Why small can be good

Charities employ 600,000 people and are involved in a wide range of fundraising lobbying, influencing and administrative activities, as well as delivering projects on the ground.  These charities do very important work. There are, however also many small charities making a real, sustainable difference to the lives and future prospects of very many vulnerable people in Africa.  These charities help AIDS orphans to have an education and a future; they feed, shelter, educate and provide jobs skills training for young people who would have ended up in jail or prostitution or dead; they provide micro-loans to help women living in abject poverty to generate the income that will enable them to provide shelter and education for their children.  They have very little money but they spend almost every penny they do get, doing what they intended to do.

There are amny such charities in Africa and, in the midst of all the debates about how best to help the two thirds world, there is no doubt about how worthwhile and purposeful their work is.  John Humphrys, the broadcaster, was inspired by the work of such charities to set up his own Charities Trust.

The problem is that these charities don't have marketing departments and have very few  staff.  So money can be a problem.

The Corporate Goat aims to help some of these charities to be able to plan and deliver projects knowing that they have funding in place to see through what they start.

Increasing business support for Africa

Charity today is big business with 7 billion per annum raised through private donations and many billions more from corporate sponsorship.  However since 2002, the figure has been falling.  John Humphrys comments (Sunday Times November 27^th 2005)  'I know, because of the extraordinary response since I first wrote about this that there are millions of people in this country who would give more if they knew that their money would really change lives.'  We believe that the same applies to Businesses.  The Corporate Goat wants to encourage corporate funding for projects assisting the poor and vulnerable in our world, over and above that which is currently given.  It aims to do so by employing strategies that build confidence that money is well spent and achieving, in human terms, a return on investment that an organisation may rightly be proud of.

The Corporate Goat believes ...

• In helping to create an enabling environment which gives men and women the opportunity to create their own solutions and work together to end their own hunger and build local capacity.
• In low cost, bottom up strategies that enable people to create and run their own programmes that achieve lasting progress.
• That the creativity, vision, skills and self-reliance of hungry people should not be undermined.  We must help to clear away the obstacles to their success.
• That women are key decision makers who must have a voice in decision making.
• That all of us have a duty to stand in partnership with hungry people.  Hunger is a global issue.
• That we must stop thinking in terms of giving charity to Africa and start investing in the kind of world we, in our humanity, want to be part of.
• That the end of hunger will be brought about by millions of actions that cumulatively make the difference.
• That everyone, at every level of society, must play their part. Poverty and hunger is not inevitable.  The problem is not too big for us to solve.  We do not need to live in a world where 1 in every 10 boys and girls, by an accident of birth, never sees their third birthday.

Corporate Goat support