Do children in need actually get all the ‘Children in Need’ money?

Wednesday-Thursday blog

You’re probably aware that ‘our’ BBC, which we all love paying for, is running its annual “Chidren in Need” charity fundraising. And loads of often third-rate supposed ‘celebs’ will all be doing supposedly ‘crazy’ and ‘amusing’ things and ‘terrifically entertaining challenges’ to get us to hand over our cash.

Whenever the BBC Children in Need is featured during a BBC programme, there’s usually a line on the screen which says something like “All the money donated will go to the BBC Children in Need“. Many people may believe that this means all the money donated will go to real children in real need. But don’t be fooled by our (IMHO) slimey BBC’s (IMHO) weasel-wording. In fact, all the money donated actually goes to a charity organisation called BBC Children in Need.

The charity BBC Children in Need charity doesn’t (as far as I know) actually do any charitable work. It just distributes the money raised to various children’s charities. But quite a bit of money never gets anywhere near any real children in need;

• just over £10 million of the 2025 £61 million donations went towards paying the salaries of the 160 employees (up from 145 in 2024) of the BBC Children in Need charity
• the total salaries of BBC Children in Need in 2025 of £10,242,000 was a (IMHO) generous increase of 24% from £8226,000 in 2024
• the head honcho running the BBC Children in Need charity got £165,695 in 2025 – up from £160,997 in 2024. So the boss of the £61 million BBC ‘charity’ gets pretty much the same salary as the boss of the £339 million Oxfam
• the average salary cost of a BBC Children in Need employee (including social security and pensions) is an impressive £64,012. To put that in some context, the average cost per employee at Oxfam, which actually does real charity work, is a less impressive £31,225. The Oxfam figure is more typical for the ‘charity’ industry. Quite why the salaries at the BBC ‘charity should be so much higher than the overall charity industry is a mystery (or maybe it isn’t?).

But there’s worse to come. The Charity Commission and the major charities often trot out the line that 90% of money raised is spent on what they call ‘charitable activities’ and only around 10% goes on administration and fundraising. But at the BBC Children in Need charity around 16% (£10 million) of the £61 million raised didn’t go anywhere near any needy children. It went on the costs of running the charity.

Now, you might think that’s not too bad. After all, 16% spent on salaries and administration is ‘only’ about one and a half times the 10% many charities claim to spend for their internal costs. But you have to remember that most charities spend a considerable amount of money on fundraising – advertising, leafleting, chuggers etc etc. But the BBC Children in Need doesn’t need to spend this fundraising money as it gets its money from the TV mega bore-athon.

And there’s a further possible problem. Many of the charities receiving BBC Children in Need money may be small and staffed mainly by volunteers. But others may be quite large with chief executives and financial directors and marketing directors and loads of well-paid staff. So with them, you’re paying for two sets of management and administration – one lot at the BBC Children in Need organisation and another lot at the charity which receives the money. A cynic might be tempted to wonder whether giving money to the BBC Children in Need is actually one of the most effective ways of helping useless, money-grabbing, overpaid, overpensioned bureaucrats and least effective ways of helping those actually needing the money.

Still, looking on the bright side – at least we won’t have a former participant of the show, David Walliams, taking part in the show this year.