Welcome to The Charity Show Bites - your quick-fire dose of surprising stories, sector insights and the odd fact you can impress your colleagues with over a cuppa.
This week we’re going a little bit international. With President Trump’s UK visit making headlines last week, Tim and Piers take a whistle-stop tour of the incredible ways UK and US charities have teamed up, swapped ideas and raised millions. From silly challenges to world-changing philanthropy, it turns out some of the biggest charity moments of the last century have been transatlantic collaborations.
In this episode, we cover:
🤡 Comic Relief & Red Nose Day – from Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry in 1985 to Jimmy Fallon and NBC in the US, raising billions either side of the Atlantic.
❄️ The Ice Bucket Challenge – the viral 2014 phenomenon that raised over £115m for ALS in the US and £7m for MND research in the UK—directly funding breakthrough discoveries.
💉 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation + Wellcome Trust – two of the richest foundations in the world pooling resources for vaccine research, malaria and epidemic preparedness.
🎶 Live Aid (1985) & Live 8 (2005) – London, Philadelphia, Queen, Bowie, Madonna, billions of viewers, and $150m for famine relief.
🌍 Elton John AIDS Foundation – deliberately transatlantic from the start, raising $565m across the UK and US.
🐦 RSPB & Audubon Society – both born out of campaigns against the feather trade in the 1800s, still working together today on bird conservation.
📺 Stand Up To Cancer – launched in the US in 2008 before becoming a UK TV fixture with Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK.
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