Any opinions UNICEF sponsoring Barcelona.
Lets be fair if anyone needs more money it has to be football players.

Dunno, not sure if UNICEF is a “charity” as such though.

Could be wrong, but I thought Barca paid UNICEF not the other way round?

Just checked it appears they are now sharing space on shirts and UNICEF is done for free.

So to sum up:

– A lot of people on STW don’t understand how listed shares work, and that you aren’t subsidising the company or enabling them to do something they wouldn’t otherwise be doing simply by holding their shares.
– A lot of people have no understanding of how large charities actually work, both in terms of financing and management.
– A lot of people think they can, in the space of 5 minutes reading a news report, determine strategic funding decisions that very senior finance people and trustees sweat over for weeks. Clearly they should be offering their services to Charities (free of charge of course).

I didn’t think I had any particularly special skills that made me a good trustee. Perhaps I was wrong and bothering to understand how the organisation worked, and why it worked that way before blundering in to declare it wrong was unusual. That is not to suggest I never challenged a decision or upset the applecart but I did my best to be fully informed first.

Many apologies to anyone offended by any of the mistakes i have made whilst posting.
It is not one of my strong points but i am good at other things in life
so i try not to worry about it too much, i hope you understand.

It’s all a big stinking crooked gravy train

course its a gravy train, its a good job they’re there tho, at least we don’t have to actually do anything charitable, just hand over some cash every now and then, and keep watching…

Sorry Poly, but that doesn’t sum anything up,
If you raise money on the promise of helping people then investing the money raised in arms and tobacco company’s isn’t ethical, regardless of how you dress it up..
Hiding behind the excuse of being prudent doesn’t wash.

Sorry Poly, but that doesn’t sum anything up,

It summed it up perfectly for me as it happens.

Very well put poly.

Are you new here poly?!? 😉

Good points.

So khani, now that you have had a lie down and read a lot of informed comment, how would you change things? You have read the reason why CR does not invest purely in ethical funds? Would you challenge that reasoning? How would you propose getting £1 of donations directly into the hands of the needy without payed staff? Up to what scale would this be possible?

In short, you have dismissed the explanations for the status quo – fair enough – what exactly what would ou do instead and how would you do it?

Actually I do realise that payed staff are needed, I accept that investment is needed for the funds, but not in arms and tobacco company’s just to eek out every last penny regardless of the ethics
Ethical investment isn’t new or hard to do, so no investment in arms or tobacco company’s that cause untold death and misery around the world is what I’d do.
How hard can it be?
Edit, and it’s comic relief, they bombard us with images of starving children, war zones and illness and death, then use the money raised to invest in the perpetrators of it, come on.. You must admit that’s wrong.

Well not only does ethical investment appear to be pretty hard to do (how to you define an ethical investment) but the returns from ethical funds have been insufficient for CR to fulfill it’s stated objectives. Do you say tough, we just accept the lower returns?

I am quite surprised by elements of their investment policy tbh but not by their staff or staff costs though. I actually think ethical investments is a misnomer and essentially a non-starter in practical terms.

But nothing has changed my mind yet, that the BBC headline is sensationalist.

What a weird topic.

What gobsmacked me was…

It costs SIXTEEN MILLION A YEAR running costs for Comic relief. Wtf.

It’s not just paying the staff who work for the charity, there has to be money available for promoting the charity, and for raising funds through postal raffles/lotteries, you know, those envelopes that drop through the door with tickets in for you to send back, in the hope you might win £5000/10,000, a car, a holiday, etc.
Who d’you think pays for the printing of the tickets, and the envelopes, and the literature that goes in with it, and the people who operate all the processes involved in the mailing, which involve pre-press, (design, film-planning/plate-making), folding, guillotine, enclosing, then who are involved with the response end, sorting all the many thousands of letters that come in every day, opening them, dealing with the cash/cheques/CC details, banking, customer services, like handling phone queries, etc, then doing the draw, sorting out payments to winners, etc…
I work for a company that does all those things, mostly in one building, (printing’s done in another unit, warehousing all the pallets of paper and envelopes in another), and there’s an enormous amount of work involved in dealing with lots of clients; currently I’m dealing with the postal returns for over thirty different charities, and variants of their individual draws, (up to 140 trays of mail a day, in three deliveries), along with some pre-press, and also scanning RTS/Gone Away returns for database updates, and also helping out running a folding machine.
Where does anyone think the money comes from to pay for a business to actually do what is a pretty specialised operation, that has to comply with charities laws, Gaming Commission, (who were around today), and all the other stuff, like the nit-picking H&S people who been round finding little details to get all flustered over, and being a PITA, and which have to be paid for.
And of course, the company needs to make a profit, and the employees need to be paid…
Is anyone stupid enough to suggest that I, and all my work colleagues, should work for nothing as well?
They seem to think the charity employees should all be volunteers, so, by definition, we all ought to be volunteers as well!
Yeah, right! 🙄

If you raise money on the promise of helping people then investing the money raised in arms and tobacco company’s isn’t ethical, regardless of how you dress it up

My understanding is that they did not invest in said company – the investment company that the use did. Now you can argue that they should have gone back and checked, but often its not that simple. Here’s an example – company I work for uses single use surgical instruments – company has a policy that we do not use any supplier that uses child labour. Many of the companies that produce said instruments are based in Pakistan and trying to discover if they use child labour is incredibly difficult. Even more difficult is trying to establish if the companies that they source Stainless Steel from use child labour as they have a number of sources. My company throws a huge amount of (very expensive) resource into uncovering this, charities are not capable of doing this.
In a perfect world they would not invest in this type of company – and in a perfect world they would not have to spend huge chunks of the money they raised on discovering if the companies they are investing in have ethical practices, or if the companies that they deal with have ethical practices or the companies they deal with… ad infinitum.

When it says ‘arms and tobacco’ it doesn’t mean artificial arms for paralympians, it means the sort of arms that blow your limbs off in the first place………
[/quote]
Yeah I get that bit – I was wondering which company Comic Relief is (indirectly) investing in is making the guns used to shoot children.

If it is the case that they have some of their money invested in such a company, I’m also wondering whether how many deaths and injuries it would save if they put their money elsewhere and let somebody else invest in those companies instead.

they put their money elsewhere and let somebody else invest in those companies instead.

That’s a classic excuse put forward by governments arming corrupt regimes,- we might as well sell them our guns, if we didn’t they’ll just buy them from somebody else.

Somebody needs to make an ethical stand at some point. If CR don’t want to, that’s fine, but don’t expect me to give them any more of my money.

Ethical investment isn’t new or hard to do, so no investment in arms or tobacco company’s that cause untold death and misery around the world is what I’d do.
How hard can it be?

So you didn’t bother reading the quote from the Comic Relief website then ?

Trustees have been unable to invest in funds promoted as ethical at the same time as meeting their regulatory duty, to get the best returns at the lowest appropriate risk.

which company Comic Relief is (indirectly) investing in is making the guns used to shoot children.

BAe, try googling Hawk jets and East Timor

That’s a classic excuse put forward by governments arming corrupt regimes,- we might as well sell them our guns, if we didn’t they’ll just buy them from somebody else.

Somebody needs to make an ethical stand at some point. If CR don’t want to, that’s fine, but don’t expect me to give them any more of my money.

How far do you take that argument though? CR has a close working relationship with Sainsbury’s – who sell tobacco and alcohol in large quantities. Comic Relief also use Asda to sell their Tshirts – who are owned by Walmart who sell very large quantities of firearms and ammo in the US thereby supporting the arms industry etc etc. Its all well and good saying that someone has to make a stand – but there has to be a degree of realism in that notion, otherwise virtually every company in the world is off limits.

teamhurtmore – Member
Chief Exec £130k last year
5 other got between £90-100k
Total staff costs £13.5m
Total staff 286 (average)
Crude average £47k wage

All there in the open.

I want to work full time for charities. It’s far better than what I earn now. I promise to invest the donated money wisely by doubling the interest earned. I don’t need excessive bonus but would prefer to be rewarded for my investment prowess.

Alternatively, can I buy some shares in the charitable organisations? When is the IPO? I mean at least I have invested in full proof shares …

😆

Yes, that is directly equivalent to saying that if CR doesn’t invest in BAE Systems somebody else will 🙄

Let me put it like this for you: if a government refuses to sell arms to a regime, then that might just set a precedent and other governments might follow, therefore making it more difficult for the regime to arm itself. If CR refuses to buy shares in BAE Systems what impact will that have on the market for their shares? Do you reckon other investors are likely to follow their ethical stand?

Do you reckon other investors are likely to follow their ethical stand?

Quite possibly. A lot of folk choose the COOP bank for their ethical stance rather than financial performance. (Barclays, South Africa, apartheid, that Mandela bloke etc etc)

Do all those criticising Comic Relief, and suggesting you won’t donate any more, have personal pensions?

Have you scrutinised the investment criteria which the pension uses?

If you feel that strongly about ethical investment I’m sure you’ll be happy to forego some potential retirement income to make sure than none of the investment is indirectly in companies you don’t like.

Was just going to mention that Poly

I’d be suprised is my savings hadn’t been used by the bank for some dodgy investments.

I’m sure the arms firms would love to do more to end hunger and poverty in the world, it’s just the damn Geneva convention that gets in the way.

Quite possibly.
[/quote]

😆 at the idea of it making a difference to BAE Systems business when CR sell their shares

suggesting you won’t donate any more

Not seen that

have personal pensions?

Different innit, driven by personal gain not altruism

If you feel that strongly about ethical investment I’m sure you’ll be happy to forego some potential retirement income to make sure than none of the investment is indirectly in companies you don’t like

I do

CR’s investment policy – fine, all in the open then. Still I don’t have to like it and it doesn’t make it right.

They are obliged to invest the money as prudently as possible, even if it means profiting from the sale of arms. I’m cool with that. The trouble is, this is after they have successfully canvassed millions upon millions in donations due to their heavily publicised charitable mission to make the world a better place.
It’s that hypocrisy that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Surely it’s not impossible to help the world without being dragged down into its mess?

Have you scrutinised the investment criteria which the pension uses?

If you feel that strongly about ethical investment I’m sure you’ll be happy to forego some potential retirement income to make sure than none of the investment is indirectly in companies you don’t like.

Yes and yes. It’s what ethic’s are all about. Not that everybody has to have them of course………………..

They are obliged to invest the money as prudently as possible

They don’t have to be indiscriminate in where there money goes, no problem having an ethical investment policy. Investment choice is subjective to a degree anyway.