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UK Aid Match: Real Aid or Charity-Washing?

Martin Scott

All-Party Parlimentary Group for Aid Match; University of East Anglia (2023), 32 pp.

"UK Aid Match (UKAM) is a match-funding scheme, funded by the UK government, designed to incentivise greater charitable giving amongst the UK public towards projects that reduce poverty in developing countries. For every £1 donated to a UKAM charity appeal, the government also contributes £1 of UK ... aid – usually up to £2 million. This report examines UKAM’s communication requirements and considers their potential limitations, contradictions, inconsistencies, and political implications. UKAM’s overall aim is to allow the British public to have a say in how UK aid is spent and provide opportunities to engage with international development issues, whilst boosting the impact of civil society projects to reach the poorest people in developing countries8. According to the UKAM documents analysed for this report, all participating Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are required to comply with various communication requirements, to be eligible for government matchfunding, most notably to use a pro bono communications partnership that can provide at least 400,000 opportunities for the UK public to view information about the appeal and the match funding offer. [...] This report shows that UKAM appeals have generally been very successful in achieving their communications objectives. Since 2011, UKAM appeals have generated over 14 billion unique Opportunities To be Viewed (OTVs) by the UK public. These communications include appeals involving Ministers, Parliamentarians or the Secretary of State receiving over 45 million OTVs in 2019 alone14. In just the February 2020 round of UKAM , the ‘value in kind for pro bono communications’ of the 1.7bn OTVs was given as £2.2 million. However, this report also highlights several concerning contradictions with UKAM’s current communication requirements. For example, setting a minimum requirement for generating ‘Opportunities to View’ (OTV) appears likely to restrict the participation of NGOs with smaller marketing capabilities. This limits the extent to which UKAM can achieve its stated objective – in line with two consecutive Conservative Party Manifesto commitments – to ‘give the public a say in how a portion of the UK aid budget is spent. This report also notes that UKAM funding has only amounted to approximately 0.2% of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) since 2011, while ODA has been reduced to 0.5% of Gross National Income (GNI)18. Given this, the 14 billion OTVs generated by UKAM may inadvertently give the UK public a misleading impression of the true extent to which they are directing a portion of the UK aid budget to their favoured charities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that – rather than giving the UK public a greater say in directing UK aid – incentivising campaigns to have greater reach may instead be providing greater reputational benefits to government Ministers – who charities are required to feature in their campaigns." (Executive summary, pages 5-6) more

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Who owns the story? Live financial testing of charity vs participant led storytelling in fundraising

Jes Crombie, David Girling

London College of Communication; University of East Anglia (2022), 53 pp.

"This project demonstrates that there is another way of gathering and sharing the stories of people living in poverty around the world. Until now, there has been much positive and enthusiastic discussion amongst INGO communications and fundraising professionals about how to change the way we tell st ... more

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Shining a Spotlight on Media Freedom? Media Coverage of the Global Campaign for Media Freedom

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Mary Myers

City University of London; University of East Anglia (2020), 26 pp.

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Foundation Support for International Non-Profit News: Mapping the Funding Landscape

Martin Scott, Kate Wright, Mel Bunce

Humanitarian-journalism.net; University of East Anglia (2018), 11 pp.

"There are three main reasons for the limited amount of foundation support for international journalism: a) It rarely aligns directly with the strategic priorities of a foundation (and so has to compete either with all other forms of journalism, or with numerous other ways of achieving the specific ... more

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The State of Humanitarian Journalism

Martin Scott, Kate Wright, Mel Bunce

Humanitarian-journalism.net; University of East Anglia (2018), 36 pp.

"Very few international news organisations routinely cover humanitarian affairs. Only 12 news outlets reported on all four of the humanitarian events we analysed in 2016. Because of the high costs of producing regular, original journalism on humanitarian issues, commercial news organisations do not ... more

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Attitudes Towards Media Coverage of Humanitarian Issues Within the Aid Sector

Martin Scott

Humanitarian-journalism.net; University of East Anglia (2018), 9 pp.

"There is widespread dissatisfaction within the aid industry with the quantity and quality of mainstream news coverage of humanitarian issues and crises. 73% of respondents agreed that mainstream news media does not produce enough coverage of humanitarian issues. Mainstream news coverage was also re ... more