Society Diary: Why is there a giant loo roll outside St Paul's?

11 Jul 2014 Voices

Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector.

Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector. 

Bowel cancer gets a bum rap

Diary has long been campaigning for bowel cancer charities to launch a “wear brown for bum cancer” campaign during rectal cancer awareness month. After all, the “wear pink for breast cancer” thing has worked so well, and it’s hard to see what could go wrong.

After all, is anyone now unaware of breast cancer? But awareness of bowel cancer is probably much lower.

Charity Beating Bowel Cancer has also spotted this, and has today erected a giant loo roll outside St Paul’s Cathedral as an awareness-raising device. It’s worked on Diary, which was hitherto unaware that bowel cancer was the second biggest cancer killer in the UK, and the fourth most common cancer.

So why is bowel cancer comparatively so badly funded? Diary has decided to investigate further. This is something we need to get to the bottom of.

There’s always a bigger tosser

We’re not completely happy with Mark Astarita, outgoing chair of the IoF and director of fundraising at the Red Cross. Astarita is officially the biggest cheese in fundraising after coming top for the third year in a row in the 50 Most Influential poll run by our title, Fundraising Magazine, but he seems to have taken a slightly two-handed attitude to his honour.

Astarita was presented with a special cover of the mag at the IoF’s National Convention, rather like the way Brazil got to keep the Jules Rimet trophy after winning the World Cup three times.

“Now I’m standing down as chair I hope you’ll stop voting for me in the ‘biggest tosser in fundraising’ award,” Astarita told the conference. “Now Richard Taylor is chair, I hope you’ll vote for him instead, because he’s a much bigger tosser than I am.”

  astaritamark_fundraising_cover_400.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church ditches Wonga

So the Church Commissioners have finally managed to get rid of their stake in Wonga, the best part of a year after first saying they wanted to. They released a statement saying effectively that they’d finally managed to ditch it after a prolonged wrestle to exit their investment from the private equity firm who’d taken the position, but it was OK, they hadn’t made any profit from it.

Surely this is the worst of all possible worlds – committing a sin but obtaining no pleasure from it, a bit like Bill Clinton smoking marijuana but not inhaling. If you’re going to invest in Wonga, you should try to walk away with as much of their cash as possible. After all, it's surely better for the church to have the profits from Wonga than Wonga having them - isn't it?

This got Diary thinking a bit more. If you’re an MP or a business and you discover you’ve been caught making a profit from something dodgy, the traditional thing is to give it to charity. But if you’re a charity and you make a profit from doing something dodgy, who do you give it to?