Christmas Cheer Board thousands of dollars below holiday target

The Christmas Cheer Board says by this time last year, it had received thousands of dollars more in donations than it has in 2015.

Although southern Manitoba has definitely cooled off in the last couple of weeks, the Winnipeg charity said the temperate conditions leading up to the Christmas seasonwere fooling people into thinking the holidays werestill a long ways away. That led to adecline in average hamper and monetary donations.

"It's very nice we can go around in our shirt sleeves, but the mindset we sort of have to deal with is a little different than what we're accustomed to," Kai Madsen, executive director at the charity, told CBC News. "Really,people didn't start thinking aboutChristmasuntil it was almost here."

Madsen said the delayed onset of coldweatherhas impacted both the number ofpeople makingdonations and the number of peopleregistering to receive aholiday hamper. He added18,182 hampers have been requested this year, down from18,300 last holiday season.

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"There's a huge pressure on our system to make sure everything gets processed, so we had to do a little scrambling," Madsen said. "But we're coming up, we're very close to what I expected at this time."

"It is very busy.... We've got a lineup, people are picking them up," he said.

As for monetary donations, the cheer board said it's about $17,000 below where it was in the days before Christmas 2014.

"We're at $406,000raised, compared to $423,000last year at the same time," he said.

"A lot of things happen after we get over the rush. There's schools, churches, businesses who have little projects within their group to raise money on our behalf and some of that doesn't arrive until afterChristmas. The easiest way to make sure we're on target is to say, 'OK, on this date last year where were we?'And we're a little behind."

More information about how to donate to the Christmas Cheer Board is available on its website.