Children in need....falling popularity?

[mids2019]

So children in need seems to be raising less money in recent years. Is this due to the cost of living crisis meaning people give less or are people jaded by this annual event? Are people giving to more local charities instead?

Personally I feel the whole thing though raising money for some good causes does seem to be a vehicle for celebrities profiles and there is a feeling the event showcases the most heartening emotive cases which maybe isn't quite balanced.

I also have question a about schools coercing children to give a pound or 2 towards the event as even at a young age charity should be about choice. It also means you feel you have given if your kids have paid a line to non uniform day and I don't know if that is quite the sun c. In n are thinking about?

Should we think again about children in need?

Yes, and where are the actual celebrities? It used to attract bigger names, now we're left with pop has-beens and Z listers.

I’m always very conflicted with Children in Need because we access a local charity for my daughter with Down syndrome who are funded by CIN and she benefits greatly from it and we are really grateful for their support. However, I would never consent to my daughter being paraded around to make people feel sorry for the poor little disabled girl to make them donate. It’s exploitation. She should just have what she needs and a charity shouldn’t have to plug the gaping holes in provision for her.

I wonder as well whether going 'cashless' also has an impact. Back in the olden days I remember the towns and pubs being full of people collecting for Children in Need and they would make a lot from people putting money in a bucket after a few drinks. I think in those days you phoned through your 'pledge'. Cafés, restaurants, shops would also all have a collecting bucket.

Now you have to text or go online to donate which probably works for the big Paddy McGuiness-style events but less so for the smaller collections around the country.

And yes, cost of living, doubt over where the money goes and general charity fatigue are factors imo.

CIN has £90M sitting in investment portfolios, and has done for years. All through austerity, up until today when millions of children in the UK are hungry and cold. I don’t know how they sleep at night. That money could do so much good at a local level.

I’ve found Children in Need quite distasteful and tone deaf for years now. Back when Chris Evans used to raise money on his breakfast show by auctioning once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like racing a formula one car at Silverstone with Damon Hill or dinner and a private show with Paul McCartney or whatever. Filthy rich people would ring up and pledge hundreds of thousands of pounds, obscene amounts! No normal person would have had a chance to have their dreams come true in this way. They’d probably have raised even more if they’d held a raffle for these events and given everyone a chance. It just highlights the haves and have nots.

Children in needs days are numbered.

They knowingly gave donations to a Scottish LGBTQ+ charity lead by a paedophile who sexually abused a baby.

CIN's chair has now resigned because of this.

x.com/transgendertrd/status/1859642441667944956?s=46

They could still raise money with the branded merch in supermarkets and whatnot but the telethon has well had its day, boring stale unfunny content and patronising presenter's alternating between trying and failing to be funny and then doing very grim, earnest sad face.

Its a shame because it was genuinely good back in the day, I still remember laughing at the newsreaders doing Rocky Horror (and have never been able to look at Michael Burke in the same way since) but even in spite of his fee it always felt like Terry Wogan really cared about the show. This lot all just look like their competing with each over whose funniest and who cares the most. It also doesn't help that they all seem more wooden on screen than my dining room table.

More details here: open.substack.com/pub/malcolmrichardclark/p/what-did-the-bbc-know-about-lgbt?r=8zwv3&utm_medium=ios

@Anonym00se I hated that for the same reasons as you. Probably didn't help that Chris Evans was soooooo pleased with himself either.

All charities have their accounts published on the Charity Commission website. So you can see exactly where the money goes for each charity.

This thread has made me realise that my son's primary school have done absolutely nothing for CiN, either this year or last year. They do other charity collections during the year but not this one. When I was at school, it was definitely a thing. I only knew it was happening this year because Have I Got News For You wasn't on.

It dates from the 80s - when most households had one television that everyone sat round in the evening. It was a novelty in the days when there were only three/four channels, each showing their routine evening schedules. It's had its day now we have practically infinite entertainment choices in our living rooms.

This. I've stopped giving to big charities. A huge amount goes on marketing and ceo salaries. Big charities also tend to follow government's priorities for spending which are often vanity white elephant projects. It's better to give to local or small charities in this country or elsewhere. Somewhere along the line many charities became corrupt businesses.

Re CEO salaries, if anyone is interested, take a look at this TED talk.

Just elated through town yesterday and went past 5 different charities asking for donations. There are so many charities that you have to pick and choose. Many prefer local ones

I am not really in to any charity merchandise that is predominantly single use. Whatever they say about recycling, you can guarantee that most pudsey ears, poppies, red noses and plastic bracelets end up in the bin. Agree that telethons wheeling out people they deem pitiable have had their day. It feels like they are just clinging on as they can't think of a replacement.

Our school let's kids wear an accessory on the day, but doesn't ask for money, as the donation was made at the time of purchase. Home clothes days are always an item such as chocolate, drinks etc donation to the summer or Christmas fair. They have a bucket by the gate, so if people can't afford to donate, they aren't publicly shamed.

Yep. They have form and I bet they knew perfectly well what they were doing.

It's shit, it's always been shit. People don't have the money to donate and don't have the time to put on events or make cakes. Equally no one has cash anymore so £1 for mufti day becomes difficult to do.

I can't stand people like Fearne Cotton re-emerging from the woodwork when you know it's in part to boost their career.

I think cost of living is a major factor but also it's a dated format and no longer interesting to the majority of people.
When it started it was a novel concept and a big TV event. There were only a handful of channels and families usually only had one TV so everyone sat around and watched whatever was on rather than being able to choose from any number of channels, streaming services etc.
There isn't the interest any more. There's more information in the public domain these days about scandals, how much ceos of charities earn, behaviour of the BBC with regards to paedophiles etc and many people are choosing not to support things like this on principle.

I remember when it first started my Grandad (a devout Christian) watched the first one and then refused to watch it ever again or donate because he said it was everything that charitable giving wasn't supposed to be - a quiet, private donation that nobody knew anything about. He really objected to celebrities making a big song and dance about how much money they were donating and getting praised for doing so. He talked about the story in the bible of the poor widow who gave two coins but that was all she had so it was worth more than the donation of the rich people who only gave a tiny fraction of what they had.
Grandad had a point!

The money is distributed to many causes so you have no idea where it actually ends up. you could say its all for children but ultimately most people have a specific cause they prefer.

DD's old junior school already stopped fundraising over 10 years ago, They did fundraising for their own PTA which did amazing jobs for the school instead and a local foodbank collection for Harvest Festival and Christmas instead.

For me most of these clips leave a bad taste, it feels like the children are paraded around for the sake of aging and D-listed celebrities having a night of fame again.

We give locally to cause who don't spend a fortune on advertisement.

I work for a small local charity and the biggest cost to us is salaries and overheads. It’s unavoidable.
However we provide a free service to our beneficiaries that is outstanding. Our management are experienced and paid well for it, why shouldn’t they be - they have a huge level of responsibility. (They’re certainly not on £100k but for the bigger charities that doesnt seem that unreasonable to me.)

There are potential funders out there that we can’t apply to because they won’t give money to cover staff/business costs, which is terriblly short sighted of them. We could be expanding our service with the extra money but they want to see something more tangible. But without the staff who is going to provide the service? This extends to the admin, marketing team etc.

I absolutely agree charities have unavoidable salary and overheads costs - but what I don't want my donation to go towards is 'expenses' for celebrities and a CEO's salary that is bigger than the Prime Minister's. There are national charities such as St John's Ambulance who ensure over 80% of donations go towards the cause, others are as low as 26% - those are the ones I have a problem with.

I think people often do not realise that charities have to pay managers a decent salary as these people are full time staff, they have to attract people with the skills necessary to get the funds/grants to make it work in the first place.

It often sounds like you are supposed to run charities purely with volunteers but you need business skills and staff you rely on.

But there is still the issue with huge nationwide ones where you could argue if really all the costs are necessary or if there would be a way to maximise benefit vs expenses.

This!

I don't give to CIN, but if the CEO is actually being paid 98k that's perfectly reasonable. Charities need to be run properly. Contrary to the beliefs of some MNers, there's not actually a reserve of suitably qualified people just waiting to do the job for whatever number people want to pull out of their arse. The salary isn't the problem here.