FAQs

Be Someone's Santa is a registered Scottish chairty that works in partnership with Glasgow Health & Social Care Partnership. Our annual appeal aims to provide Christmas gifts for specifically nominated children and young people who are unlikely to receive anything at Christmas time.

Gifts are provided to some of Glasgow's most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, young people, and families across the South of Glasgow, although in the last two years of our appeal, we have also managed to cover allocations across the East and North of Glasgow too. 

You can register to be allocated a child/young person at https://besomeonessanta.org.uk/. You will be asked to include your name, email, and contact number. Upon successful submission of the registration form, the page will refresh to display a unique 4-digit PIN code (this will also be emailed to you). Please keep a note of this code as you will need it to obtain your allocated child/young person's age and gender. To find your allocated child/young person's details, go to our lookup and input your PIN code and the email address you registered with. Your child/young person's age and gender will be displayed.

IMPORTANT: Once you have retrieved your information, please check the 'received' box so we know you have your child/young person's details.

We aim to allocate within 24-48 hours of registering. To find your allocated child/young person's details, go to our lookup and input your PIN code and the email address you registered with. Your child/young person's age and gender will be displayed.

IMPORTANT: Once you have retrieved your information, please check the 'received' box so we know you have your child/young person's details.

Our 2024 appeal has now ended and our public drop offs are now closed. 

Sorry, we're unable to guarantee that we will be able to allocate you a preferred age and gender due to the volume of children/young people in need. If you have a preference however, please state this when you register, and we will try our best to accommodate if we can.

Yes, you can select the number of children/young people you wish to buy for from the drop down when you register.

We suggest a budget of no less than £20 per gift. 

We are aware however that not everyone will be in a position financially to spend this amount due to the rise in cost of living many of us are facing. We would hate for anyone wishing to take part to feel unable to do so and would encourage anyone who wishes to take part, but is unable to meet the suggested minimum gift value to get in touch with us. 

Please know, every gift is gratefully received regardless of its value and we often have extras donated which we use to top up bags (if needed) to ensure siblings receive similar value of gifts.

We will also be taking smaller financial donations this year for those wishing to support in this way. 

We also run a special requests list for families who are in greater need. In these cases, a higher budget would be allocated so if you would like to sign up for a special request you can do so by emailing us at [email protected] or you can note your interest in a special request when registering.

Unfortunately, we cannot give specifics on every child/young person due to the high volume of children and young people nominated. The social work team also need to ensure confidentiality is maintained for these children/young people and families. Please be assured though that we match up gift bag contents to the recipient as best we can. (e.g., if we have a bag that contains a football or art sets, the social workers will give this to a child/young person they know of who has these interests).

Our Facebook group is also a great place to share gift ideas for specific ages and genders. 

Yes, there is a selection of vouchers that are great for our older children and teenagers.

Please note: If you are purchasing a voucher, can we ask that you include the receipt with it. This means if there's an issue with the gift card, the recipients have a way to prove the value. 

These vouchers/gift cards have been popular in the past and are a great way for teenagers to be able to be social with their pals when funds might not usually support this. ❤

• Kids Choice
• Teen Choice
• Greggs / Nandos / Costa Coffee
• Cinema (Odeon, Cineworld)
• Other experiential vouchers (e.g. crazy golf, FlipOut etc.)
• Amazon
• JD Sports
• Primark

We would kindly ask that all gifts are placed in a gift bag with your 4-digit code, age and gender clearly marked. This allows us to ensure your gift goes to the correct team and allows us to do a quick check to ensure safety and appropriateness of the gift. While we're sure nobody would knowingly provide an unsuitable gift, we have in the past had incidents where some items not intended for the recipient have accidentally made their way into the gift.

Note: We appreciate that unwrapping a gift is part of the joy of Christmas, so if you would like to include wrapping paper in your gift bag for the parent/carer to use, that is fine.

While this is a lovely idea, we encourage people who are gifting not to write personal notes from themselves. Feel free to write "from Santa" if it's age appropriate for the child/young person. I know this may feel unfair, but we would prefer to avoid the recipients feeling any embarrassment from receiving a charity gift.

Unfortunately, not. The recipients of Be Someone's Santa are specifically nominated by a variety of family support services who have been assessed as meeting the criteria for requiring support at Christmas. We cover a wide range of different areas within the appeal and aim to support as many vulnerable children/young people as we can. We would be unable to manage or govern individual nominations from members of the public.