Our Accounts

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 are committed to allocating 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 the public gives directly to us paying 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 the public gives us.

The above sets of accounts have been submitted to the Charity Commission and Companies House, and you can have a read too.