How We Operate

First things first

Ok, here comes the legal bit… Comic Relief is a UK registered company limited by guarantee and a charity registered with the Charity Commission in England & Wales (326568) and with OSCR in Scotland (SC039730).

What that doesn’t tell you is that, as well as being an official UK charity, we’re also absolutely committed to maintaining the best standards in everything we do. When it comes to raising money for example, we’re a member of the Fundraising Standards Board and strive to comply with fundraising best practice. We’re also a grant making organisation so we don’t run our own projects on the ground. Instead, we award grants to other organisations who need the money to carry out their own crucial charitable work with our financial support.

What may come as a surprise is that we are, in fact, independent from the BBC. We are enormously grateful for their incredible support and work very closely with them indeed – they are our most important partner. If one of us is Batman, the other is Robin – and we make a great team.

Governance and Charity Structure

How We Manage Our Money

Awarding Grants

Operating Income and Expenditure

Governance and Charity Structure

Any good ship needs an excellent captain and ours comes in the form of a highly dedicated and knowledgeable Board of Trustees. Our Trustees meet six times a year to discuss all things Comic Relief and they’re responsible for approving every single grant that we award. We also have a series of committees which include professional experts in their chosen fields, giving critical advice and support in all our key business areas. These groups, the UK and International Grants Committees, Investment, Finance, Remuneration and Nomination Committees and The Business Advisory and Cash Management Groups are voluntary and support the work of the paid staff team in critical ways.

The full-time staff team is managed by a Chief Executive and seven Directors who take the lead on carrying out the vision as set by the Board of Trustees, as well as implementing strategy, planning and delivery of the day-to-day work. Like any organisation serious about achieving its goals, we have strategies in place - in our case one- and four-year plans and an outline of a ten-year framework scoping our longer-term ambitions. Outside of the Chief Executive's office, the seven directorates are Marketing, Operations, Business, Innovation, Creative, Strategy and Grants.

How We Manage Our Money

Comic Relief has formal policies relating to its investments, its reserves and its grant making which govern the way we operate our core business.

We work hard to allocate all the money raised during Red Nose Day before the next Red Nose Day two years later. And we take the same approach with Sport Relief.

But the money isn’t paid out all at once because some of the grants we give last for a long time, up to six years – and we need to make sure the money is being spent as we agreed. That’s why we phase the payments and ask the organisations to report on what they’re doing with the money before the next payment is made.

And while we’re waiting to pay all those charities and organisations their next instalments we have a lot of money waiting to go out. Under charity law we have to invest that money so that we can try and make it into even more money. That’s why we have a team of the UK’s best financial experts advising us how to invest that money wisely.

The additional money we make is then spent on running Comic Relief and making sure we can create another standout campaign the following year, and raise even more for the thousands of projects we support across the UK and world’s poorest countries. Using the income from the money we have invested means that we don’t have to spend any of the money raised directly from the public to pay our salaries, lighting bills and all the other expenses that are needed to run a successful and professional charity. We have other money to help run ourselves too – some is from corporate partners, some is from the Government and some is from other income sources. But it’s never from the money donated by the public.

For a more detailed explanation of our investment, reserves and grant making policies, click here.

Awarding Grants

In many ways, spending money well is as hard and complex as raising it, and it takes time and professionalism to get it right.

We receive many more applications for grants than we can make, and selecting those that best meet the criteria can therefore be difficult (learn more about the vision and principles that guide our UK and International grant making).

Once the Trustees have made their final decisions we monitor and evaluate the impact of the grants we award and undertake research of various kinds to ensure that the needs addressed are the right ones and that the public money we are responsible for is genuinely making as big a difference as it possibly can.

We also review our key areas of funding every four years so that we’re always awarding grants to support projects that help people in real need. This time frame also allows us to assess the impact of our grant making strategies and consider the difference we’ve made, take account of the changes in the external world and apply our learning in a systematic way to what we do next.

To ensure organisations that are allocated money spend it in the best possible way, we stagger our payments to them. By doing this we can hold each organisation directly accountable and make sure that each instalment has been spent correctly before we issue the next one.

The aim is always to allocate all the money raised by each fundraising campaign before the next one comes around. So, money from one Red Nose Day is fully committed by the time the next one is over, and so on.

Operating Income and Expenditure

Every year we raise millions of pounds in a very short period of time and that, combined with the fact that we stagger our grant payments and fund long term projects, means we are in a position to earn interest on funds we hold, which in turn goes a long way in helping us to pay our own running costs.

Operating Income and Expenditure statement:

“In order to run itself in a professional and effective way Comic Relief incurs necessary costs. Raising funds, making grants and organisational overheads cost real money.

Despite these costs, Comic Relief is still able to promise that for every pound the charity gets directly from the public, a pound goes to help transform the lives of people living with poverty and social injustice. If Red Nose Day raises £50 million, Comic Relief will spend at least £50 million doing just that.

It can make this promise because its operating budget is covered in cash or in kind from all types of supporters like corporate sponsors and donors, suppliers, generous individuals and government (including Gift Aid) as well as from investment income and interest.”

Next Steps

Meet the team