15.7% state funding

Submitted to the site after being mentioned in a typically hysterical Daily Mail article.

Their website states the following…

Stonewall was founded in 1989 by a small group of women and men who had been active in the struggle against Section 28 of the Local Government Act.

Section 28 was an offensive piece of legislation designed to prevent the so-called ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools; as well as stigmatising gay people it also galvanised the gay community.

The aim from the outset was to create a professional lobbying group that would prevent such attacks on lesbians, gay men and bisexuals from ever occurring again. Stonewall has subsequently put the case for equality on the mainstream political agenda by winning support within all the main political parties and now has offices in England, Scotland and Wales.

Current lobbying efforts concentrate on: “Securing equal legal treatment in areas where it doesn’t already exist such as extension of the legal form of marriage to same-sex couples. Influencing the development of public policy in areas such as blood donation, asylum, the workplace and faith-sanctioned discrimination.”

12.5% state funding

NSPCC is paid by statutory bodies (which its annual report explains are “are government agencies or departments”) for providing:

• Child protection and preventative services and helplines
• Influencing and public education
• Child protection training and consultancy

Some credit should perhaps be given for spelling this out, even admitting that it is paid for “influencing”, even if only in a footnote to its accounts.

The NSPCC’s website has a page dedicated to their lobbying activity, saying: “We campaign for changes to legislation, policy and practice to ensure they best protect children, both at a local and national level… We lobby at both a local, regional, and national level.” Current campaigns include a ban on parents physically disciplining their children. They also want to “make the internet safer for children.”

26% state funding

Oxfam’s Annual Report & Accounts for 2009/10 includes the word ‘lobby’ on its front page as one of the keywords in the graphic, and campaigning is one of the three areas in the ‘What we do’ section of the report. Although Oxfam lobbies private companies in addition to governments, a quarter of its income comes from government sources. In a summary of its five aims, it says it spends 8% of its income on:

The right to be heard…raising people’s awareness of their rights and helping them lobby their government and other decision-makers.

38% state funding

Butterfly Conservation’s accounts for 2009/10 estimate that:

…volunteers contributed work worth over £9 million…

If that figure were actually in the accounts as income, then the charity’s state funding would fall just below our 10% threshold (but still be above the £1 million threshold). As it is, the charity receives more than a third of its income from the state, income that it maintains by lobbying.

Recently it declared its support for one of its state donors, the Forestry Commission, which has been widely criticised for policies that harm wildlife. The money was apparently more important.