Finances | Comic Relief

Comic Relief has formal policies relating to its investments, its reserves and its grant making which govern the way we operate our core business. We are committed to allocating all the money raised during Red Nose Day before the next Red Nose Day. And we take the same approach with Sport Relief.

WHAT WE DO WITH OUR GRANTS MONEY

Our grants money isn’t paid out all at once because some of the grants we give last for a long time – up to six years – and we need to make sure the money is being spent as we agreed. That’s why we phase the payments and ask the organisations to report on what they’re doing with the money before the next payment is made.

And while we're waiting to pay all those charities and organisations their next instalments, we have a lot of money waiting to go out. We invest that money to try and make it into even more money. That’s why we have a team of the UK's best financial experts advising us how to invest that money wisely. To ensure that our investments do not conflict with our grant making, we do not invest in companies that manufacture armaments or tobacco products, or whose primary business is adult entertainment or the manufacture of alcohol products. You can find out more about our investment approach in our Annual Report and Accounts.

The additional money we make is then spent on running Comic Relief and making sure we can create another standout campaign the following year, and raise even more for the thousands of projects we support across the UK and the world’s poorest communities. We have other money to help run ourselves too – some is from corporate partners, some is from the Government and some is from other income sources.

You can find a full list of the organisations we fund here.

OPERATING INCOME AND EXPENDITURE STATEMENT

In order to run itself in a professional and effective way Comic Relief incurs necessary costs. Raising funds, making grants and organisational overheads cost real money.

Despite these costs, Comic Relief is committed to making sure that as much as possible from every pound the charity gets directly from the public goes towards helping people living incredibly tough lives, or dealing with social injustice. This includes the cost of making sure that our grants are allocated to good projects and properly monitored and evaluated.