The Guardian - charitable giving

I'm clearing out my mother's house and would like to give her belongings to someone who needs them. But where to begin?

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday's paper.

This week's question

I'm clearing out my late mother's home and am wondering what to do with all her furniture, linen, pans etc. It's all good stuff and I'd like to give it to someone who really needs it – but how do I find them? I've thought of Freecycle but fear dealers could sell it on. Anyone found a solution?

What are your thoughts?

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• Consumer affairs
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• Death and dying
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Northern & Shell boss, who operates rival Health Lottery, says he wants Camelot's licence when it next comes up

Richard Desmond has expressed an interest in bidding to run a "bigger, better" National Lottery, with ticket prices of £1, when the licence next comes up for renewal.

Desmond, who has been at loggerheads with National Lottery operator Camelot since unveiling his rival the Health Lottery in February 2011, made the claim following comments reportedly made by the rival company's chief executive, Dianne Thompson.

Thompson, who led a failed high court bid to get the Health Lottery's gambling licence revoked, has said that it is a "possibility" that Camelot might not look to bid to renew the licence it has held for 19 years because of the Health Lottery.

Speaking to GamblingCompliance.com at the European Lotteries Congress in Tel Aviv she said that it it was a possibility that Camelot would not rebid.

Desmond has seized on the PR opportunity to state that his media company Northern & Shell is interested in the franchise.

He said that if it was the successful bidder it would reduce the cost of tickets to £1 and pledged to give all profits back to charities. In January Camelot announced that the price of a ticket would be doubling later this year from £1 to £2, the first rise since the lottery was introduced in the UK nearly 20 years ago.

"I would be very happy to bid to run the National Lottery, which I will make bigger, better and British as well far more cost-effective," said Desmond. "I will raise more money for good causes and put all the profits back to support charities and good causes. I will put the ticket prices back to a pound."

Camelot declined to comment. It has been the sole licence holder since the National Lottery was set up in 1994 and has a contract to run it until 2023. Camelot's profits last year were £55m on record sales of £6.9bn.

Desmond's Health Lottery has so far raised £34m for good causes, with a top prize of £100,000.

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• This article was amended on 11 June 2013 to clarify that the Lotto ticket price has not yet risen to £2. Camelot announced in January that the price would rise later in the year.

• Richard Desmond
• National Lottery
• Northern & Shell
• Newspapers & magazines
• Charities
• Charitable giving
• Consumer affairs

MPs have told firms involved in street fundraising that they have five years to address public concerns over the practice

A regulatory crackdown on street fundraising – known as "chugging" – is inevitable if charities fail to address public concerns over the practice, MPs have warned.

Critics of chugging, in which salespeople cajole passersby to sign up for direct debit donations to good causes, say it is a form of public harassment and causes nuisance to shoppers.

Firms involved in street fundraising, which raises about £130m a year, are regulated by the voluntary sector itself. But the report by the House of Commons public administration select committee (Pasc) says this is not working.

"It is clear that self-regulation has failed so far to generate the level of public confidence which is essential to the success of the system and the reputation of the charitable sector," it says.

The Pasc proposes the current system be "placed on notice", and if there are no improvements within five years, statutory regulation should be introduced. "There should be no complacency from the charitable sector about the need to rebuild public confidence in charity fundraising."

Fundraisers told MPs that chugging – a name derived from "charity mugging" – had attracted few complaints. Public annoyance at the practice stemmed from feelings of guilt because "some people just do not like to be asked to support charity".

The report rejected calls by a rightwing thinktank to tighten up the rules to curtail political campaigning by charities such as Shelter and Child Poverty Action group. But it does recommend that all charities be required to declare in their annual accounts what money they spend on "political and communications work".

"Clear information about how much a charity spends on political and campaigning activity would enable members of the public to make an informed choice about whether to donate based on an understanding of how an organisation would use their donation," the report says.

However, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of charity umbrella body the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Acevo), said there was no public support for restricting charities' right to campaign and called the proposal "an unnecessary piece of red tape".

He said: "The proposal is entirely without foundation and would impose a regulatory burden that would mean more donations being spent on bureaucracy, and less on good causes. It is a regulatory madness and the government should reject it."

The report partly exonerates the Charity Commission for its apparent failure to detect a fake charity, the Cup Trust, which was used as a front for a multimillion pound tax avoidance scheme.

The commission was criticised this week by Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, who said she would launch an investigation into whether the commission was "fit for purpose".

But the Pasc report concludes that the commission, which has lost a third of its budget in two years, did not have the capacity to investigate potential tax fraud, which is the role of HMRC.

It warned that if ministers wanted the commission to investigate tax avoidance, they should fund it adequately. "Ministers must decide whether they think it is necessary to have a proactive regulator of the charitable sector, and if so, the government must increase the commission's budget and ask Parliament to clarify their powers."

• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Consumer affairs
• Charitable giving

MPs have told firms involved in street fundraising that they have five years to address public concerns over the practice

A regulatory crackdown on street fundraising – known as "chugging" – is inevitable if charities fail to address public concerns over the practice, MPs have warned.

Critics of chugging, in which salespeople cajole passersby to sign up for direct debit donations to good causes, say it is a form of public harassment and causes nuisance to shoppers.

Firms involved in street fundraising, which raises about £130m a year, are regulated by the voluntary sector itself. But the report by the House of Commons public administration select committee (Pasc) says this is not working.

"It is clear that self-regulation has failed so far to generate the level of public confidence which is essential to the success of the system and the reputation of the charitable sector," it says.

The Pasc proposes the current system be "placed on notice", and if there are no improvements within five years, statutory regulation should be introduced. "There should be no complacency from the charitable sector about the need to rebuild public confidence in charity fundraising."

Fundraisers told MPs that chugging – a name derived from "charity mugging" – had attracted few complaints. Public annoyance at the practice stemmed from feelings of guilt because "some people just do not like to be asked to support charity".

The report rejected calls by a rightwing thinktank to tighten up the rules to curtail political campaigning by charities such as Shelter and Child Poverty Action group. But it does recommend that all charities be required to declare in their annual accounts what money they spend on "political and communications work".

"Clear information about how much a charity spends on political and campaigning activity would enable members of the public to make an informed choice about whether to donate based on an understanding of how an organisation would use their donation," the report says.

However, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of charity umbrella body the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Acevo), said there was no public support for restricting charities' right to campaign and called the proposal "an unnecessary piece of red tape".

He said: "The proposal is entirely without foundation and would impose a regulatory burden that would mean more donations being spent on bureaucracy, and less on good causes. It is a regulatory madness and the government should reject it."

The report partly exonerates the Charity Commission for its apparent failure to detect a fake charity, the Cup Trust, which was used as a front for a multimillion pound tax avoidance scheme.

The commission was criticised this week by Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, who said she would launch an investigation into whether the commission was "fit for purpose".

But the Pasc report concludes that the commission, which has lost a third of its budget in two years, did not have the capacity to investigate potential tax fraud, which is the role of HMRC.

It warned that if ministers wanted the commission to investigate tax avoidance, they should fund it adequately. "Ministers must decide whether they think it is necessary to have a proactive regulator of the charitable sector, and if so, the government must increase the commission's budget and ask Parliament to clarify their powers."

• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Consumer affairs
• Charitable giving

Margaret Hodge says alarm bells should have rung over Cup Trust, run by creator of Jimmy Carr's tax scheme

MPs have attacked the charity watchdog for its "astounding" failure to close down a fake charity that gave just 3p out every £100 of donations to good causes.

Margaret Hodge, chair of the influential public accounts committee (PAC), said that if the Charity Commission had "only bothered to pick up the phone" to the tax authorities it would have discovered that the Cup Trust charity was a front for a multimillion-pound tax-avoidance scheme.

The Cup Trust, the claimed objective of which was to "improve the lives of young children and adults", donated just £55,000 of its "staggering" £176m income to charitable causes. Despite its scant donations, the trust used a complex web of transactions to seek £46m in gift aid, and its "donors" claimed £55m in charitable-giving tax relief.

Hodge said it should have been obvious to the commission that the trust, which was founded with only one trustee, in the Caribbean, had been "set up as a tax-avoidance scheme by people known to be in the business of tax avoidance".

The Cup Trust was controlled by Matthew Jenner, the boss of NT Advisors, who Hodge said was "already renowned in HMRC" for setting up tax-avoidance schemes.

Other schemes set up by NT Advisors – the initials stand for "no tax" – include those used by the comedian Jimmy Carr and the TV presenter Chris Moyles. HMRC has won three successive tax-avoidance cases against the Jersey-based NT Advisors, including one case last week.

"It is so astounding," Hodge said. "It stares you in the face. Yet it didn't appear to raise any questions [with the commission] before it was registered. If only someone had bothered to pick up the phone and ask them [HMRC] about NT Advisors. Elementary checks with HMRC could have alerted the commission to the true purpose of the trust and its trustee … Its purpose was to avoid tax."

Hodge said it was remarkable that HMRC had not queried why the Cup Trust, which collected more annual "donations" than the RSPB, the British Heart Foundation or the Salvation Army, had just one trustee: Mountstar, based in the British Virgin Islands. The directors of Mountstar are also the directors of NT Advisors. "Alarm bells should have rung," she said.

A public accounts committee report said the trust operated by buying £176m of government bonds, known as gilts, which it sold on to "donors" for only £17,000.

The donors, whom Hodge described as "Jimmy Carr types", sold the gilts and donated the proceeds – which were roughly the same as the purchase price – to the charity. In doing so, they were able to try to claim £55m in charitable-giving tax relief.

The trust went on to claim £46m in gift aid from HMRC. The tax authorities have not paid the claim, vowing to stop "tax dodgers" from exploiting charitable tax relief.

If the scheme had worked, Jenner and his partner, Anthony Mehigan, could have collected 5-10% of the tax saved for their wealthy clients. Tax experts said the pair may have already collected some fees in advance.

Hodge described the exploitation of charitable status by tax avoiders as "repugnant" but warned that there were "devils in this world" who would continue to exploit well-intentioned government tax-relief measures.

The PAC report said it was "unacceptable" that the Cup Trust had ever been allowed to register as a charity, and it was shocking that the commission had failed to close it down when it investigated it, between 2010 and 2012.

"In the last 25 years, the committee and the National Audit Office have repeatedly found severe shortcomings in the commission's performance, particularly in relation to investigation and enforcement," the report said.

In the last four years, the commission has removed only one trustee, after a judge ruled that he had perjured himself, and appointed only five interim managers to run suspect charities.

Hodge said the commission appeared to have "simply failed" to implement the PAC's previous recommendations, and said her committee would now "undertake yet another" investigation into whether the regulator for charities in England and Wales is fit for purpose.

The commission said it had opened a new statutory inquiry into the Cup Trust, but not until after its chairman was hauled before the PAC, in March. It has also appointed an interim manager to run the charity, in a move that Mountstar has challenged.

A spokeswoman said the commission was "discussing better ways to share information and work together to tackle abuse of charity. We are targeting our resources on the areas of highest risk, with a particular emphasis on tackling fraud, terrorist abuse and risks to vulnerable beneficiaries."

Hodge warned that the commission's failure to act against the Cup Trust was "disastrous" for the reputation of the commission and for the charity sector in general. She also raised concern that the Cup Trust scandal may "just be the tip of the iceberg". HMRC investigates 300 incidents of fraud relating to charities every year.

• Tax and spending
• Charitable giving
• Tax
• Consumer affairs
• Jimmy Carr
• Charities
• Voluntary sector

Internet giant pledged only £20,000 to Internet Watch Foundation last year, despite multibillion-dollar turnover

Google donated little more than £20,000 last year to the charity responsible for policing child abuse images online – the equivalent of 90 seconds' profit for the internet firm.

The search giant was one of a number of firms, including Facebook and Microsoft, that pledged relatively small amounts to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in 2012, despite their multibillion-dollar turnovers.

Facebook made a baseline donation of around £10,000 and Microsoft's Bing search engine gave about £20,000, according to the IWF's own records.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, said internet companies needed to ensure the IWF was properly resourced to tackle urgently the proliferation of child abuse images online following the murder of five-year-old April Jones.

"I am shocked that, despite the importance they have said they place on its role in keeping our children safe, they have donated such paltry amounts to it, which for them represent a drop in the ocean. As it stands, it is difficult to take their commitment to protecting our children seriously," Vaz said.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft insisted they had a strong relationship with the IWF and other child protection bodies. Facebook sponsored an event hosted by the IWF last year and made donations to agencies in other countries, it said.

Sir Richard Tilt, the IWF's chair of the board of trustees, said it would welcome more money from members. "There's certainly scope for increasing our number of analysts and we know if we had more analysts we could do better. If we could get more money that would enable us to do more," he said.

The scrutiny came after Mark Bridger was jailed for life for the sexually-motivated murder of April Jones, having earlier looked at child abuse images online. The biggest web companies – apart from Twitter and Amazon – are members of the IWF and block about 1,000 illegal sites at any one time.

But the IWF's five-strong team of analysts has become overwhelmed as reports of child abuse sites soared by 40% compared with last year, to 40,000, or 150 a day. The body is pushing companies to introduce new measures in the next 12 months including a "splash page", which would warn visitors to websites showing unlawful abuse images.

Tilt, a former director of the prison service, believes the setting will be a strong deterrent and potentially prevent further attacks. "Most of us who work in this area feel it will make a difference. There probably is a link that [online abuse images] make people more likely to commit dreadful offences, but the trouble is there isn't any clear evidence," he said.

Deborah Denis of the Lucy Faithful Foundation, a children's charity dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse, called on search engines to become more involved. But she said more stringent measures for those caught with indecent images would be "unacceptable and unrealistic", and instead there should be better sex and relationship education in schools.

Denis said: "If we attempted to lock up everybody who looked at indecent images of children, we simply wouldn't have enough space in prison. The police already do excellent work in this area, but it is a problem that is just too big for them to tackle alone."

Google was singled out for criticism by Liz Longhurst, whose daughter Jane was murdered by extreme pornography user Graham Coutts in 2003, prompting her to campaign for internet firms to ban such images. She said internet firms must "get their act together" and start tackling violent online imagery. "What annoys me immensely is that Google won't block these sites. They say we've got to have freedom. All I ask them is where was my daughter's freedom – tell me that."

There have been calls for Google to enforce its "safe search" option as the default setting, which would block pornographic material in search results. However, insiders insisted the move would be ineffectual as the stricter setting operates as an algorithm for legal content – and child abuse imagery is illegal, so is covered by extra blocking measures.

Scott Rubin, Google's director of communications outside America, said the company has a "zero-tolerance approach" on child abuse images and added: "The SafeSearch filter, which is designed to prevent sexually explicit material of all kinds from showing up in your search results, should not be conflated or confused with our dedication to keeping illegal abuse imagery out of our products. We don't rely simply on filtering technology to block child abuse images; we go beyond that.

"We are very proactive and work with the right people, including the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US and the IWF, to keep child abuse content off all of our sites. Any implication we aren't doing anything or we refuse to be part of removing this material is wrong."

A spokeswoman for Microsoft said: ""When we are made aware of any illegal content, we remove it from our services, including our search engine and report it to the police."

Facebook said it has technology that scans for child exploitative content and automatically flags images to law enforcement. It added: "Facebook works closely with CEOP [the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre] in the UK to help bring offenders to justice."

• Google
• Charitable giving
• Internet
• Pornography
• Child protection
• Children
• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• ISPs

Military support charity inundated with calls and web traffic over soldier killed while wearing Help for Heroes top

Help for Heroes has been swamped with donations, leading to its website crashing, after Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered while wearing one of the charity's tops.

Supporters of the military charity took to social networks in an attempt to boost its coffers after the 25-year-old was killed in Woolwich, south-east London, on Wednesday.

The former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan was among the sports stars, actors, broadcasters and politicians who spoke out in support of the charity, urging the public to give money.

David Cameron tweeted his support and a photograph of him wearing a Help for Heroes wristband. He wrote: "Proud to support @HelpforHeroes in tmrw's @TheSunNewspaper in memory of Drummer Lee Rigby £H4H".

The Oscar-winning actor Dame Helen Mirren donned a Help for Heroes polo shirt. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, and London's mayor, Boris Johnson, also gave their backing.

Help for Heroes offered its thanks for the "extraordinary demonstration of support", which it said had taken it by surprise.

In a statement on its website, the charity said: "Since the sad news emerged that a serving soldier had been murdered in Woolwich, Help for Heroes has been overwhelmed with people spontaneously showing their support for the armed forces.

"Our website is struggling to cope with this overwhelming reaction from the British public, some of whom are choosing to buy T-shirts and hoodies."

It added: "This sudden surge of interest in the work we're doing to help the wounded and their families has taken us completely by surprise. We just want to help, and all funds we receive will be used to provide direct, practical support to those affected by their service to our country.

"We ask all our volunteers, fundraisers and donors to remember Lee Rigby's family, colleagues and friends."

The charity said: "Thousands of people have visited our website wishing to donate or to buy H4H T-shirts in an extraordinary demonstration of support and defiance of terrorism. We are working hard to respond to this level of activity."

• Woolwich attack
• Charities
• Military
• London
• Voluntary sector
• Charitable giving

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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• Fundraising
• Communications
• Aid
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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.

• Gay rights
• Sexuality
• Religion
• National Lottery
• Charitable giving
• Consumer affairs

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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• Newcastle University

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

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the Guardian Voluntary Sector Network, click here.

• Voluntary sector network blog
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Shoppers urged to pay voluntary donation representing fairer factory wages towards ActionAid charity helping victims' families

A new campaign has been launched to raise money for the Bangladesh factory collapse victims by urging shoppers to pay a voluntary "T-shirt tax". The cash is going to the charity ActionAid which will distribute it to the families of victims killed in the disaster, as well as to workers who survived.

Victoria Butler-Cole, a 36-year-old barrister from Kent who came up with the idea, said: "It seems to me we have a moral duty to help. Everyone has something in their wardrobe from Bangladesh. This isn't just the fault of companies who supply cheap clothes."

Butler-Cole said shoppers should consider donating the difference between what they paid for a T-shirt – and what it would cost if it had been produced by workers treated property. For example, if a T-shirt produced in Bangladesh cost £3, a £3 donation would be fair, she said.

On Saturday demonstrators gathered outside cut-price retailer Primark's flagship store in Oxford Street. A petition has been launched calling for Primark and other brands, including Matalan and Mango, which used businesses based inside the Dhaka building, to compensate the families of workers killed or injured.

Butler-Cole acknowledged struggling families wouldn't be able to pay a T-shirt tax, and often relied on cut-price clothes. But she said others should consider it. The tax was better than a high-street boycott, which could lead to Bangladeshi workers losing their livelihoods, she added.

Butler-Cole's sister Imogen, who lived in Bangladesh, has launched a Facebook page and Twitter campaign with the hashtag #TShirtTax.

Currently ActionAid Bangladesh has 200 volunteers helping with the rescue operation and providing food, water and emergency equipment.

• Bangladesh
• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Charitable giving
• Fashion industry
• Primark
• Retail industry

Ed Balls is aiming for more than £30,000, McFly's Harry Judd has already topped £12,000 and TV presenter Jenni Falconer has only raised £117 so far

With just over two weeks remaining until the London Marathon, runners should now be tapering their training regimes to make sure they're in top shape for race day. But while the physical toil might be lessened, for the time being, this is the time when participators step up the pace with their fundraising efforts.

With many charities demanding minimum fundraising totals upwards of £1,500, reaching the target can be tough. But surely for celebrities, promoting their cause is much simpler? We took a look at how some familiar names compare with one another in the fundraising stakes.

The surprise winner of the celebrity totaliser is the McFly drummer Harry Judd, with a whopping £12,812.85 so far. Judd is running with a team of friends in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust and Eyes Alight. They intend not only to complete the 26.2m course, but also take part in Tough Mudder two weeks later, a half-marathon-length obstacle course that boldly describes itself as "probably the toughest event on the planet".

Judd's running total (pun intended) may have been boosted by the news yesterday that he has been diagnosed with a minor heart condition brought on by his intensive training regime. The musician tweeted that his ectopic heart beat proves he's "pushing as hard as possible for the marathon".

Competing for the first time last year, Ed Balls raised a spectacular £68,683. This year, he's aiming to take that figure to £100,000 by raising a further £31,317. But the shadow chancellor's total currently languishes at just £1,139, a mere 4% of his target, having only just started his fundraising drive for Whizz-Kids and Action for Stammering Children.

Balls can comfort himself with the knowledge that he is still beating his parliamentary rivals. Conservative MPs Jason McCartney, Nicky Morgan and Graham Evans have raised £832, £492 and £263 respectively, according to their Just Giving pages. Leaping ahead of Ed, though, is fellow Labour MP Dan Jarvis, who has raised £3,213 so far of his £10,000 target for Cancer Research.

Balls has said that he hopes to achieve a faster time this year, with his father-in-law promising to double his donation if he makes it round in sub five hours. Alas, a spokesperson for the politician told us that – most disappointingly – we won't be seeing Balls don a novelty banana costume in the name of charity.

In the battle of the news readers, Sian Williams is currently ahead of her BBC colleagues Susanna Reid and Sophie Raworth, with an impressive £6,638. Williams signed up to the London event after the New York marathon was cancelled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

At the other end of the scale and in need of your support are The Only Way is Essex's Amy Childs, with £200, and TV presenter Jenni Falconer, whose total currently stands at £117, according to her Virgin Money Giving page. However, Falconer is not a newcomer to the marathon world, and has the fastest previous time of any of our celebrities at 3hr 20min.

Falconer has said: "Training is proving tricky this time round because I am also trying to juggle looking after my little girl, Ella, who is 18 months old", but that the opportunity to raise money for The Childrens Trust is motivating her to complete the course. She adds, plaintively, on her donations page, "Please make the blood, sweat, tears, injuries, aches, pains and bulging blisters worth it!!"

• All figures are taken on Thursday night from the Just Giving and Virgin Money Giving websites and are – of course – going to change.

• Running
• Fitness
• Celebrity
• Charitable giving

Charity hopes giving Nectar points for unwanted items will raise millions of pounds

Giving unwanted items to Oxfam can now earn you Nectar points, after the charity teamed up with Britain's biggest loyalty scheme.

Oxfam said it hoped to raise millions of pounds as a result of the "first of its kind" partnership.

Nectar claims to be the UK's largest loyalty programme with more than 18 million cardholders. Those who sign up to Oxfam's gift aid scheme, called Tag Your Bag, will now be able to earn two points for every £1 their donated items raise when sold in its shops or online. Customers will also receive 100 points when they first sign up.

Gift aid is run by HM Revenue & Customs and allows charities to reclaim the 25% tax on donations by UK taxpayers. Over the last few years a growing number of charity shops have been inviting people to boost the value of their donated clothes, books and CDs simply by filling in a gift aid declaration.

Oxfam started rolling out Tag Your Bag in early 2009. More than 600,000 people have signed up so far, and all but 22 of its almost 700 UK high street shops are taking part.

Oxfam will process all donations, adding a unique code to each item to ensure that sales can be tracked back to the individual donor, thereby allowing points to be rewarded if and when an item is sold in store or through its online shop.

If, for example, your bag of unwanted DVDs raised £30, including the gift aid, that would give you 60 points. However, with 500 points typically required to produce £2.50 that can be spent on rewards such as money off shopping, travel, eating out and day trips, few people will get rich from their giving.

Sarah Farquhar, head of retail brand at the charity, said: "Oxfam is always looking for good-quality donations and this initiative will enable us to engage with an entirely new audience.

"Collecting Nectar points in this way is exclusive to us and we are aiming to raise millions of pounds from the scheme, which will go a long way in supporting our vital work fighting poverty around the world."

Customers can sign up to Tag Your Bag in an Oxfam shop or by visiting oxfam.org.uk/tagyourbag. They will receive a welcome pack, which includes the tags that must be attached to the bag of donated goods before they are dropped off at an Oxfam shop.

• Charitable giving
• Consumer affairs
• Family finances
• Charities
• Retail industry

Donate scheme aims to usher in a new era of fundraising by encouraging people to give money electronically

An ornate 17th century beaded basket and a badly damaged portrait of Britain's first world war naval commanders could be two of the first artworks to benefit from a newly launched funding scheme.

The scheme, called Donate, encourages people to give money to arts groups via a mobile phone or tablet device. To start it off, 11 institutions have signed up – from the Baltic Gallery in Gateshead to the Science Museum in London – and will display posters showing how it works. The idea is that people will be so cheered by what they have seen – whether a play or an exhibition – that they will feel moved to donate electronically, perhaps as little as £3.

Comedian Griff Rhys Jones, who had more than 10 years experiencing the headaches of fundraising at the Hackney Empire, backed the scheme on Wednesday. "It was an experience I don't intend to repeat," he said. "It was, actually, horrendous." He said he was now wary of many fundraising ideas but endorsed this one. "What I learned is: you do have to ask."

Jones said that it often seemed a near impossible task to reach a target but added that it was possible to raise vast amounts with small donations, pointing to the Comic Relief appeal, which has raised nearly £1bn over 25 years.

The plan is to roll Donate out nationally at the end of 2013. Others taking part in the first wave are the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, the Southbank Centre, London's Almeida Theatre, Bolton's Octagon Theatre, the Holburne Museum in Bath, the Kala Sangam south Asian arts company in Bradford, the National Trust, and the Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre.

Each has specific goals. For example, the NPG wants to raise £20,000 to restore a painting currently unfit for display. The hope is that the five-metre-long Naval Officers of World War I by Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope might be returned to its former glory in time for the first world war centenary in 2014. The Holburne Museum, meanwhile, is hoping for £5,000 to buy what it calls an "irresistibly charming and slightly mad" 17th century basket made from thousands of tiny glass beads. The Octagon is raising £100,000 to modernise its building and the Southbank is trying to raise the final £150,000 it needs to restore the Royal Festival Hall organ.

The organisation behind Donate is the National Funding Scheme. Its chairman, Robert Dufton, said it was exciting to see the first phase of the scheme go live.

"The scheme was created to help UK cultural organisations tackle the challenge of funding in a new, innovative way that engages supporters at the point of emotional engagement and encourages giving," he said.

• Arts funding
• Charitable giving
• Consumer affairs

Kate Almond's hair was 70cm long and had never been cut – but she decided to have it snipped off for Comic Relief

A schoolgirl has had her hair cut to be made into a wig for young cancer patients as part of a fundraising effort for Comic Relief.

Five-year-old Kate Almond's hair was 70cm (27ins) long and had never been cut – but she decided to have it snipped off for Comic Relief. She raised £100 from classmates in Wales and the hair was sent to the Little Princess Trust. Her mother, Nicola Beaumont, 44, said: "I'm so proud of her. I'm quite emotional but she isn't fazed at all. She did it for Comic Relief and it will help young cancer patients."

Red Nose Day celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, with performances from celebrities including James Corden, Miranda Hart and Dawn French.

The show included a reprise of Ricky Gervais's character David Brent from The Office, and Ron Burgundy from Anchorman, played by Will Ferrell.

Comic Relief was launched on Christmas Day 1985 in response to the famine in Ethiopia. It has funded more than 15,000 projects and raised over £800m.

The previous Red Nose Day, in March 2011, raised £74.3m and featured famous figures such as David Cameron, Paul McCartney and Rio Ferdinand. In 2007, Tony Blair appeared alongside comic Catherine Tate in a sketch set inside Number 10.

• Comic Relief
• Charities
• Charitable giving

Comic Relief is all very well but research suggests generosity varies by postcode – individualism seems a possible cause

Before you don your red nose and snorkel for Comic Relief, consider that your 24 hours immersed in baked beans may be significantly more lucrative in some parts of the country than others. New Philanthropy Capital have published survey findings into patterns of donor behaviour that some may find surprising.

As a Scot who has spent the last two decades attempting to bring civilisation to the English, I'm happy to report that, contrary to stereotype, ordinary Scottish people donate more to charity per head than their counterparts elsewhere in the UK. As a chippie pleb, I'm no less happy to note that my richest compatriots (Scots earning over £150k) defy the pattern, actually giving less than the rich elsewhere. I always knew they were a different species. Just to complete a gleeful triptych of confirmed personal prejudices, those from London and the south east are among the most tight-fisted folks around, even after controlling for income and cost of living.

These findings grabbed the headlines, because we journalists can never resist a good regional stereotype or two (yes, yes, I know, but you clicked the link, didn't you?) In fact the NPC report skips quickly over the regional variations, investigating and analysing not just the where, but also the how and the why of charitable giving.

The how has changed massively in recent years. When Comic Relief began, viewers would phone in and pledge money, then be trusted to post a cheque or go along to a bank the next day to pay in the money. Most of us can now donate with a few clicks of a mouse, a phone call or a text message. On a year-round basis, standing orders and payroll giving have made regular donations effortless, and charities now utilise expertise and technology to maximise their fundraising. Direct approaches, either to previous donors or cold-call victims, are almost universally despised but also infuriatingly effective.

The reasons why people give to charity are more complex. Presumably because it is drawn from focus group work, the NPC report only looks at the conscious and stated reasons why people do or do not give – the perceived effectiveness of the donation, the reputation of the charity, personal involvement in the charity's aims and so forth. With all due respect to the careful consideration given by Brooke Magnanti and others, I suspect that most people's charitable donations are usually spontaneous and emotional rather than rationally considered.

All sorts of psychological processes influence decisions on charitable giving. The big national telethons are object lessons in conformity, but at the heart of most altruistic behaviour is the capacity for empathy. As I've noted before, psychologists have shown that human empathy can be manipulated just by changing people's perception of their own social status. This can help explain the well-observed phenomenon that poor people give a much higher proportion of their income to charity than the rich.

It seems a long time ago now, but one of the cornerstones of David Cameron's big society was supposed to be the flourishing of philanthropy among the better off, a new privatised safety net to replace the welfare state. It hasn't happened, and one reason may be that charitable inclinations often stem from a sense of proximity, either physical or emotional. I will freely admit that this is speculation, but it seems likely to me that the current media and political climate is pulling in exactly the opposite direction. We are encouraged to think of our society as being split between the workers and shirkers or the deserving and undeserving poor. Can that encourage people to feel compassion for the poor, to give to projects helping and supporting the very same people being dragged daily through the gutter press? Disability charities make up one of the most important parts of the sector, so what effect does the stereotyping and demonisation of disabled and ill people as scroungers and malingerers have upon public generosity? For whatever reasons, personal donations to charities dropped by 20% last year, vastly more than the average drop in wages.

It may be one reason why Scotland comes out well in the new figures. The political and media culture in my homeland has always been distinct, and since devolution it has become more so. Notions such as solidarity and collective welfare are not yet entirely alien concepts. By comparison, the culture of the south east is much more closely aligned to a conservative individualism.

Of course individualism and rightwing politics do not preclude generosity. The US was built on a philosophy of individualism and free market economics, but combines that with perhaps the world's strongest charitable ethos. Meanwhile I've known plenty of socialists who were stingy bastards. For all that, modern England seems to be drifting away from a culture of collective social protection, without even the Elastoplast of charitable giving. That is a dangerous combination.

• Charitable giving
• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Consumer affairs
• Scotland
• Comic Relief

Study by New Philanthropy Capital says Britons would give about £700m extra yearly if more sure of charities' impact

London comedians making stereotyped jokes about Scottish stinginess, look away now. Scots give more to charity than the English and a third more than Londoners, a study of the habits and motivations of British philanthropy has revealed.

People living in the south and east of England are giving less than those in poorer areas, according to the donor advisory group New Philanthropy Capital, which produced the study.

The survey of 3,000 donors also found that most Britons do not see giving to charity as a duty. Less than half of those polled said others should give too if they had the means.

The report has sparked fresh concern that charity leaders are failing to prove the effectiveness of their work; the British public, it appears, would give an estimated £700m extra a year in income if they were more convinced their donations were doing good.

The snapshot of British giving comes before the Comic Relief telethon, on Friday, the UK's biggest night of fundraising, and next week's budget in which the chancellor, George Osborne, is expected to encourage charities to fill the space left by retreating public services, with offers of tax breaks for social investment.

"It is quite shocking that so few people feel there is an obligation to give," said Dan Corry, chief executive of New Philanthropy Capital. "We have gone through a phase where we have a welfare state, we pay our taxes and we feel we don't give any more. But the world has changed and the government is not going to do as much."

The report calls on charities to tackle two main areas of underperformance identified by donors: the charities' evidence of impact and explanation about how donations are used.

The study found 10% of mainstream donors and 13% of rich donors would give more if charities provided better information.

A further 10% of mainstream donors and 21% of the rich would give more and shift their donations to more persuasive charities. The effect would be a £665m annual boost to charities, the report's authors have calculated.

Fundraisers have said the lack of training for small charities in asking for donations holds the groups back, so they are lobbying the chancellor to increase funding for that purpose.

"There's a political disconnection," said Peter Lewis, chief executive of the Institute of Fundraising, which represents 350 charities. "The government says it wants more and more giving but it needs to help with more asking. The research shows 83% of donors only give because they are asked, so we want the government to invest more in training more charities to be better at fundraising."

The survey, conducted by Ipsos Mori, found Scottish donors from households with incomes lower than £150,000, on average, gave £356 last year. The only English region to give more was the Midlands, with £375. People in London gave £268. In the south and east of England the sum was £276. The smallest donations came from the north-east, with £223.

The Scots' generosity comes despite per capita household incomes in London being 25% higher than in Scotland, according to national statistics.

"People have less disposable income at the moment and yet we continue to be happily surprised by our donors' continued support," said Kirsty Yanik, awareness manager of Alzheimer Scotland, in Edinburgh. "It is time to get away from the old stereotype that Scots won't open their wallet, because that's certainly not the case for charities."

She said Scottish charities might be benefiting from being outside the maelstrom of competitive marketing and fundraising that donors are exposed to in London.

Corry said competition in London could confuse donors and it might be hard to choose between charities. There were, for example, 23 charities registered in England and Wales with autism in their name and eight operated in London.

The average gift from those people categorised as giving over £50 a year from households with an income lower than £150,000, was £303.

The average gift from a high-income household, with more than £150,000 a year, was £1,282.

Donations do not increase in proportion with income. The average donation for a household with an income between £20,000 and £50,000, was £313, while adding an extra £80,000 to £100,000 to the household income only brought the average donation up by £206.

People aged 45 to 54 were giving the least, on average, while those aged over 65 gave the most.

Collection tins remained the most often used way to give, followed by direct debits to charities, then sponsorship.

But hi-tech techniques are gaining traction, with more than a fifth of people aged 18 to 34 donating by text message in the last year. Medical research, children or young people, and hospitals or hospices, were the three most popular causes.

• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Charitable giving
• Philanthropy
• Social trends
• Tax and spending
• George Osborne

How do you go about raising money for Comic Relief when all you have to offer is a Guardian science blog and an almost total lack of academic credibility? You let other people decide for you

I wanted to do something for Comic Relief. I have always endeavoured to show the humorous side of science in my myriad works, and rumour has it I sometimes succeed [citation needed]. Since the last time Comic Relief happened, I've managed to obtain my own dedicated blog on the Guardian Science network, the one you're reading now (possibly by accident).

But despite having access to this ill-deserved moderately-high-profile platform, the question of how to use it to raise money for Comic Relief still remained. The general consensus seems to be that the things you do to raise money for Comic Relief should be a) challenging, and b) amusing, or at least an attempt at being amusing.

This is tricky to manage in the Guardian Science section. For one, scientific literature on humour and comedy is relatively sparse, and what there is of it is, as you might expect, not funny at all.

Add to this the fact that writing a blog, although often tricky, isn't what most people would consider "challenging". It can be, as demonstrated by the mighty Michael Legge's 25 hour non-stop blogging marathon earlier this week. But even if I were willing/able to attempt some ill-advised herculean blogging endurance test (which I'm not), I'm pretty sure the Guardian website (third most popular news site in the world as of June 2012) would not be keen on letting me abuse its resources to do it.

So, I'm going to do what any good scientist would when faced with a tricky problem. I'm going to ask others for help. Science is invariably done best in collaboration, so here's what we're going to do.

In honour of Red Nose Day's 25th anniversary, the first 25 people to sponsor me get to choose a subject. It can be anything you like as long as it's not a) offensive or b) illegal (I may be doing this for charity; the Guardian legal team is not). Once I've got enough subjects, I'll do my very best to combine them all into a science blog and post it here on Friday 15 March, the day of Comic Relief.

It will probably be the most incoherent, illogical and nonsensical science blog ever posted on the site (and that's saying something), but I'll be donating all the revenue I get via web traffic to the sponsorship total, so you can give money to charity just by reading it (although it may not be worth it).

I may well fail in my attempt to combine 25 disparate subjects into a coherent science blog, but that should provide a good laugh at the very least.

Here are some of the rules of this bizarre challenge:

1. Here's my sponsorship page. The first 25 people to sponsor get to pick a subject I have to incorporate into the final blog. There is no minimum sponsorship required and it's first come first served. Once there are 25 subjects provided, you will be unable to make suggestions, but you can still sponsor if you wish.

2. If you donate, you can leave your name and the web address of anything you'd like to have a link to (website, blog, twitter feed etc). You can remain anonymous if you wish, but if you donate too late to pick a subject, you can still get a mention in the final blog if you leave your details.

3. Suggestions and names/link details can be left in comments on the sponsorship page.

4. Anything deemed offensive or legally questionable posted as either subject suggestions or link requests will not be considered.

So there we go. If the set-up is this confusing, imagine what the end result is going to be like.

Ah, science!

UPDATE: 25 people have now sponsored and provided subjects. You can still sponsor and get a mention, but no more subject choices will be accepted.

Dean Burnett's sponsorship page is here. You can track his efforts to give himself brain sprain while doing this via Twitter, @garwboy

• Comic Relief
• Psychology
• Charitable giving
• Comedy
• Crowdsourcing

Fiennes, who was forced to drop out of charity trek across continent, may require surgery on frostbitten fingers

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has said he is frustrated after frostbite forced him to pull out of an expedition aiming to be the first to cross Antarctica in winter, but he will still be devoting all his energies to making the trip a success.

Revealing that he has spent five years preparing exclusively for the journey, and sporting a bandaged left hand, the 68-year-old serial adventurer nevertheless showed that he had not lost his sense of humour.

"I am very frustrated at being back six months before the expedition is due to finish," he said at a press conference, after flying back to the UK on Monday morning. "I am not good at crying over spilt milk, or split fingers, but it is extremely frustrating."

Fiennes was forced to drop out of the Coldest Journey", a 2,000-mile trip in temperatures as low as -70C, which is scheduled to begin on 20 March, after he fell while during training at a base camp in Antartica last week and developed frostbite after taking off his outer gloves in temperatures of -33C. He said a surgeon had told him two of his fingers may need to be operated on.

He now intends to dedicate his energies to raising money for the expedition's charity, Seeing is Believing, which aims to tackle preventable blindness. "Having spent five years on this I am going to make sure it succeeds," he said.

Fiennes was to have completed the expedition on skis with the remainder of the team in tractors with caterpillar tracks. The expedition will be the first vehicular winter crossing of Antarctica, if it succeeds.

Making a lighthearted comparison to when the Australians accused Team GB of winning Olympic medals only in sitting-down sports, Fiennes said the Norwegians would no doubt now beat him to completing the crossing on skis, and then mock the fact that the British had done it using caterpillars. But the actor Joanna Lumley, who is on the Coldest Journey board of trustees, said it remained an "extraordinary … madcap" expedition.

Fiennes suffered frostbite 13 years ago, which could have made him susceptible to another bout. But he said that in that time he had undertaken other expeditions in conditions harsher than last week's, including three to Mount Everest, without suffering any recurrences.

He said of his attempt to fix his bindings, which led to the injury: "I tried fixing them with my big overgloves on but I couldn't do a thing. You couldn't even peel a banana with those on. So I took off my inner mitts in order to be able to do the bindings up.

"People will say, 'Surely you know you mustn't take your mitts off completely.' But if [I hadn't], I'd have sat there, gone nowhere, and died of cold. It's just one of those things."

Fiennes batted away questions about his age and whether he would be retiring soon by joking that he could not answer questions about his future without his wife. However, he said that after he was named the UK's top celebrity fundraiser by JustGiving, having raised £15m, he had said to himself he wanted to raise £20m before retiring; the Coldest Journey has a target of $10 million (£6.6m).

• Ranulph Fiennes
• Antarctica
• Charitable giving
• Australia
• Norway
• Team GB
• Joanna Lumley