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NOT ALL CHARITY APPEALS get our vote. Some don’t think too hard about who they give their money to. Others don’t check the money has been used properly. Others send out confusing messages about admin costs.
But Comic Relief (read profile [0]) doesn’t seem to commit any of these sins. Our research shows that you can happily jump in a bath of jelly, knowing that:
- Comic Relief gives grants to un-sexy charities - and does so with care. Most of the money goes to carefully chosen, small, less popular charities (for example, ones helping asylum seekers and mentally ill people). These are hard to identify without in-depth knowledge. Giving to Comic Relief is like getting expert advice on charities, only for no effort or cost.
- It will usually sit on your money for over a year – but in a good way. Many grants are drip-fed over several years – so at any one time, there’s a lot of cash in the bank. Usually we don’t like this sort of behaviour, but it’s a good way of making sure that the receiving charities do what they say with the money. Because if they don’t, they don’t get any more.
- They seem honest... In their annual report the bigwigs at Comic Relief admit mistakes (most charities don’t), and talk about learning from them. They’re also good at setting targets and meeting them.
- ...But they could try harder. The annual report doesn’t give evidence that the money is well spent. But in private it analyses all sorts of data and it commissions reports to monitor the work. The charity’s head of grants, Judith McNeill, tells us that it keeps this information under wraps because there’s never been demand for it before – but says that she'll be making it public before long.
- It benefits all charities. We’ve heard that immediately after Red Nose Day, all charitable giving goes up. An afterglow effect, apparently. Hurray.
- It makes us laugh. And how many charities manage that?
> Our profile of Comic Relief [0]
> Watchdog articles [0]
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