Comic Relief's Red Nose Day campaign grew out of a desire to harness the talents of entertainers, especially comics, to make a positive change to the lives of disadvantaged people. Many comics have a strong sense of justice: this motivates many who take part in charity fundraising.

For Sport Relief, the association with sport means the potential for teamwork, challenge, international community, a sense of pushing yourself to the limit, which inspires people to step out of their comfort zone in aid of charity.

Eddie Izzard, an actor and comedian with no special athletic ability, ran a lonely, painful, awe-inspiring 43 marathons in 51 days. He raised over a million pounds for Sport Relief. James Corden took a considerable risk by performing an epic solo comedy sketch before thousands of sportsmen and women at the Sheffield Arena - a one take wonder with only a minute of recording time to spare. Christine Bleakley water-skied across the Channel and Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton kayaked 2010 miles down the River Amazon for Sport Relief, breaking two world records in the process.

I was one of many people massively moved by Chris Moyles' film from a malaria clinic in Uganda where tiny babies were being given emergency treatment. Chris allowed the audience to share his feelings in the bleakest of circumstances. This was very different from Chris' usual style on Radio 1's breakfast show. BT handled 386,978 calls to the donation line during the live TV show, peaking at 210 calls per second.

But apart from the celebrities, there were the less famous contributors, who raised money or donated. There were runners in South Africa, in Manchester's Coronation Street set, around Television Centre and in local parks. There were films about inspirational local leaders in Africa and across the UK, and doctors and nurses working in daunting and difficult circumstances, all carrying out the work funded by Comic Relief.

In a less spectacular way, the BBC's other appeals continue throughout the year. Radio Merseyside has just launched an appeal for mobile clinics for the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre. BBC One's Lifeline is currently filming with Sandy Toksvig and a charity called Five Talents, showing how it supports microfinance in Tanzania. You'll be able to see the programme on 23 May.

[This is my last blog as BBC Charity Appeals Adviser, as I'm moving on to work as Chief Adviser for BBC North.]

The total raised by the DEC now stands at over £70m. This is far more than most emergency appeals. Typically, an emergency appeal will raise £10-20m; the most recent exception being the 2005 East Asia Earthquake Appeal, which received around £60m in donations. And, of course, the 2005 Tsunami Appeal raised an extraordinary £300m. Lessons learnt from post-Tsunami disaster relief are being applied to the way agencies are now working in Haiti. Their priorities are moving from immediate aid to reconstruction and recovery: money donated to the DEC Haiti Appeal will be spent over three years, a longer period than usual.

But it's not just the DEC appeal which is current. Sport Relief is in the run-up to an appeal on 19th March. And Blue Peter is looking for a charity partner for its 2011/12 appeal.

The BBC's newest appeal, the BBC Wildlife Fund, is facing some interesting challenges. The programme supporting the appeal will go out on BBC Two on Sunday June 20th. This is a very different slot from BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief - typically a Friday night on BBC One, and a great deal of work is going into how to make the programme 'appeal' to a BBC Two audience. There's also the small matter of a World Cup match between Brazil and Ivory Coast which takes place at the same time, potentially splitting a family audience.

With four months to go, the production team is starting to shoot the films which will tell audiences how the £1.8m raised from the 2006 BBC Wildlife Fund Appeal was spent. Charity staff are putting together off-air events and promotions. The BBC's interactive technical team (ITACU) is looking at how the telephony and donation systems will work. There's new branding; fundraising packs are being assembled. The BBC Wildlife Fund will benefit from the experience of the more established appeals, but crucially, in the run up to the appeal, it will need to find its own distinctive ways to move and involve the audience.

I'm writing this from one of the editing suites at Television Centre. The Producer and Editor are choosing shots to go in today's DEC Appeal for the Haiti Earthquake. Anyone watching the Appeal can't fail to be aware of appalling situation, but putting the pictures together really brings things home.

During the day the BBC will broadcast over 70 appeals for the disaster, across radio and television and also online. The first appeal was at 8 o'clock this morning on Radio 3 - there will also be appeals on channels as varied as BBC One, BBC Parliament, the HD Channel, BBC Alba and all the local radio stations.

Because of the scale of the Appeal, over a hundred BBC staff will also be involved, often doing quite small things, but all contributing to the overall impact of the Appeal. There are the radio and television producers, schedulers, web designers, presenters. Yesterday a lawyer volunteered, not to do legal work, but to sort out stills for web pages. Everyone says 'yes' when they are asked.

Back to the editing: The BBC has Editorial Policy and Guidelines which apply to all our output, we also have to comply with our Charter obligations.

For appeals, the guidelines most relevant are usually taste and decency and impartiality. For taste and decency, there's a fine line to be drawn between giving the audience information about the appalling plight of people affected by a disaster and respecting the dignity of those who are suffering.

There's also the issue of how graphic an image of suffering we can show, especially before the watershed. At the moment we're looking at a picture of a man lying on the ground. His hips, arms and legs are clearly broken and there's plenty of blood. The picture could go out in the BBC News at Ten, but probably not in the BBC News at Six, and not in our Appeal, as several of the transmissions are also before the watershed. Impartiality is not an issue for this appeal.

There are also criteria specifically for emergency appeals, which are agreed between the broadcasters and the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). These are:

1) The disaster must be on such a scale and of such urgency as to call for swift international humanitarian assistance.
2) The DEC agencies, or some of them, must be in a position to provide effective and swift humanitarian assistance at a scale to justify a national Appeal.
3) There must be reasonable grounds for concluding that a public appeal would be successful, either because of evidence of existing public sympathy for the humanitarian situation or because there is a compelling case indicating the likelihood of significant public support should an appeal be launched.

The first criterion is primarily about need. For this appeal, the need is evidenced on our screens and by governments and the humanitarian agencies. A second consideration is how much money is needed, i.e. are other organisations funding aid effort? In the case of Haiti, a huge amount of money is promised. However, the need is so great it cannot even be measured at this stage.

On a personal level, my own donation feels like a drop in the ocean. But it means I'm part of trying to make things better for people in Haiti. I would only hope that people watching the appeal feel the same way.

The second criterion is about the ability of the agencies to deliver aid on the ground. Things that get in the way of this can be physical access: this is the case in Haiti. For some emergencies, there may be government opposition to foreign aid, or a weak infrastructure. In Haiti, aid agencies have been working in the country for many years - they know the area and the people which will make a very difficult task easier.

The third criterion is about public sympathy. If we ask our audience, will they want to donate?

We're asking.

In fact, the total money raised for the studio night wasn't bigger than the previous year's. Just after 2 o'clock on Friday morning, it was confirmed that a fantastic £20,309,747 had been raised. The total was slightly down on last year, but very impressive in the current climate. The audience had been the highest since 2003.

There's an assumption that every year the BBC's charity appeals will make more and more money. But the reality is that each year Children in Need starts with nothing and it takes hard work and innovation from both the charity and the BBC to raise the money. In the run-up to the broadcast appeal this year there'd been intense speculation inside and outside the BBC, and especially amongst other charities, about how the night would go. At a time of deep recession, would the public still dig deep into their pockets?

In all the speculation about the amount raised, it's easy to forget that raising money is only part of the picture - making people aware of the problems and issues facing children across the UK and actually spending the money to change their lives for the better is the other crucial part.

Charities have been affected in different ways by the recession. For some, the need for their services has never been greater. Others, those with a large proportion of statutory funding, may be less affected. Charities which derive much of their income from interest on investments feel the impact of the recession keenly. But charities like Children in Need and Comic Relief, which get nearly all their money from public donations, want to know if, when times are hard, people will still donate.

One of the reasons people donate to BBC appeals is that audiences trust the BBC to check out the charities it broadcasts appeals for. The charities we support should be well run, sustainable, have real impact and the money raised must go where the BBC said it would. My role as the BBC's Charity Appeals Advisor is to make sure this happens.

The BBC can't make people donate to charity, nor should it, but it does provide opportunities to donate. One of the recent new opportunities is texting. Earlier this year there was a breakthrough when text service providers agreed to set up special charity numbers - the 7 codes and tariffs. This breakthrough meant that a healthy £1.5m plus Gift Aid was raised during Thursday night's Albert Hall rock concert.

So now all of us - programme-makers, fundraisers, donors great and small, and children's projects across the UK - wait for Children in Need's grand total. We won't know this until March. Can the BBC and its audience - an audience which each year raises up to £100m for charity - beat last year's Children in Need total of over £37m? I'll stick my neck out and say I believe we can come very close. Over and over again I'm humbled by the generosity of our audience.

At any given time, a wide variety of appeals are being planned or broadcast. For example, the BBC's newest charity, the BBC Wildlife Fund, is working on a BBC Two appeal which will go out early in the summer next year and will look and feel very different from Children in Need and Comic Relief. At BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester they're searching for a charity partner for an appeal which will involve and inspire their audience for the whole of 2010. And Blue Peter is running the Send a Smile Appeal, encouraging its young audience to make T-shirts into medical gowns, to support cleft repair operations for children in India. I'll let you know how they get on.