40 Fun Facts About Charities

Which animal on the World Wide Fund for Nature logo was inspired by Chi Chi, a London Zoo favourite?

A giant panda named Chi Chi had moved from Beijing Zoo to London Zoo in 1958, three years before WWF was set up. Naturalist Peter Scott designed the first logo from a colleague's sketches.

Which singer played both Live Aid concerts in 1985 by flying Concorde across the Atlantic?

Phil Collins sang at Wembley, took a helicopter to Heathrow and a Concorde to New York, then a second helicopter to Philadelphia. He met Cher on the flight and told her about the shows.

Which former US president led Habitat for Humanity's volunteer building weeks for over 30 years?

Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn picked up hammers themselves, working beside more than 100,000 volunteers on homes in 14 countries.

Which film star co-founded a salad dressing firm in 1982 that gives all its profits to charity?

Paul Newman and writer A. E. Hotchner first mixed the dressing at home and gave it to friends as gifts. Newman left the whole food company to its charitable foundation.

Which country singer's Imagination Library has mailed free books to young children since 1995?

Dolly Parton began the scheme in her home county in Tennessee as a tribute to her father, who never learned to read. Each child gets a book a month until the age of five.

Which charity's bell-ringers collect Christmas donations in red kettles outside American shops?

The Salvation Army has used kettles since 1891, when Captain Joseph McFee set one out in San Francisco to pay for a free Christmas dinner for the city's poor.

The 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge funded research into which illness, also called Lou Gehrig's disease?

ALS, known in Britain as motor neurone disease, received about $115 million from the 2014 craze. The money helped researchers identify a new gene that causes the condition.

Which Skopje-born nun founded the Missionaries of Charity and chose a white sari edged with blue?

Mother Teresa started the order in 1950 to serve the poorest people in the slums of Calcutta. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was made a saint in 2016.

Which Scottish-born steel magnate paid for more than 2,500 public libraries around the world?

Andrew Carnegie funded 2,509 libraries between 1883 and 1929, at a cost of about $56 million. The first one opened in Dunfermline, the Scottish town where he was born.

Which Civil War nurse, called the Angel of the Battlefield, founded the American Red Cross?

Clara Barton had earlier been a clerk in the US Patent Office, the only woman in her office paid the same as the male clerks. She led the new society from 1881.

Which Swiss businessman co-founded the Red Cross after seeing the aftermath of Solferino in 1859?

Henry Dunant won the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, long after a business scandal had bankrupted him and seen him expelled from the committee he helped to create.

Which emblem do Red Cross societies in most Muslim-majority countries use in place of the cross?

The Red Crescent was first used by the Ottoman Empire in its 1877–78 war with Russia, because its government feared that a cross would alienate Muslim soldiers.

Which charity began in 1942 as a committee urging Britain to let food through a blockade of Greece?

Oxfam is short for the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, set up by Quakers, activists and academics. Its first permanent charity shop opened in the city in 1947.

Which medical charity, set up by French physicians and journalists, won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize?

Doctors Without Borders, founded in 1971 as Médecins Sans Frontières, grew out of the Biafran famine of the Nigerian Civil War. It treats patients whatever their race, religion or politics.

Which human rights group founded in London in 1961 has a candle wrapped in barbed wire for a logo?

Amnesty International took the image from a proverb about lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness. Diana Redhouse drew it in 1963 for the group's first Christmas card.

Which British charity, founded by Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry, stages the Red Nose Day telethon?

Comic Relief was launched live on BBC One on Christmas Day 1985 from a refugee camp in Sudan. The first Red Nose Day followed in 1988 and raised £15 million.

Which teddy with a bandana over one eye is the mascot of the BBC's Children in Need appeal?

Pudsey Bear was created in 1985 by BBC designer Joanna Lane, who named him after her home town in West Yorkshire, where her grandfather had been mayor.

Movember, the moustache-growing fundraiser for men's health, began among friends in which country?

Australia supplied the name as well as the idea: mo is Australian slang for a moustache. The campaign focuses on prostate cancer, testicular cancer and men's mental health.

Which charity was inspired by a Phoenix boy with leukaemia who longed to be a police officer?

Make-A-Wish traces its start to 1980, when the people of Phoenix rallied round seven-year-old Chris Greicius. Its first official wish child, Bopsy Salazar, joined a fire engine crew.

Which entertainer founded St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis in 1962 to fulfil a vow?

Danny Thomas, then a struggling actor, vowed to build a shrine to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, if he found success. Patients there are never charged for treatment.

Which comedian hosted the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Labor Day telethon from 1966 until 2010?

Jerry Lewis fronted broadcasts that ran for up to 21 and a half hours, starting on the Sunday night before the holiday. The show came from Las Vegas for 28 of its years on air.

Which US president founded the polio charity March of Dimes and was later honoured on the dime?

Franklin Roosevelt, whose own legs were paralysed by polio, founded it in 1938. Comedian Eddie Cantor coined the name as a pun on a newsreel series, The March of Time.

Which investor, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha, launched the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates in 2010?

Warren Buffett helped to create a public promise in which billionaires commit at least half of their fortunes to good causes. It is a moral commitment, not a legal contract.

Which 1985 famine-relief single did Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie write for USA for Africa?

We Are the World raised more than $80 million for humanitarian aid. Its two writers finished the song only the night before the first recording session, with Quincy Jones producing.

Which former Beatle organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with sitar player Ravi Shankar?

George Harrison staged two shows at Madison Square Garden on a single Sunday, with Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton on the bill. It was the first benefit concert on such a scale.

Which singer's 1997 tribute single raised millions for the charities of Diana, Princess of Wales?

Elton John sang the reworked Candle in the Wind in public only once, at her funeral in Westminster Abbey. It became the best-selling single in UK chart history.

In which African country did Princess Diana visit a HALO Trust minefield in January 1997?

Angola had been sown with landmines during decades of conflict. Her visit to a site being cleared at Huambo brought the mine-clearing charity global coverage.

Which British royal founded the Prince's Trust in 1976 to help vulnerable young people?

Charles, then Prince of Wales, set up the charity now known as the King's Trust. It has helped more than a million young people, including the actor Idris Elba.

Which UK armed forces charity raises money each autumn through the Poppy Appeal?

The Royal British Legion holds the red poppy as a registered trademark, and says its only lawful use is to raise funds for the appeal.

Which spring flower has the end-of-life charity Marie Curie used as its emblem since 1986?

The daffodil was chosen as a positive, resilient, life-affirming symbol. Each March the charity runs its biggest fundraising appeal, which is named after the flower.

Which animal welfare charity, the world's oldest, was founded at a London coffee house in 1824?

The RSPCA began at Old Slaughter's Coffee House and took 63 offenders to court in its first year. Queen Victoria granted the society its royal status in 1840.

Which reformer founded Save the Children and drafted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child?

Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in Trafalgar Square in 1919 for handing out leaflets that showed starving children. The crown prosecutor who won the case then paid her fine himself.

Which composer was made a governor of London's Foundling Hospital after concerts in its chapel?

Handel conducted Messiah there in 1750 to mark the presentation of an organ to the chapel, a year after writing an anthem for the children's home. Benefit performances of the oratorio followed each year until his death.

Christmas Seals were devised by a Danish postal clerk in 1904 to help children with which disease?

Tuberculosis was greatly feared in the early 1900s, above all for the harm it did to the young. Einar Holbøll's idea of a charity stamp on festive post reached Sweden and Iceland the same year.

Which pillar of Islam requires Muslims who can afford it to give part of their wealth to the needy?

Zakat is customarily set at 2.5%, or one fortieth, and Muslims whose wealth falls below a minimum known as the nisab do not have to pay it.

Which service club network made blindness its cause after Helen Keller spoke at its 1925 convention?

Lions Clubs heard her at Cedar Point, Ohio, where she challenged the members to become champions of blind people. Their clubs have run sight programmes ever since.

Which relief agency's 1946 food parcels to Europe gave English a term for a box of home comforts?

CARE, then the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, sent its first parcels in 1946. The trademarked name became a general term for any parcel sent for relief or comfort.

Which Dublin-born campaigner opened an orphanage for boys at Stepney Causeway in London in 1870?

Thomas Barnardo had already opened a ragged school in the East End, where cholera had orphaned many children. He had come to London to train as a medical missionary for China.

The label 501(c)(3), used for most American charities, refers to a section of which body of US law?

The Internal Revenue Code frees bodies run purely for charitable, religious, scientific, literary or educational ends from federal income tax, and many donors can deduct their gifts.

Sir William Hillary, who founded the RNLI lifeboat charity in 1824, lived on which island?

The Isle of Man saw shipwrecks in 1822 that moved Hillary to appeal for a national rescue service. At 60 he was washed overboard while commanding a lifeboat, yet everyone on the wreck was saved.