#3008

Do you ever ask yourself where does BBC Children in Need money actually go? I know I do so I did a bit of digging. A large slice of the money raised by school cake/bun sales/non uniform days with kids bringing in donations, marathon runners etc. and ordinary donors goes on overheads, reserves, senior pay and projects many of donors never hear about. BBC Children in Need took in roughly £61 million in the year to June 2025. Of that, £9.59 million went on the cost of raising the money itself. That's nearly double what it spent on fundraising 4 years earlier even though overall income was lower than in 2021. Staffing across the group came to more than £10 million. The chief executive was paid £165,695 and the senior management team together took over £1.1 million. At the same time the charity was sitting on £66.6 million in reserves. In 2024 the charity’s own chair Rosie Millard resigned after 6 years saying there had been an "institutional failure" over grants totalling around £466,000 to LGBT Youth Scotland. That organisation’s former chief executive James Rennie was convicted in 2009 of serious child sexual offences including against a baby. Children in Need’s funding of the group started about 7 months later and only stopped in 2024 after Millard raised the issue. Let's do a bit of diving into where funds have gone to over the years. 🚨Mermaids - tens of thousands (e.g. amounts in the £30k–£70k range in individual years) in the mid-to-late 2010s (reported around 2017–2019) for helpline and support work with transgender children and families. 🚨Ethnic Minority Sports Organisation Northern Ireland -£15,000 awarded November 2022 (We Move Fund) for a campaign in Belfast about young asylum seekers and semi-professional football. 🚨Anti Racist Cumbria - £50,000 awarded October 2022 (We Move Fund / Youth Social Action) to empower Black children and young people in Cumbria. A further grant of around £42,500 was later reported for a 2 year period. 🚨The New Black Film Collective - £49,820 awarded 2022 (We Move Fund) for an 18-month project with Black children and young people in Newham through film and social action. 🚨Ethnic Minority Sports Organisation Northern Ireland - £15,000. A campaign in Belfast about young asylum seekers being barred from semi-professional football was awarded in October 2022. 🚨Bahja Initiative - £45,000 awarded February 2023 (core grant) for sport, craft and youth club activities for girls in Hyndburn. 🚨Cumbria LGBT Pride - £45,000 awarded September 2023 for "Connect with Pride" events and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ children and young people. A further £45,000 was awarded September 2026. 🚨Asylum Aid - £75,000 awarded February 2024 for legal representation for 60 children in the asylum and trafficking systems. 🚨Derbyshire LGBT+ Ltd - £99,000 awarded July 2024 (running to July 2027) for face-to-face and online sessions with LGBTQ+ young people. 🚨The Proud Trust -£120,000 awarded February 2025 (project grant, running to 2028) for group sessions and 1-to-1 support for transgender, non-binary and gender-questioning young people. (An earlier £150,000 grant was also awarded in July 2022). Children in Need has previously stated it was funding dozens of projects focused on sexual identity and gender identity (1 older figure given was 37 projects worth over £2.6 million). Their funding priorities still explicitly include safe spaces and support for LGBTQ+ young people so further grants in this area exist in the public dataset. Multi-year/aggregated asylum and refugee funding (roughly 2016–2026, not single awards): 🚨Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum - £366,000 across several grants (including awards in 2021 and 2026). 🚨Young Roots - £337,000 across several grants (including 1 in April 2025). 🚨CARAS - £188,000 across 2 grants (including one in October 2023). The full list is searchable on GrantNav using keywords such as "LGBT", "transgender", "refugee" or "asylum". The examples above are the main additional ones that have come up in public reporting and the charity’s own data. That's only scratching the surface.