26 April 2012
This guest blog comes from Trevor Pears, Chair of the Give More campaign and the Executive Chair of the Pears Foundation. Here he talks about why he’s launching the Give More campaign today, and what he hopes the campaign can achieve.
Need in our communities is going up, and resources are going down. When we are asked who is going to give the money, time or energy to charitable causes the answer has to be: all of us.
The Give More campaign launches today with a wide-ranging survey of the UK public, who tell us just that: they see the need in their communities and they recognise that it is up to us all to help. Encouragingly, they also show they have the appetite to respond to that need themselves.
- 51% said that they thought need in their local community has increased in the past 12 months and 57% said that need is likely to increase over the next 12 months
- 79% think the UK is generous when it comes to giving money, time and energy to charities, community groups or directly to the community
- 26% (or 12.5million people) said they could give more to good causes than they currently do
That last statistic is the crucial one, and the reason why I am optimistic that we can rise to this challenge. Our campaign has been touring the whole of the UK, with teams in shopping centres in London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast today talking to people about giving, and getting an overwhelmingly positive response.
The campaign now hopes to push on to new heights, and our objectives are to:
- Inspire people to make a public commitment to give more money, time or energy to the causes they care about in 2012.
- Focus public attention on safeguarding the vital contribution of the voluntary sector. Encourage organisations to sign up to the Give More partner commitment.
- Publicly celebrate the giving of money, time or energy to the causes people care about.
We hope this campaign will be a rising tide that lifts all the ships in this sector, but we can only do it with the help of our brilliant partners and supporters, all pulling in the same direction.
To find out more about the Give More campaign, visit www.givemore.org.uk
