Our 24th Dallas Morning News Charities campaign ended last week on a high note.

The campaign received $1,224,044 in donations from 1,992 contributors, and that represents a large increase over last year's total of $927,982. Since 1986, our readers have given more than $20.5 million to this effort.

One hundred percent of your gifts go directly to selected agencies to address issues of the homeless and hungry in our community. We take no money out for administrative costs.

Those agencies serve the needy in the most pressing areas of metropolitan Dallas by providing food, shelter, clothing and other assistance.

When we launched this year's campaign on Nov. 26, there was more than a little anxiety about whether economic realities would affect giving as they did last year.

Fortunately, from the earliest days of the drive, we ran ahead of 2008-09 numbers.

We will publish an end-of-campaign special report in next Sunday's paper featuring the many successes of the campaign. I hope you will look it over.