The BBC, as readers will know, has admitted deliberately deceiving viewers by featuring fake competition winners on charity fundraising programmes Children in Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief.

The incidents are part of a general erosion of ethics of the publicly funded BBC – other examples are the £50,000 fine from Ofcom for also faking a competition winner on children’s TV programme Blue Peter, widely seen by many as the worst possible example to present to the impressionable. The reaction of the BBC’s management has been to keep their well-paid jobs and instigate ethical training sessions for all staff, to teach them how to tell right from wrong.

For the charity sector the most worrying aspect is the impact the massive loss of trust in the BBC will have on charitable giving by viewers.

The richest man in the City, Peter Cruddes of financial trading group CMC Markets is to donate £100 million of his £1 billion + fortune (10%) to charity. (Daily Telegraph).

Cruddes, 54, who lives in Monaco has said: “It is quite obscene for one person to have such large amounts of money” and his new charitable foundation will give some of his money to a variety of charities helping young people, including The Prince’s Trust, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and the Great Ormond Street Hospital. The re-distribution of wealth makes Cruddes one of the largest individual donors to charity in the UK. Continue reading →

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is to survey people’s views as to what social evils are most damaging to today’s society.

Religious congregations, children and pensioners will be consulted along with experts in the subject and will all be asked “What really appals you”.

When the charitable trust was set up Joseph Rowntree identified some of the great scourges of humanity as war, slavery, intemperance, drugs, impurity and gambling.

To register your views visit: www.socialevils.org.uk

A 13 year old boy is set to climb the three peaks of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, a total of 11,179 feet in three days. (Daily Telegraph).

Robin Butler, the son of Afghanistan war hero Brigadier Ed Butler, who will join him in the climb, is raising money for the foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths and the British Heart Foundation. His sister Augusta died in her sleep at four weeks old, a year before he was born, and he needed open heart surgery to correct a mal-function when he was four days old, his reasons for wanting to support the charities.

Following the involvement of pop singer and cheer leader Madonna in the recent Live Earth concert her charity, The Ray of Light Foundation, has been criticised for its shareholdings in companies identified by environmentalists as big polluters.

There are, according to America’s Fox News network, which broke the story, such as Alcoa, the aluminium company ranked 9th on a list of all-time toxic firms drawn up by the University of Massachusetts. Also invested in and appearing on the toxic list are health firm Kimberly-Clarke and defence firm Northrupp Grumman. Continue reading →

The number of households that do not want to receive telemarketing calls from charities or anyone else has now reached 14.5 million. (Third Sector).

Delegates at the recent Institute of Fundraising’s conference were told by Colin Lloyd, chairman of the Fundraising Standards Board that 200,000 households a month were now signing up to the Telephone Preference Service. Lloyd estimates that within five years telephone fundraising from the UK will no longer be a viable option. However charities fundraising from abroad are not regulated. Continue reading →

Ex prime minister’s wife Cherie Blair’s name-dropping made toe-curling viewing during her BBC documentary The Real Cherie Blair, according to the Evening Standard.

The reference was to the scene in which Mrs Blair asks her secretary to remind her whether she has written to the Emir of Kuwait yet “because we certainly must thank him. Half a million pounds is generous to say the least”. Continue reading →