Women are 10% more productive when their work involves something they care about, wheras men showed no increase when working for a cause.

This is a finding by researchers at the University of Southampton who have concluded that this difference is a reason for women being more attracted to jobs in lower-paid sectors, such as healthcare, education and charity, where the cause is more important than the cash.

Another conclusion was that this aspect had led to the gender gap in earnings.

A millionaire businessman is giving most of his accumulated wealth to charity, with a stipulation that half of it is invested in the Catholic Church.

Albert Gubay,82, who founded supermarket chain Kwik Save, gym network Total Fitness and a vast property empire has said that he made a pact with God to hand over half his estate to the Church if he ever became rich, which he has, to the tune of nearly £500 million, a figure he hopes to double.

Those who feel that “charitable bankers” is a contradiction in terms might be cheered to note that some are giving a little of the money they’ve stolen from the poor to charity.

In what is seen by many as an attempt to clean up their grubby image bank bosses at HSBC and Standard Chartered are giving their million pound bonuses to charitable causes.

Meanwhile, and nothing of course to do with the above item, a record number of people contacted the Consumer Credit Counselling Service last year.

The charity reports that they received calls for help from 335,323 people, 25% up on 2008, that another 150,000 contacted them online and that in 30% of cases there was nothing that could be done to help them.

The Cherie Blair Foundation For Women, a charity set up by Cherie Blair, has spent nearly as much on expensive female staff as it has on good causes for women.

According to a report published in the Sunday Telegraph, of the £671,438 raised £258,266 or nearly 40% was spent on staffing and consultancy, including a payment of £113,325 or nearly 20% to its former chief executive, Connie Jackson, for 10 months work.

Jackson told the newspaper “I am expensive and I don’t apologise for it”

A one day conference, Strategic Development through Technology for Charities and Associations takes place at the QEII conference centre, London on Wednesday 11 November 2010.

www.itconference.co.uk

Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder, 47, is giving away his £3 million fortune to charity because it is not making him happy.

He has already sold six gliders valued at £350,000, as well as his profitable interior furnishings business, and is selling his lakeside villa near Insbruck and a farmhouse in Provence, together valued at over £2 million.

His objective is to have nothing left, and he told the Daily Telegraph “All the luxury and comsumerism is not real life. Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness.” He intends to move to a bedsit in Insbruck, or a wooden mountain hut, surviving on £800 a month, and donate his fortune to a microcredit charity he set up in Latin America, from which he draws no salary, to offer small loans and business advice.

A charity poetry event to raise money for Haiti was organised by the present Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, at Westminster Central Hall, London in January.

Featuring more than 20 poets, Poetry Life for Haiti also featured PM Gordon Brown, who told the audience of the shipping of 5700 sheets of corrugated iron to provide shelters in Haiti. He also said that poetry could do what ordinary words alone could never do.

One example was by Roger McGough, “They Came Out Singing”, as below.

They came out singing, many of them. Pulled from the rubble, broken bodies from broken buildings. Coated in dust, red-eyed and bruised, crushed bones and severed limbs. Days of sepulchral darkness, nights choked with disbelief. First the smile, wide as thanksgiving, then the song, praise to the rescuers, and God for his mercy. Merci, merci.

Dementia, suffered by more than 820,000 people costs the economy an estimated £23 billion a year and has a relatively modest £50 million spent on research, against cancer costing £12 billion and having £590 million spent, and heart disease costing £8 billion and having £169 million spent on research.

These figures are from a report, Dementia 2010 produced by Oxford University and commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Research Trust which warns that dementia is the nation’s greatest health challenge, and one that will beat us unless we invest now.