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Funding

Our Strategic Programmes

We make grants with attention to the following areas:

Alleviating poverty’s consequences and grip on people’s daily lives.

We fund programmes that help people and communities overcome the many challenges they face.

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Tackling the injustices that keep people in poverty.

We support organisations and movements that strive for fairness and equity.

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Standing with those in poverty who are most harmed by climate change.

We work in places and with people who are already vulnerable and now dealing with the effects of climate change.

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Approaches

Comic Relief supports approaches to social change that offer something different, think outside the box or offer new thinking to achieve profound impact.

Pop Culture for Social Change

Pop culture has the ability to provoke far-reaching change in society. The narratives and stories that reach mass audiences through films, TV, music, books, games and journalism, often touch people’s hearts and minds and shift public opinion, thus driving public pressure towards policy change.

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Sport for change

Sport for Change can achieve much more than just the physical benefits of participation in sporting activity. Sport brings people together across culture, language, gender and social class, making it a powerful alternative for engagement to clinical or traditional services.

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Funding - How we fund

How we fund

Our funding approach is based on four important priorities:

1. Equity, diversity and inclusion

We invest in organisations led by and for communities experiencing inequity, exclusion and discrimination and use learning and storytelling to help drive justice.

2. Participation and lived experience

We listen to, work with and support people with direct experience of the issues we fund to ensure our own work best meets their needs.

3. Being learning-led

We continually engage and reflect with our funded partners in order to drive continuous improvement and deeper understanding of the impact our funding has on social change.

4. Centring trust in relationships

We understand the power imbalance traditionally held by funders and continually engage our funded partners in open and transparent dialogue in order to better understand their needs and reduce barriers to engagement, participation and support.

Funding in detail

How we support change

We support individuals and communities experiencing poverty by funding essential support and services. Through our storytelling, we raise awareness and understanding of the challenges they face. We also tackle the injustices which contribute to poverty by convening our extensive networks to share learning and build collective action.

You can find out more about what your money does through the link below…

Read our stories

Our Progressive Funding Practice

Our funding charter outlines our commitments to the partners we fund, so everyone knows what to expect from our funding partnership.

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Funding Cards

More about our funding

IVAR's grant making initiative

IVAR’s Open and Trusting grant making initiative calls for funders to adopt more flexible grant making that reflects the challenges and realities facing charities.

Comic Relief has been an active participant since the start in 2020 and we have recently updated our funding commitments.

Centre for Effective Philanthropy

The Centre for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) grantee perception report collects anonymised information from our funded partners so they can give us honest feedback on how they find working with Comic Relief. We undertake the CEP survey every two years and commit to publishing the findings, progress and actions taken.

Tackling Racial Inequalities

Comic Relief was founded on the principles of ending injustice including addressing racial inequality through our work. Here is a summary of the ongoing work across our funding stream, projects, and creative channels as we listen, learn and grow.

Get in touch

We are always trying to learn and improve the way we fund.

If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, you are welcome to email us at fundinginfo@comicrelief.com(opens in new window)

We have open and confidential feedback forms available for every funding call we release. Click here to find out more.

Existing Funded Partners can leave feedback anonymously here.