Comic Relief is a remarkable philanthropic success story. Founded in 1985, it has raised over half a billion pounds to date. The great majority of its income has been raised by and from the general public through its flagship events – Red Nose Day and Sport Relief. As a result, Comic Relief is now amongst the largest independent charitable funders in the UK, currently distributing over £40m annually.
Comic Relief also has a reputation for innovative grant-making. It has championed unpopular causes, worked for long-term strategic change, and used its media profile and celebrity links to highlight issues, not just raise cash. It is no surprise therefore that Comic Relief has recognised the increasing impact of climate change on its beneficiaries, particularly in Africa where the majority of the world’s poorest and most disempowered people live and where impact will be felt most. In supporting these local communities affected by climate change, Comic Relief is funding action within existing programmes.
Peter Macfadyen, a consultant working for Comic Relief, says: “It is increasingly clear that the unpredictability of climate is having a significant impact on the ability of people to produce crops. While extreme weather events make the headlines, it is local variations from what is expected that are making it increasingly hard, especially without capital or the ability to borrow to fall back on. Comic Relief believes that to really understand the complexity of how local people are affected and how they can best respond, we should work within our existing programmes.
“After a period of careful research and consultation, Comic Relief carried out a pilot climate change funding programme during 2009. This supported eight agencies and their partners to carry out work in Africa to develop increased community-based resilience to climate change, and to advocate at a national and international level.
In parallel Comic Relief carried out work on our own carbon footprint, and took some initial steps into supporting communications work in the UK. The programme was externally evaluated and has been written up as a booklet as part of our ‘learning series’.
We are now building on our learning from the pilot and evaluation. Firstly we will make further grants for work in Africa. These will build on the pilot and will embed climate work into our existing grants programmes rather than build a stand-alone grants programme which may become isolated from the bulk of our funding. However, this is not a plan to ‘mainstream’ in the conventional sense, because this risks diluting the impact we wish to achieve. Rather, we will support a limited number of organisations with clear ideas and plans to address climate change within their existing programmes of work and relationships with local organisations.
Secondly, we will, as far as possible, employ a participatory approach to grant making. This will include: working with potential grantees to define the aims and outcomes for a climate change initiative within each of the programmes; peer reviewing one another’s application forms; and for grantees to take part in ‘Communities of Practice’.
Finally, the evaluation recommended that Comic Relief use its position to bring together funders interested in collaboration on climate issues to increase impact and effectiveness. To this end, we have held one very successful meeting of funders, and are following this up early next year.
“We believe that through funding in this way we will be better placed to learn how people are affected in climate change in different situations, and whether climate change is indeed the hazard on which we should focus.”
The learning series booklet Taking the Climate Initiative which describes the pilot programme in more detail is available here. Further information is also available from Peter Macfadyen p.macfadyen@comicrelief.com and on the Comic Relief website.
