Britons are more likely to donate to campaigns that help people survive, than thrive. Christain Aid explains its decision to concentrate its new ad campaign on the upside

Over the past few days, television viewers in the UK might have caught a glimpse of an ad shot by Christian Aid to mark our annual week-long fundraising drive. The campaign, filmed on location in Sierra Leone, depicts the difference a solar freezer could make to the life of a local fisherman, helping him not only feed his family, but then market his catch and maybe even open a small restaurant.

Instead of grinding poverty, the ad features smiling faces, energetic children and upbeat music – our attempt to tell the true story of positive intervention. However the fact remains: UK-based NGOs, seeking donations from the British public for development and aid work overseas today, face something of an obstacle course in presenting the case that urgent need still exists.

In choosing to tell the true story of a positive intervention made through one of our partner agencies in the life of the York Island community, Christian Aid has had to walk a delicate line, leaving viewers with the sense that an end to poverty is possible – some of the world's fastest growing economies are in sub-Saharan Africa – but that real needs still exist that Britons can help to alleviate. But the million dollar question is how.

My team recently conducted research involving groups most likely to support Christian Aid. The findings suggested that while people were perfectly willing to donate to help people survive, they were more reticent to put their hands in their pockets to help people thrive. Any footage showing a poor person with a mobile phone – or colour television – would be counterproductive, we were told. That response rang true recently when I gave a talk using one of the case studies for Christian Aid Week that features a mobile phone project. There was an audible gasp from the group on first mention of phones.

It was only when we'd watched the film together and discussed the project in detail that they could see for themselves the usefulness of mobile phones in delivering early warnings to communities exposed to extreme weather events as a result of climate change. We don't have that luxury with a television advert. It has to do the job of announcing Christian Aid Week, support our army of volunteer collectors and motivate people to give. All in just 30 seconds.

We would never resort to an advert that portrays people living in poverty as people without their own dignity. The question for us was whether we could move away from a Christian Aid Week advertising message that had been fairly simple – 'sending money over there' – to a more complex message about food security, hope and independence.

It's an age-old question, the dissonance between rhetoric and reality in advertising, can we talk about our work and world view without depressing income? The potential supporters we discussed it with said yes. That was enough to take the risk and make the ad.

So far, the advert has been well received by the public and our volunteer collectors. Perhaps more importantly still, our colleagues and the community in Sierra Leone like the film. As someone said to me on Twitter: "This is an ad you can be proud to show your beneficiaries".

Proof of how successful we have been will come when we discover whether this year's fundraising week has reached or exceeded the target of £12.7m. That's the hard reality: if the film changes perceptions but doesn't support the donations that are urgently needed then we'll need to think again.

The challenges that we and other agencies face in tapping into the generosity of the British public start at home. As this newspaper recently remarked, the economic climate today is much tougher than it was eight years ago when Make Poverty History galvanised public opinion and G8 leaders at Gleneagles delivered on trade and debt, or said they would.

Africa too has changed. Once the graveyard of good intentions, it is fast changing its image. The former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan announced in an annual progress report last week that there was "good reason to be optimistic". Nearly half of the countries there have been identified as resource rich by the IMF, and have "sustained high growth and improved their citizens' daily lives".

It is not all good news though. The same report goes on to say that in many African countries, rising inequality is slowing the rate at which growth reduces poverty. "Countries across Africa are becoming richer, but whole sections of society are being left behind," it warns.

This is the complexity we need to get across in our stories. While there will always be a need for advertising that emphasises desperation – in response to natural disasters for instance – we think it's time to try and present aid and development in a different way.

In our ad, the sun may be shining, and the participants – all local villagers - may look buoyant. But more than 60% of Sierra Leoneans live below the poverty line, the average life expectancy is 48, and malnutrition ranks among the world's highest, with acute malnutrition at or above the emergency level of 15% of children under five years old.

Helping alleviate poverty is not simply about feeding the hungry, it's about enabling communities to help themselves. That is the message that needs to come across loud and clear.

Steven Buckley is head of communications at Christian Aid. You can follow him on Twitter @stevenbuckley

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Categories: giving/philanthropy

Divine interventions: lottery cash needs to be kept from homophobic groups | Andrew Brown

The Guardian - charitable giving - 9 May, 2013 - 19:20

Better scrutiny will ensure religious organisations with links to homophobia are not awarded public funds

Across most of the world today gay rights are something between an absurdity and an abomination. This makes a difficulty in an age of religious globalisation. When the government, which believes in equality, tries to reach minority communities through their faith organisations, how far should it engage with them if they hold repulsive views?

Not all of the cultural homophobia in the world is religiously based or tinged. Some forms of Jamaican music and rap are violently homophobic without being in the least bit religious. But the problem does not arise with them in the same form, since they are not applying for government grants to do anything. Churches with an African background, or strong African links, are quite another matter.

The sometimes literal demonisation of homosexuality is an important part of much African Christianity. Pressure from the former colonial powers simply entrenches this attitude. In countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Uganda, demonstrative attacks on gay people and gay marriage are proven crowd-pleasers and in the context of the Anglican communion have been used as ways to stick two fingers up at the Archbishop of Canterbury and his woolly, liberal, colonial church. The same dynamic works almost as strongly with independent evangelical or charismatic churches.

Yet the government's supporters say that the same arguments should apply as are used when dealing with Muslim organisations. Some of them are likely to be just as homophobic but with them the problem may be jihadism and, to some extent, the oppression of women. The question is whether it is better to shun them or to bring some of them into the ordinary mechanisms of local life.

Helping some with public funds is a way to promote integration and deliver services to populations that are otherwise hard to reach. That way the social changes at work in wider British society can spread within the target groups as well.

There are precedents for the success of this approach. One of the most important British leaders of an independent charismatic group of churches, Steve Chalke of the Oasis Trust, recently announced his conversion to equality.

But whatever the principles involved, the practice will be messy. Some people will get funds who shouldn't. Some groups who should be funded won't be. Scrutiny is an essential part of cleaning it up.

Andrew Brown
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Categories: giving/philanthropy

How to become a philanthropist

The Guardian - charitable giving - 9 May, 2013 - 07:00

Researchers at the Centre for Charitable Giving are investigating the reasons why prominent entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, become philanthropic

"How do you become philanthropic?," is a question that has never really been studied in depth. What does the journey from entrepreneur to philanthropist look like, and how can we chart these experiences to help the cause of more and increasingly effective giving?

Our research team, based at the universities of Newcastle, Exeter and Strathclyde, has conducted a major initiative to understand the experiences of entrepreneurs turned philanthropists: the 'big-givers' of all backgrounds, whether they are local or international players, who have become committed to sharing their wealth. The group will present its findings on "Understanding the philanthropic journey" at a CGAP Conference in London on Thursday where they will co-present with two leading entrepreneur-philanthropists: Sir Tom Hunter of West Coast Capital and Hunter Foundation, and Rakesh Bharti Mittal of Bharti Enterprises and Bharti Foundation.

We want this research to show there is a logical process at play which many struggle to understand. Entrepreneurs apply the same rigour and disciplines from the world of commerce to the charitable sector, which suggests there is in fact a science to giving at this level that can be replicated and learned from.

Entrepreneurs bring business methods and disciplines to philanthropy – they don't like wasting money and like to be focussed and planned and their charitable partners to be vetted. Andrew Carnegie, a man famed for the mass manufacture of steel in America, is perhaps the best example of this.

His pervasive influence within the field of philanthropy stems more than anything from his treatise on 'wealth', known as 'The Gospel of Wealth', where he concludes: "the problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and the poor in harmonious relationship." Through his charitable projects Andrew Carnegie gave away almost everything he had earned to a wide range of projects, from arts to education. Entrepreneurs tend to be gifted in recognising and consciously applying the principles of capital accumulation. This is critical to making philanthropy more effective at a time when there is increasing inequality of wealth and income. What are the hallmarks of entrepreneurial philanthropy? Our research shows the following:

• It is the pursuit by entrepreneurs on a not-for-profit basis of big social objectives through active involvement of their economic, cultural, social and symbolic resources.

• They apply business-like methods when making social investments: key performance indicators and rates of return.

• Entrepreneurs invest more than simply money to their causes: time, connections, the 'know-how', branding.

• They like to leverage investments and frequently partner with others, including governments.

• Businessmen and women don't believe in giving handouts. They want to help others to help themselves.

Our studies have also shown that philanthropy is not a one way street. Entrepreneurs benefit from forms of capital, like honorary titles, degrees and recognition. Their world becomes a lot richer, they meet interesting people and come to mix in very interesting circles. What they learn can be turned to economic advantage. The possession of this status and level of connections within the world helps build philanthropy further over time. Therefore, giving encourages these greater returns and helps facilitate more philanthropic enterprises.

A large aspect of the research has been interviewing businessmen and women confronted by the burdensome issue of what to do with more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime. We have asked why they decided to become philanthropic and what they got out of it.

Their motivation is often revealed in their personal experiences and personal values. What makes them get involved in the voluntary sector is commonly understood to be a landmark event within their life that triggers a transition. One entrepreneur said the death of his mother from cancer in 2008 had prompted the change:

"Suddenly life felt a bit meaningless. We were sitting there in a big house in Berkshire, with a house in the south of France, and two beautiful little girls and everything seems perfect ... It [the death of his mother] made me feel more emotional ... It probably made me start thinking about giving ... I think another thing is when I sold the business I didn't know, I felt like I wanted to start giving but I didn't know how to or who to give to or what way to do it, I hadn't a clue, no one teaches you how to be philanthropic."

While entrepreneurs have all the intellectual capacity to make giving more effective, they frequently search for the guidance to become philanthropic. What we need are more stories to be told by philanthropists because they are its best advocates.

We also need access to fellow philanthropists to share their experiences. The level of giving relative to wealth and also need is nowhere near as high as it could or should be. What we witness are some very generous individuals among a lot of people who do little or nothing. A lot can be learned from these practised entrepreneurs and philanthropic groups, such as The Philanthropy Fellowship led by UK Community Foundations and funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, to inspire more and better philanthropy.

The voluntary redistribution of wealth, however, cannot serve as a substitute for welfare in times of austerity. IMF figures (2012) show there is a clear relationship between income inequality and the dynamics of the global economy. The gap between the top 5% and the rest of us has risen very sharply since the early 1980s in the UK & US and other countries of the developed world. As profits and top pay rise it becomes more obvious that this is unsustainable. The power of entrepreneurial philanthropy lies in helping others to help themselves and seize opportunities for betterment.

Professor Charles Harvey is pro-vice-chancellor for humanities and social sciences at Newcastle University

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