Nobody could accuse Lord Joffe of lacking tenacity. The man who defended
Nelson Mandela at his trial in South Africa in 1964 was subsequently banned
for almost 30 years from the country of his birth. Still though he
campaigned for human rights and Mr Mandela’s eventual release.
As a peer in the House of Lords since 2000, Lord Joffe, an ardent supporter of
euthanasia, introduced a private member’s Bill on the “right to die” in
2002. The latest amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill, to clarify the
law on taking relatives abroad to die, is due to be tabled this month.
He is also self-deprecating. “I am tenacious, yes. I suppose that I’ve always
felt hard work makes up for a lack of natural talent,” he said.
The controversy that euthanasia arouses has put Lord Joffe’s work in the
spotlight. Yet he is less well known as a crusader on another issue: how to
persuade more people to give money to charity. The former chairman of Oxfam,
he also led the Government’s Giving Campaign to find new ways to spark
generosity. “We were quite successful but there is an awful lot more to be
done before we have a real culture of giving in this country.”
The latest initiative to benefit from Lord Joffe’s persistence is Geared for
Giving, a campaign launched last year to encourage more employers to offer
payroll giving schemes, whereby workers sign up to donate a percentage of
their salary to charity each month.
“Nothing should be easier if you want to give to charity than to sign a piece
of paper saying ‘dock a fiver off my payslip’,” he said. Payroll giving is
also extremely tax-effective: from April 2010, a £10 donation to charity
will cost a higher-rate taxpayer £5.
However, while half of UK employees have access to payroll giving schemes,
take-up stands at only about 3 per cent. This contrasts with the US, where
95 per cent of workers have access to payroll giving and more than a third
choose to give each month.
The problem, Lord Joffe believes, is that when workplaces offer the option to
donate, it is not seen as a priority and so it is not publicised. “Many
employers sign up for the scheme, write one letter to staff, then nothing
happens. It has to be actively promoted by the employer,” he said.
Tenacity is required here, too: Lord Joffe suggests that companies employ a
person to promote the scheme, send reminder letters every few months and
allow staff to choose which charity their donations should benefit.
Directors should pledge to donate at least 2 per cent of their salary and
encourage every employee to give whatever they can, he said. It is a proven
tactic. “Lead by example and raise the stakes of the game.”
Corporate philanthropy in the UK remains low-key: business donations were the
only source of voluntary sector income to decline between 1994 and 2004.
Many take the “easier and cheaper option” of asking staff to volunteer, Lord
Joffe said.
“Many companies speak a good game and produce beautiful glossy reports. But
the real test is whether they allow their auditors to audit their social
responsibility. At the moment, all Companies House requires is to state your
CSR policy. Your policy can be to say ‘we have no policy’.”
Competition is a good way of getting firms and individuals to give, he
believes. Workplaces that have had success with payroll giving have league
tables showing competing offices. Lord Joffe, together with his former
co-founders of Allied Dunbar, the life assurance company (now Zurich),
pioneered the Per Cent Club, borrowing an American idea of getting the most
generous companies to join a group and so persuade more companies to give a
percentage of their profits to charity.
“If you are a FTSE 100 group with profits of £10 billion a year, even half a
per cent is more than most charities’ income. We tried to translate this
idea to the chairmen of the big companies. They would say ‘yes, that’s a
very interesting idea — we’ll think about it’. We knew that in order to
conclude a deal, you get people to sign up. Eventually the Per Cent Club
took off.”
One of the big successes of the Giving Campaign was the creation of the Sunday
Times Giving Index to accompany its annual Rich List, Lord Joffe said.
By publicising the most generous individuals, others are encouraged to
follow suit rather than hide behind a convenient culture of confidentiality.
“Originally [wealthy individuals] could get into the Giving Index by giving
away 0.5 per cent of their income. Now those at the top of the list are
giving away 10 per cent.”
Despite advocating publicity, Lord Joffe declines to publish his own
charitable giving, saying that he does not regard it as laudable as he lives
“very comfortably”. According to accounts filed at the Charity Commission,
the Joffe Charitable Trust, his personal trust, made grants of £430,000 to
charities in the past financial year.
Lord Joffe argues in favour of introducing a benchmark for individuals to give
1 or 2 per cent of their income. “If we could get people giving even 1.5 per
cent, we would double giving in this country.”
Although a committed atheist, Lord Joffe is an admirer of the Christian
doctrine of tithing, which encourages individuals to pledge up to 10 per
cent of their income to charity.
“The question everyone should ask themselves is, could you live on 98 per cent
of your salary? Everyone can afford to give, whether they have been hit by
the recession or not. Ask yourself the question because there are some other
people out there who need it more than you do.”
In the works
• Charities lose out on an estimated £900 million a year from poor take-up of
payroll giving in UK workplaces
• More than half (56 per cent) of the UK adult population gives to charity in
a typical month; overall 70 per cent give to charity
• The richest 20 per cent of families devote 0.7 per cent of household
spending to charities; the poorest 10 per cent devote 3 per cent, a 2002
survey found
• The average given per donor per month rose to £33 in 2007-2008, up from £29
in 2006-2007
• The Giving Campaign recommended that companies aim for a 10 per cent take up
rate of payroll giving among employees
• Geared for Giving was launched in May 2008 by Anne Snelgrove, MP, aiming to
allow a million more people access to payroll giving
www.workplacegiving-uk.com
www.gearedforgiving.com
Sources: Charities Aid Foundation, National Council for Voluntary
Organisations, The Giving Campaign, Geared for Giving
