The ballad of the bulbous bulldog

Normally in order to find entertainment in the events of the charity sector, it is necessary for Society Diary to carefully shape some flight of rhetorical fancy.

In the case of the PDSA’s annual Pet Fit Club, however, all of that wordsmithery is wholly unnecessary. The facts speak for themselves.

The PDSA takes in fat dogs, and makes them skinny, and there is just something innately funny about a fat dog. Here is a picture of a surprised woman holding a fat dog.

You have nothing to lose but your chains

Last week, Society Diary got a press release from an outfit called Revolutionise Clayton Burnett.

This rather tickled Diary’s fancy. Maybe Clayton Burnett was a dormitory town somewhere in rural Hertfordshire, where the local stockbrokers and lawyers were being oppressed, and had issued a call to arms. Maybe they needed the vote, or land reform, or bigger parking spaces suitable for sports utility vehicles, and a kind of middle-class equivalent of the Boxer Rebellion was imminent.

Sadly, all of this proved pure whimsy. It was actually a fundraising agency, and the name Revolutionise Clayton Burnett was merely an intermediate stage, a kind of pupa between the dull caterpillar of Clayton Burnett and the bright butterfly that is its new name, Revolutionise.

But then this in turn started Diary thinking. If we need to revolutionise Clayton Burnett, what might we need to do with the other members of the PFRA? Jumpstart Bluefrog perhaps? Divert Flow Caritas? Revitalise Alive Fundraising?

F2F off, Mr Hurd

Society Diary is considering a ban on Nick Hurd – or at least a temporary suspension – after recently noticing that the affable, quip-dispensing charities minister has strolled his way through these pages on an almost weekly basis. No doubt Hurd will be disappointed, but it’s for his own good.

Before we dispense with his services altogether, however let us turn to the AGM of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, which Hurd attended earlier this week.

You’d imagine the charities minister would find it quite hard to get booed at a charity event – after all, everyone wants his money – but Hurd managed it with the PFRA.

He strolled to the rostrum and looked around the room. “I’ve had lots of advice to introduce statutory regulation of chugging,” he said.

“Boo!” the audience shouted.

Why the complaints? Well, they probably didn’t like the idea of government regulation, but that wasn’t really what got their goat. It was being called chuggers. You’d think they’d be used to it by now, since that’s what everyone calls them. But quite the reverse, really.

Hurd looked a bit surprised. “What’s the polite term?” he asked.

Face-to-face fundraisers, old chap.

Crime pays

Did you know that the Social Investment Business, the largest frontline social lender in the UK, was originally started with money from the proceeds of crime?

Now in other sectors, a bunch of investors profiting from the proceeds of crime is almost de rigeur. Libor? Gold prices? Insider trading?

But these are social investors. They use their powers for good. So when they say their money came from the proceeds of crime, they mean other people’s.

The SIB’s parent charity, the Social Investment Business Foundation, originally started out with a £4m grant from a Home Office fund which redistributed the assets of hardened criminals.