementing and removing the overlay banner from your site.

View the code and instructions here (site in Finnish)

This service is provided by Esmes Digital Studio.

If you have any questions or problems with the installation or functionality of the JavaScript code, please contact support@esmes.fi

Make a donation and join us in the aid work. Companies that donate more than 400 euros can download the communication package for the donor.

You will get access to social media images and a signature banner that you can use to communicate your social responsibility contribution to your customers and other stakeholders.

Example of communication material

When you donate online, you will receive an email titled ‘Thank you for your donation to the Finnish Red Cross.’ A link to the materials is provided in the same email.

Do not hesitate to contact us

We would be happy to answer any questions you may have about company donations and our products. Please contact us if you make the donation in any other way, and we will provide you with a link to the communication materials.

Contact us by email at lahjoitukset@redcross.fi or call +358 (0)20 701 2192 (Mon–Fri 8.30 am–4.00 pm). 

You can also set up an online collection for your company and invite members of staff, interest groups and customers to help. Your companies can donate a nest egg, for example, or double the sum donated by the staff.

The fundraiser is easy and quick to set up. See the instructions.

Set up your own fundraiser

Approximately 90% of the donations to the Disaster Relief Fund come from private donors. Your support is essential!

In addition to donors, the aid projects of the Finnish Red Cross are funded by e.g the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO). Since all projects require a funding share from the Disaster Relief Fund, aid work would not be possible without our donors.

We warmly thank you for your help!

The Disaster Relief Fund is not committed to any specific target, meaning that funds can be directed to crisis areas with short notice. When a hurricane wreaks havoc, a drought destroys all chances for normal life or life at a refugee camp becomes unbearable, donations save lives.

Emergency aid means taking care of the basic necessities: clean water, food, soap, blankets, tarpaulins and health care for people who have lost everything. We can also send a field hospital or equipment and support for building IT connections in a crisis area. We deliver aid in cooperation with the local Red Cross or Red Crescent society.

The Disaster Relief Fund also supports development cooperation. We help the community affected by a crisis get back on its feet, prepare for any new crises and deal with them as efficiently as possible.

The need for help can surprise any of us at any time. The Disaster Relief Fund also allows us to help people with emergencies in Finland. For example, people who have lost their homes in fires can receive emergency aid, such as emergency accommodation, clothes and hygiene supplies and psychosocial support.

Donations made for the Disaster Relief Fund ensure that trained volunteers are always ready to provide aid across Finland in sudden accidents and exceptional circumstances. During the coronavirus epidemic, volunteers have helped vulnerable people by distributing food aid and running errands for people in high-risk groups.

The fund also supports the Voluntary Rescue Service that helps the authorities e.g. in finding missing persons.

Here are some examples of what money can buy.

In Finland:

• €50: training in psychosocial support for a volunteer
• €180: clothes for a person who has lost their home in a fire

A preparedness unit on a trailer: When helping in emergencies, the volunteers bring a mobile preparedness unit with them. These units are located all around Finland, and donations to the Disaster Relief Fund are used to equip them:

• €5: a blanket
• €13: a metal petrol canister
• €87: a carrier gurney for the injured
• €149: a cordless drill

Around the world:

• €9: a food package for a family for a week in a disaster area
• €17: a maternity package in the middle of a disaster
• €60: antibiotics for thirty children

Field hospitals can be sent to a disaster area anywhere in the world. The hospital supplies are acquired through donations:

• €4.4: an iron supplement for after giving birth
• €100: a suture kit
• €620: an otoscope kit with one year’s worth of supplies
• €4,100: a patient monitor with additional supplies for an operating room
• €29,000: an operating table with additional equipment

The collection expenses of the Disaster Relief Fund must not exceed 20 per cent. This means that at least 80% of the donations are used for aid work.

The amount of collection expenses is monitored by the board and council of the Finnish Red Cross. Collection expenses are expenses caused from acquiring the donations, such as the printing and mailing costs of donation request letters, acquisition costs of the collection equipment, marketing costs, and fees collected by external service providers, including operators and banks.

The rules of the Disaster Relief Fund and its monitoring regulate the use of the donated funds.

In addition to life-saving aid supplies and their delivery costs, the Disaster Relief Fund can cover the salary costs of Finnish Red Cross aid workers operating in disaster and crisis areas. Such helpers include doctors, nurses and logisticians working in the areas. The Finnish Red Cross does not carry out international aid operations from Finland using volunteers. 

In the target countries, the share of aid workers and local volunteers depends on the situation and task at hand. For example, a field hospital clinic has a 50/50 share between hired employees and volunteers, whereas aid distribution can have one employee responsible for organising the work per 50 volunteers responsible for distribution. 

Of the permanent staff of the Finnish Red Cross, only employees working on fundraising are paid from the Disaster Relief Fund collection profits. The salaries of other staff in Finland are funded from several sources, such as the sales profits of Finnish Red Cross products, membership fees, and funding from various ministries and STEA.

In Finland, Red Cross employees support volunteers in their tasks. The aid work itself is carried out by volunteers, apart from a couple of exceptions. These include tasks in crisis situations that require trained psychologists.

Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers around the world take part voluntarily, out of a desire to help.

The rules of the Disaster Relief Fund and the strict control regulate the use of the donated funds. The accounting of the Finnish Red Cross is audited project-specifically every year, and an annual audit is required from other national associations of the Red Cross. Risk management is essential, because the international Red Cross movement operates in almost all countries in the world, and every country has its own operating culture.

We also analyse our cooperation partners, evaluate their capacity to monitor misconducts, and carry out monitoring ourselves. If the operations do not meet our expectations, we train our cooperation partner to develop their operations. If that does not help, we will withdraw our cooperation. This, also, is development cooperation by the Red Cross.

The Finnish Red Cross has permanent representatives at some aid targets, others we check once a year or more frequently as necessary.

If the target has an external funder, their representatives will visit the aid target to check that reports are accurate and money is spent as agreed.

We also strictly make sure that aid supplies go to those in the greatest need.