Doing something funny for money
Does a bit of Comic Relief on a Giving Tuesday help all charities or just some?
Comic Relief is the second-largest independent grant-maker in the UK, with BBC Children in Need standing at number seven[1]. In 2013/14 Comic Relief gave grants totalling over £103 million, and BBC Children in Need distributed nearly £44 million. Both have their roots in the 1980s following the landmark Live Aid event of 1985 which raised millions from ordinary people up and down the country for starving children in Africa.
Today, Comic Relief and Children in Need still raise much-needed funding for overseas development, but also disperse grants across the UK to needy children. Comic Relief received more than 2,000 applications for funding in 2014/15 and awarded 393 new grants– 281 in the UK and 112 overseas. Critically, both Children in Need and Comic Relief fund in some of the UK’s most deprived areas: for example, in some of the poorest London boroughs and the North East[2].
Everyone seems to love these charity appeals, and Comic Relief has also been voted the top charity employer people would like to work for, and the most ‘exciting’ place to work[3]; and is regularly at the forefront of innovation in fundraising (think text donations, Web 2.0, social media campaigns and #twitrelief - auctioning off celebrities to follow you on Twitter).
One thing is certain, the rolling juggernauts which are BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief are steaming ahead, seemingly unstoppable. Comic Relief has proved to be recession-proof by ‘doing something funny for money’[4]. In fact, 2009 proved to be a record-breaking year for Children in Need, Comic Relief and the London Marathon, while other charities suffered.
So, are these major fundraisers an unmitigated success, bringing more money into the UK charity sector and increase the pot for everyone? Well, not exactly. Evidence shows that although 10% of the population give to Comic Relief Red Nose Day, the overall level of giving to charity has remained the same over the last 30 years[5]. This suggests that people adjust the amount of money they give to other causes when they give to Comic Relief, Children in Need or another major fundraiser.
And, like any successful entity, Comic Relief and its counterparts have attracted other criticisms: for taking too long to process donations[6], for their total domination of the UK’s charity media coverage, suspicion of unethical investments[7], and for concentrating money into ‘popular’ causes which are heavily featured in such high-profile media events. Many small charities, for example, feel that they are squeezed out of the running in the London Marathon by larger charities which monopolise the allocation system.
Comic Relief argues that this is not the case for them, despite focussing all their efforts on one cause - children and young people:
"We are in a privileged position, but we are complementary to the rest of the sector. We raise awareness about issues and reach out to supporters who don't normally give to charity."[8] Karl Reynolds, head of fundraising, Comic Relief
Comic Relief highlights many less popular causes within the children and young people umbrella – things like carers, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and HIV/Aids and urban slums in Africa. Additionally, the Philanthropy Review noted how well campaigns such as Comic Relief engage schoolchildren and young givers[9], with Comic Relief reporting that 20,000 schools and Early Years projects took part in 2009. Younger donors tend to be attracted to celebrity-endorsed, high media profile, high-tech ways of giving as well as responding to the fun element of fundraising.
What all these kinds of giving have in common, whether it’s giving or doing something for major appeals such as Comic Relief, Children in Need or sponsorship of / running in events such as the London Marathon, or giving to disaster appeals, is that people who might not otherwise give in any structured or planned way to charity will give and take part. Appeals appeal to younger donors and those with less to give: impulsive and one-off donors. In terms of a democracy of giving, this is a good thing, although it may not raise as much money as it would from higher earners. But what we need to learn from these occasions is how to hook these spontaneous donors into patterns of more planned and regular giving.
With individual donations falling to their lowest level for seven years, according to UK Giving 2015[10], we need to do something to raise the tide for all ships; capturing the enthusiasm that donors show for Red Nose Day and Children in Need for more causes. Successful campaigns such as #GivingTuesday, which encourage people to give extra to the cause of their choice on one day in December, may be one way to do this. The ‘biggest ever day of grassroots giving’ in the UK[11] is only in its third year in the UK in 2016, and is still relatively small. But if it rises to become anything like its US counterpart (reported to have raised $116 million for charities in 2015) then we might want to nail our flags to its mast.
But that doesn’t mean we should stop supporting the mega charitythons. They definitely have their place, and, as Comic Relief’s founder Richard Curtis is fond of saying: "Cynics' Nose Day hasn't raised any money yet."[12]
[1] According to ‘Giving Trends: Top 300 foundation grant-makers’ 2015: ACF, CGAP & Pears Foundation.
[2] Garfield Weston Foundation: ‘An insight into the future of charity funding in the North East’, 2014. CGAP @ Cass.
[3] http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/comic-relief-tops-list-charity-employers/communications/article/1110268
[4] http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/comic-relief-final-figure-defies-recession/fundraising/article/917308; http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/comic-relief-beat-blues/fundraising/article/917972
[5] ‘THE NEW STATE OF DONATION: THREE DECADES OF HOUSEHOLD GIVING TO CHARITY 1978 – 2008’ CGAP with the Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO).
[6] http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/pledge-comic-relief-took-10-weeks-process/article/616985
[7] In 2013, Panorama aired a programme entitled “All in a Good Cause” which claimed that Comic Relief held considerable investments in the tobacco and arms industries. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25273024
[8] http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/comic-relief-beat-blues/fundraising/article/917972
[9] The Philanthropy Review: ‘A call to action to encourage more people to give and people to give more: Recommendations from the Philanthropy Review, June 2011’.
[10] https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/personal-giving/caf_ukgiving2015_1891a_web_230516.pdf?sfvrsn=2 : The 2015 figure was equal to that recorded in 2009, according to a spokesman for CAF, although he said the year-on-year fall was "within the margin of error" and should not be regarded as overly significant.
[11]http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/fundraising/news/content/20889/givingtuesday_biggest_ever_day_of_giving_as_donations_surge_35_per_cent_in_the_uk
[12] http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/editorial-onward-march-comic-relief/communications/article/894820