A top News of the World executive has revealed he had to beg charities to accept profits from final edition of the Sunday tabloid, making over 50 phone calls before finding three who would accept nearly £1m each.
Although there appeared no shortage of charities who would accept free ad space – over 20 shunned Institute of Fundraising advice and signed up for the final edition – when it came to dishing out the profits, good causes were more circumspect.
In an article in the New York Times, former NotW defence editor Paul McNamara said he was responsible for giving away the profits from the sales of the newspaper. “I had to beg,” he wrote in the article. “All the charities said something along the lines of ‘Paul, we’re grateful for everything you have helped us with over the past two years, but we can’t. There are family members of dead servicemen on our board, and they will not accept News of the World’s money.’
“It took me from 4pm Friday to just about 4pm Saturday – nearly 50 phone calls in all – to find three charities that were happy to accept more than $1.5m [£933,000] each from us. I’d never pondered what it would be like to divvy up more than $4.5m [£2.8m] before, but had someone asked, I would have assumed it easy.”
The final edition of the newspaper raised £2.8m. The children’s charity Barnardo’s, the Forces Children’s Trust and military projects at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity are due to to receive about £933,000 each from its proceeds.
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