Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.

Zig, Zag, Zog

Sir Stuart Etherington gave an interview to Civil Society News in the week. In that interview Sir Stuart stoically refused to pull a single punch. The interview was what we in the mud-slinging trade would call “soundbite heavy”.

For example: “The structure of self-regulation was pitiful. You couldn’t have found a worse structure if you’d tried.” Pow! “Rearguard actions are pointless now." Kaboom! Fundraisers in general are overly “defensive”, and “their professional associations sometimes reflect that defensiveness”. Onomatopoeia!

Quick, somebody get the sector some cold water for those burns.

While the interview and subsequent story has met with what could best be described as a ‘mixed response’ from the sector, Diary is obviously delighted.

Amongst all the wonderfully evocative quotes, Sir Stuart’s gem that senior people at the IoF “must think they’re on Planet Zog” is easily the best. In young person parlance, you’d have to say that’s 'just great banter'.

Also it gives this column an excuse to spend an inordinate amount of time watching old videos of Zig & Zag, those lovable, extraterrestrial puppets from – you guessed it – the Planet Zog!

‘Them Girls Them Girls’ will never not be an absolute tune.

Textbook charity

By a stroke of luck Diary found itself party to a conversation between radio presenter and club DJ Nihal Arthanayake and Sky News political editor Faisal Islam earlier this week, at the British Asian Trust annual fundraising dinner which, as an aside, raised a record £900,000. Arthanayake is a recent trustee of the Trust, and had invited Islam to attend. Their conversation, paraphrased below, was a textbook example of how these events are supposed to work, beyond generating squillions of pounds:

Faisal Islam: “I get really annoyed about all these people of my dad’s generation who try to assuage their guilt at leaving Asia behind by giving money to people collecting donations to build more mosques and temples there.  There are enough of those already – they should be giving their money to education; building more schools, not more mosques and temples.”

Nihal: “That’s exactly the kind of thing we’re doing at the Trust; that’s why I invited you along tonight.”

Faisal: “Really?  I don’t know much about the Trust, to be honest.  Well in that case I’d like to be more involved.”

Bingo! Don’tcha just love charity when it works the way it’s supposed to – giving people the opportunity to make a difference to something they care about?

The Prince and Moo

A certain headline caught Diary’s eye this week. That headline read: “Prince Charles declines to milk a plastic cow on charity visit”.

The sub-heading is also worth reproducing in its entirety: “The Prince of Wales was visiting the charity Send a Cow when he was introduced to Milky Way.”

The Prince is president of Send a Cow, a sort of humanitarian charity which provides “direct, practical help to poor farmers in East Africa by providing cows and other livestock and training”. Milky Way is, in essence, a life-sized, model cow with rubberised nipples which, when manipulated, produce milk.

Unfortunately Charles declined the opportunity to milk Milky Way for the cameras, despite the best efforts of the charity’s volunteer ambassador and faux-bovine ‘handler’ Mark Hillman.

You could say it was all much a-moo about nothing.