More about Children in Need

Last night, Children in Need issued a statement ridiculing our charges against them (see article).

We'd been looking forward to their response. We've categorically said that Children in Need is a good thing, so we hoped that the charity would be able to defend itself in the face of some of the misreporting there's been in the press.

We hoped that Pudsey would point out that he does a good job raising money from people who wouldn't otherwise give. But we also hoped he'd admit that our reservations about admin costs, sloppy reporting and a lack of transparency held some water.

Sadly, he didn't do this. The press release he issued contained the same misleading information that got the charity into hot water in the first place.

So we're going to have to say it again: just because CIN's admin costs are met from interest on bank reserves, this doesn't mean that they're a particularly well-run charity.

All big charities have investments, but CIN is the only one to claim that the interest they earn on them somehow cancels out their running costs.

We think this claim is misleading. It makes people think that CIN doesn't cost anything to run - and by implication that their money won't be spent funding an extra set of admin expenses.

We've pointed out that this isn't true: give to CIN and your money will finance the running costs of two - or maybe even three - organizations. And this isn't efficient.

And Pudsey has yet to disagree.