J.K. Rowling: a moral responsibility to give

The year 2000 marked an important turning point for J.K. Rowling, the author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series of children’s books. Before then she remained relatively anonymous, rarely giving interviews and keeping any cause she supported as far away from press interest as she could possibly manage.

Perhaps she got fed up of her rags-to-riches story of single-motherhood-on-benefits-in-Edinburgh being rehashed in the first paragraph of any profile of her – she described it as feeling like she had ‘penniless, divorcee, lone parent’ tattooed on her head – and decided that if it was going to follow her around, then she would use her status as the most famous single mother in Britain to become the Ambassador and then the President of the National Council for One-Parent Families. In the same year, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1m to aid women and children and to combat poverty and social inequality.

Since then Rowling has had plenty to say about the way single parents get blamed for everything from falling morals to rising crime: “It’s much easier for certain sections of society to say. ‘You’ve brought this on yourself by your fecklessness; you sort it out,’ than to say ‘You’ve been a victim of circumstances’ or ‘Hey, marriages break up…..but how are we going to help you help yourself?’”

Her philanthropy is now unabashedly visible and involved – the two books she wrote for Comic Relief – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages – have gone on to raise £15.7m for the fund. She has said that “You have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently”. Rather then passively signing large cheques, she involves herself not only in the organisation of her own charities but also in well publicised events (such as a reading with Stephen King and John Irving in New York to raise money for AIDS and ‘Medicine Without Borders’), that increase the public and media profile of the cause she is supporting as well as raising substantial amounts of money.

In the last couple of years, Rowling has been almost hyper-active in her giving of her time, money and her celebrity status.  In 2006, she contributed a substantial sum towards the creation of a new Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University – her mother died of multiple sclerosis - and hosted a fund-raising ball with her anaesthetist husband to mark the twelfth anniversary of her mother’s death.

In the same year Rowling went to Bucharest to highlight the use of caged beds in children’s mental institutions and raise support for the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG)*, which was founded by her and MEP Emma Nicholson. The CHLG’s aim is to improve the well being, health and protection of vulnerable children in care. To further support the CHLG, Rowling auctioned one of seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of wizarding fairy tales alluded to in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book of the Harry Potter series, and raised £1.95m for the charity.

After the bid she said, “Large amounts of wealth bring a certain responsibility if you’re any kind of human being, then after you fulfil your family’s needs, you think, well how do I do some good with this?”

Sophie Radice writes for The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent and The Evening Standard, as well as magazines such as Eve, Woman and Home and Women's Weekly. She is working on her first novel.

* UPDATE: By 2009, the two organisations had developed different visions for their future work and in January 2010, they agreed, amicably, that henceforth they would work largely independently of each other.

In 2010, Baroness Nicholson resigned from the Board of the English charity. She continues as Chair of the Romanian charity, The Associatian Children’s High Level Group, in which capacity she will further the work she began there and direct its resources to existing and new projects.

The Board of Trustees of the English charity, now renamed Lumos, will continue to be chaired by J K Rowling. The other Trustees are Dr Kazem Behbehani, Bryan Ellis, Sir Roger Singleton, Neil Blair, Rita Dattani, Sandy Loder, Lucy Smith, Rachel Wilson and District Judge Nick Crichton. The English charity will continue its work on projects across Europe, with the exception of Romania.

Lumos currently works in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Moldova and Montenegro and, over the coming months and years, will expand its projects to even more countries.

 www.lumos.org.uk