The Portland Press Herald’s annual holiday gift program is kicking off this year with the goal of raising $300,000 to provide gifts to more than 7,000 boys and girls in five Maine counties.

The program is changing its name to the Portland Press Herald Toy Fund to raise its visibility and help with fundraising. It used to be known as the Bruce Roberts Toy Fund, a reference to the pen name of the Portland Evening Express editor who started the program in 1949.

The program also has a new distributor, meaning there will be a new selection of gifts for recipients. And officials said the program will be more assertive in promoting the effort in order to boost fundraising.

“Things will be different this year,” said Kathleen Meade, executive director of the program.

One thing that isn’t changing, she said, is the underlying goal: to make sure that every needy child in Cumberland, York, Sagadahoc, Lincoln and Knox counties has something for the holidays.

Parents can get an application at pressheraldtoyfund.org. Arrangements will be made to get the gifts into the hands of the applicants, allowing them to wrap the gifts themselves and put them out when they wish, so children know they are from Santa or the parents themselves.

Donations can also be made on the website or checks can be made out to the Portland Press Herald Toy Fund and mailed to P.O. Box 7310, Portland, ME 04112.

Meade said that with a new distributor this year, the gifts will include “things that fly and hop and make noise.” She joked that the volunteers who make the program work “are having lots of fun” with the new lineup.

Because of postal snafus last year, the fund raised only slightly more than $100,000, less than half of the typical amount.

Meade said donors were apparently confused about where to send contributions, using old addresses for the newspaper or even the site of the fund’s relocated warehouse in Freeport, where mail isn’t delivered.

As a result, some of the mail containing donations was returned to donors or ended up in the dead letter office at the post office.

By linking the fund to the Portland Press Herald name and stepping up fundraising efforts, the program aims to make up for the falloff in donations that occurred last year, said Stefanie Manning, vice president of marketing at the Press Herald, who serves as president of the toy fund.

“Most people don’t know of the connection” between the paper and the fund, which highlights the Press Herald’s annual “give-back” effort, Manning said. “Putting our name on it enhances the visibility.”

Manning said the fund is also seeking to do more to solicit donations, from selling baked goods and hot chocolate at next Friday’s tree-lighting at Monument Square to partnering with the Portland Symphony Orchestra to raise funds at the “Magic of Christmas” shows.

She said the fund will also be the featured beneficiary at a Portland Red Claws basketball game before Christmas.

Meade said her personal goal is to re-create some of the magic she remembers from her childhood.

“When I was a kid, we would go to midnight Mass and we’d come home and the tree would be decorated and Santa would have come – how they did that, I still don’t know,” she said.

The fund, she said, lets parents hit hard by lost jobs, illnesses or other financial setbacks create that same sense of wonder at holiday time.

Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com