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Military and children’s charities to benefit from News of the World final day profits

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 11 Jul 2011

The profits from the final edition of the News of the World are to be split between three charities which work with children and military families, while just over two dozen charities and social enterprises took up the paper’s offer of free advertising.  

Barnardo’s, the Forces Children’s Trust and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity will each receive a third of the profits from Sunday’s edition of the disgraced tabloid. It remains unclear as to how much and when News of the World (NotW) will pay the three beneficiaries, but each are believed to be in line for a "six-figure sum". 

The three charities said they had not pitched for the partnership, but had been approached by NotW with the offer. Both the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity and the Forces Children’s Trust said they had been approached with the offer of a Sunday sales donation on Saturday.

A spokeswoman for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity said chief executive Mike Hammond sought advice from trustees and charity staff as to whether there were grounds to refuse the donation after receiving the call from the paper. The money raised via the partnership will go towards the running costs of a centre for the families of military patients, she said. The charity decided that it could not refuse the offer of money within the bounds of the Institute of Fundraising’s code of practice on refusing donations, which requires that the charity does not allow personal opinions on a donor to dictate whether or not to receive funds.

Neither of the two smaller charities had a pre-existing relationship with the News of the World. Chairman of the Forces Children’s Trust, which works with children who have lost a military parent in conflict, Denny Wise said he suspected he could have come to the paper’s attention because he was awarded a military award by the Sun, fellow News International tabloid.

Wise said that the charity was “very grateful” for the offer from the NotW, and that he had cleared the offer with his board of trustees. “We need the funds,” he said of the charity which, last financial year on record had income of just under £80,000. “The most important thing is that the children are supported.”

Hammond, from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity, similarly expressed gratitude to the paper. "The charity thanks the News of the World and its readers for this donation. It will be used to support projects benefitting military patients and their families carried out by Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity," he said.

Two dozen charities take up advert offer

Just over two dozen - mostly small – charities took up the newspaper’s offer of free advertising for good causes on the weekend, such as myHIV and Friendship Works. Larger organisations which took advantage of the free advertising were the Disasters Emergency Committee, St John’s Ambulance, Medecins Sans Frontiers and the Sky Rainforest Rescue, a collaboration between Sky, part-owned by News International, and the WWF. CivilSociety.co.uk reported on Friday that many of the large household names had shown no interest in taking up the general free advertising offer.

St John’s Ambulance, which had advertised for people to text for first aid kits, is said to have received nearly 1,000 texts as a result of its full-page advert.

Scott Jacobson, director of marketing, communications and fundraising at the charity, said, “At the end of the day, our decision was based on one thing: saving lives. As a result of this one ad, nearly 1,000 people have already texted in to request free first aid guides. Knowing that one of them might one day use the information they receive to save a life suggests we used the right criteria in making this decision despite the unfortunate way the opportunity came about," added Jacobson.

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