to be put off by the amount of money spent to make programs for comedy relief?

What I object to is the "calls cost £1 and at least 70p goes to Comic Relief"

excuse me - where does the other 30p go? It doesn't cost that much to process it!

Another example - Sainsburys - Red Nose gingerbread man - 99p. As one of the staff pointed out, the normal gingerbread man costs less than 40p. OK, fine, it's more expensive but it is raising money - except that the sticker on it says 10p is going to Comic Relief (I didn't buy it - I would rather just give my money to Comic Relief than give 50p extra profit to Sainsburys so that they can give 10p...

rant over

As long as it is profitable and the charities benefit who cares?

that was in reponse to pmdw - It wasn;t meant to sound like I think we ought to know - purely a statement of fact that we don;t know so I fail to see how we can judge them

none of us have any idea how much the celebs donate.

purplemonkey - you are funny when you are angry!

Their accounts are here. The income part starts on page 16 of the .pdf, and shows that apart from money they got from the COmmonwealth Education Fund and VOdafone, which seems to have landed fairly freely to them, their running costs look close to 50%

the costs of raising money was about 6.8 million, but including the grants, they disbursed almost ten times that.

So with the grants, they look efficient enough; without them, not amazingly so

Well, personally I hear the words 'comic relief' and reach for the remote: I can't stand self righteous celebs pretending they're there for any cause other than their own careers. I support a local charity.

it is highly ranked for cost effectiveness isn't it

programmes would be made anyway they are just all being hijacked to comic nrelief branding

agree that there is too much money slsohing casually aroind though

According to Martin Gill, Comic Releif's head of new media "... Comic Relief doesn't take money from donations to help with our running and admin costs."

I'm a fundraiser too and I'd rather support Comic Relief than most other charities because they don't pay out as much as ours does on costs etc.

i am a fundraiser so you do need to spend some money to make money but all events etc that a charity does should be looked at carefully to ensure a good return. Comic Relief has supported one of the charities i used to work for so i am quite pro what they do ... You can request a copy of their accounts so you can see what percentage goes on admin etc ...

Ali5 - Here

There was a hoohar about administration fees but Comic Relief denied paying out for admin and this year they have banged on about how the money raised goes straight to where it is needed, no admin costs, no staff fees, nothing.

Is Terry paid!? Wow. Didn't know that. Thought he was a good egg and would do it for free!
Thing about the clips is though, it's not just the celeb is it? It's the crew too - someone has to pay and wouldn't that money be better spent. And why do they have to do new ones each year?

i saw that too, eve!

I think it is more about the raising awareness, and what better way to do it with loads of celebs, various types and ages - so covers wide part of the population.

And those clips - I think they are needed; people need that visual image before them. Makes it harder to forget when you can see such hardship and such need. And I think it being celebs going there does help - again it comes down to the awareness.

Ali5 - Terry Wogan is pad a fee for his work with CIN.

I hate Comic Relief with a passion. I hate the enforced jollity and 'if you don't join in you are an evil person because it's in a good cause' atmosphere that surrounds it, and I hate the way celebrities are blatantly using other people's suffering to further their own careers.
It brings out my most cynical side.

In other words, you and I have just contributed to Comic Relief in the form of the TV license, which keeps going up and up!

... I did see an article last weekend , American Express spent £50 million in marketing the red card to raise £9million.

on the apprentice last night I felt sick when that woman donated 150k without even thinking - it was really generous but I kept thinking maybe a lot of problems aer to do with the fact that some people have 150k lying around whilst others strave.

there is a sinister irony about comic relief.

i understood that the BBC (which after all gets hy-oooooge ratings off this) foots the bill for the production costs. don't know about the clips, although part of me wonders if they'd ask them to pay for their own ticket, my understanding is that to be in the Comic Relief Gang has benefits for the career taht would easily outweight the cost of a ticket to the Sudan.

Can't say the same for most 'celebrities'.

No. I'm suspicious of celebs of the 'do as I say and not as I do ilk.'

Even more so than the government because at least many of those in government know how to read as well.

The raising awareness is a good point. I suppose the thing about comic relief is that it's really high profile - I bet they could still bring awareness without flying all those celebs out to various places to make a 5 minute 'isn't this awful' clip.