About us
The idea
In the winter of 2010, Sebastian Wehkamp was combing through Christmas markets, shops and the Internet in search for an advent calendar as a gift for his girlfriend. But all he could find was chocolate, kitsch and calendars that he didn’t like.
That gave him the idea, and came to the decision: If there is no advent calendar that you can feel good about giving to people, then he would just have to invent one!
Together with his sister Johanna Wehkamp and with Ester Altorfer, he founded soon after the association 24guteTaten e.V. (24GoodDeeds).
Ever since, the association and an ever-growing demand has been designing and producing an advent calendar year by year that makes good deeds into a reality!
24guteTaten e.V. is guided by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and supports carefully selected projects in the categories environment, nutrition, health care and education.
Mission
Our mission is to support projects all over the world that promote a more just world and sustainable development. That requires the trust of a large number of donors, and so we want to give many people the opportunity to make meaningful donations to organisations that are transparent, reliable and impact-oriented in their work.
Vision
The advent calendar that does good and gives people joy.
We are convinced that you don’t have to make people feel guilty to convince them to donate. Don’t we all know that spreading joy is a very happy experience? Especially if you can be sure where the money goes and what it achieves long-term?
Therefore: “Doing good brings happiness” – both for the donor and the people who benefit from the donation.
Principles and values
In order for you the donor to get the most out of this experience, 24GoodDeeds aims to make donating easy. To that end, we are guided by the following core principles and values.
- Diligence. Our multiple-stage selection process allows us to carefully select the projects. Learn more
- Trustworthiness. Donors can be sure that their donation will be used for exactly the purpose stated behind the calendar door. 24GoodDeeds makes a binding contract with the partner organisations on how the donation is to be used and verifies that they meet their obligation.
- Transparency. 24GoodDeeds themselves are committed to a high degree of transparency when it comes to how the donations are used. And we make the same demands of our partner organisations.
- Impact. 24GoodDeeds carefully selects projects that have a long-term strategy when it comes to their impact. Donors can access this strategy via the websites of the individual projects.
- Diversity. Because of the wide range of projects, donors do not have to limit themselves to just a single project, but can support 24 first-class projects at the same time.
- Neutrality. 24GoodDeeds does not support projects that make political or faith-based preconditions for their charitable work.
- Fairness. Every year, 24GoodDeeds publishes a new call for projects and then selects the best ones in a multi-stage process. Projects that have been in the calendar before have no advantage in this process.
- Engagement. Without the wide range of (voluntary) involvement of the members of our team, 24GoodDeeds would not be possible.
How we work
In the meantime, we as an association can look back on eight years of steady growth and 1.5 million euros in collected donations. The members of the association are all volunteers. As of 2014, we have been employing one part-time member of staff, who is in charge of the project coordination.
Sebastian Wehkamp continues to head the project on a voluntary basis.
Our wish for the future is that every household has a 24GoodDeeds advent calendar, thereby allowing the finding of many more solutions to the current social and environmental challenges of our world.
