Our role as an umbrella charity, not only facilitates the flow of funding from donors to a balanced portfolio of programs, but also guarantees our objectivity as an independent organisation. This role comes with the responsibility to report on how lives have changed because of their giving.
Our broad agenda of interdependent themes requires strategic layers of assistance so that all the areas of focus receive effective funding and awareness building. Many of the projects we support are in the developing world, as these programs yield the greatest social return on investment. A portion of Fortune Forum funds raised have been granted to small and somewhat overlooked charities and organisations.
Smaller organisations tend to have the vision, concept, and determination to start new ground breaking initiatives, but often lack the resources to finance them. Unlike the well-funded and renowned organisations, these humble charities can utilise the funds in an efficient and more cost-effective way as they don’t have the burden of huge administrative costs, thereby affecting immediate development which can be delivered in a shorter time-span, becoming both measurable and tangible. Fortune Forum wishes to support this notion by assisting exceptional and well thought-out grassroots projects.
It is our belief that ineffectiveness of funds is a charity's biggest failing - when the donor gives and nothing has changed. Fortune Forum will articulate the charity's results with evidence and will encourage future funding on the basis of performance, giving the satisfaction and confidence to donors, knowing the real difference their money has made as follows:-
- How many lives have these programs rescued ?
- What positive impact can be observed ?
- How has the well being of these people been enhanced ?
- How has advocacy multiplied awareness ?
Fortune Forum is delighted to announce the
summary report on the allocation of funds, the subsequent progress updates and its significant achievements, to ensure a lean and transparent organisation.
We will commence reporting from the second Fortune Forum Summit and then the Inaugural Summit, held
on Tuesday 26th September 2006, with an in-depth
look at how the funded project lots will begin and continue
to make a difference, as below:
Fortune Forum Advocacy and Awareness Achievements
Well publicised charity brands that are
communicated effectively with high profile media coverage
are best able to generate giving habits. Continual brand awareness therefore strengthens a charity’s ability to fundraise in order to support their ongoing and vital work.
Fortune Forum has benefited from the reach and impact that
celebrity activists' participation has brought to extend the
advocacy to multiply awareness at the global and political
level. This has also stressed urgency to policy makers and
our members thus keeping these global issues high on the
development agenda.
Summit 2007
The second Fortune Forum event was supremely successful in terms of raising awareness for the supported charity causes. The coverage generated by the event reached a global audience just short of one and a half billion or a quarter of the World’s population. Coverage that would have cost in excess of sixty million pounds well beyond the annual combined advertising budgets of the charities. A room filled with the movers and shakers of UK philanthropy were comprehensively briefed on the charitable causes sowing the seeds for future partnership whilst their presence helped fuel global media activity only surpassed by Band Aid and Live Aid in terms of charitable events. The Fortune Forum also represents the only major charitable event where so many major charities work together outside of disaster and emergency relief when the aid agencies group together under the Disasters and Emergency Committee umbrella for collective fundraising.
The unofficial expected coverage for the event was a staggering 1 billion people a sizeable increase on 2006, the end result was a gratifying fifty percent higher, firmly establishing the Fortune Forum as a global brand for campaigning and awareness raising. The Fortune Forum can now in the future build on this established brand status to act as a force for change moving on from awareness raising to creating a real movement for change and good that world leaders will have to listen to. Fortune Forum is now probably the leading name in combining the clout of the rich, the allure of the celebrity and the power of the media to generate a brighter tomorrow.
This pioneering platform has supported life-giving projects through the work of our charity partners; British Red Cross, Cancer Research UK, WaterAid, African Renaissance, Alliance for the New Humanity and International Clean Energy (ICE) Circle.
Media Coverage Analysis for the Second Fortune Forum Event 30th November 2007 - Opportunity to See
Audience Website Xtra Total AVE
Independent 500k 500k 1m 9k
Guardian 900k 1m 1.9m 11k
Scotsman 250k 500k 0.75m 5k
Sky News 120m 120m 120m 1m
Telegraph 1.6m 1m 2.6m 46k
Sunday Times 3.0m 2m 5m 60k
Sunday Mail 5.0m 1m 6m 39k
Sunday Mail 5.0m 1m 6m 39k
Evening Standard 400k 100k 0.5m 5k
BBC WS
163m 163m 500k
BBC WS 163m 163m 500k
BBC World TV 130m 130m 1m
BBC World TV 130m
130m 1m
Nipon TV 3.3m 3.3m 1m
Cork Radio 0.5m 0.5m 5k
BBC On-line 131m 131m 20k
Sunday Times Review 3.0m 2m 5m 60k
Regional UK papers 600k 400k 1m 15k
Hello! 1m 200k 1.2m
18k
Daily Star 1.5m 100k 1.6m 21k
Kerrang!
150k 200k 0.35m 5k
Vogue 500k 500k 1m 21k
Channel 4 web 1m 1m 10k
IHT web 5m 5m 10k
Guardian 900k 1m 1.9m 11k
La Stampa 0.5m 0.5m 1m 5k
USA Today 2.2m 3m 5.2m 1k
CNN Doc 200m 200m 2m
CNN 200m 200m 2m
Esquire 100k
50k 150k 8k
Le Point 800k 700k 1.5m 10k
ITV Documentary 2m 1m 3m 1m
UK audience reach 64m
Global audience reach 1443.8m £10.5m
Combined AVE for all the charities to have purchased equivalent advertising is £63 million, more than Comic Relief and Children in Need combined indeed more than any event other than Live 8 or LiveAid.
Summit 2006
The first Fortune Form event on 26th September 2006 achieved massive global media coverage for the participating charities and the causes they espouse. Coverage in print and broadcast form had the opportunity to be seen by over 300 million people globally, more than the combined population of the UK, France, Germany and Spain.
The advertising value equivalent of this
coverage runs to over £4 million; well in excess of the
annual advertising spend of any of the participating
charities. The Fortune Forum was able
to generate this priceless high level of consciousness
raising in the public and specifically amongst the
influentials at no cost to the charities benefiting, an
effective donation of over £4 million to each participating
charity
A complimentary copy of “The Fortune Forum Code”, a book extolling the basic needs of humanity, and how to achieve them, was distributed to over 500 of the most influential members of UK society at the event. The same group of influentials were exposed to the individual work and achievements of the participating charities during the event.
The participating charities were all also able to showcase their work and network with some of the leading media
moguls in the UK and beyond who were present on the night. This networking opportunity has assisted the charities in achieving further media success via these contacts.
Carrying stories relating to the Fortune Forum and the attendant celebrities such as Bill Clinton have also generated increased traffic to participating charity websites as they are flagged up as a place to go for information on particular celebrities.
This increased web traffic will have also promoted increased web donations as well as brand awareness.
Awareness of the Fortune Forum event and the charities involved reached
the attention of ministers and high ranking civil servants in the UK
Parliament and beyond with comments being fed back to this effect to
several participating charities.
The Fortune Forum combined advertising equivalent cost and
profile
generated for each charity equalling
that from the event was a staggering
£20 million pounds, a massive boost
for the life giving projects that the
Fortune Forum supports.
Fortune Forum Quantifiable Project
Achievements 2006
As part of the
world’s leading crisis response organisation, the British
Red Cross is an important part of emergency service plans
throughout the UK. It works in partnership with local
authorities, police, ambulance and rescue services and it is
a responsibility of the Red Cross to supplement the work of
these services in an emergency. In the event of a
catastrophic incident many patients at local hospitals are
discharged early to release beds for those seriously injured
in the incident. Red Cross ambulances carry people home
allowing the ambulance service’s capacity to be wholly taken
up bringing the victims of the catastrophe to hospital. They
also work alongside the Ambulance Services at peak times
when they have insufficient capacity.
In addition to supporting the emergency services, Red Cross
ambulances
and crews are used at many events, such as football matches,
concerts and 
equestrian events, across the country providing
first aid cover.
Red Cross ambulances attended over 60 major incidents during
2005, including the London bombings and the Buncefield Oil
depot fire, and provided first aid support at numerous
events. All Red Cross ambulances are crewed
by volunteers who undertake training accredited by the IHCD,
the same body
which provides NHS Ambulance Service training.
Just how important the role of the Red Cross in supporting
the emergency services is can be demonstrated by the Red
Cross response to the London
bombings of July 2005. When four bombs exploded in central
London during
the morning rush hour ten Red Cross ambulances rushed to the
sites of the
blasts following a request from the London Ambulance
Service. A further 15
ambulances were deployed throughout the day, coming from as
far outside
London as Swindon.
The two new specialist ambulances, fully equipped with the
latest first aid and life
saving equipment, so generously provided by Fortune Forum
members, will
enable the British Red Cross to continue to fulfil its role
in supporting the emergency services and local communities,
both on a day to day basis and when faced with a large scale
incident anywhere in the UK.
The British Red Cross must ensure it is prepared for the
unexpected and
be able to respond to people’s needs in the event of any
future emergencies.
The ambulances donated by Fortune Forum make a real tangible
difference
to people in communities throughout the UK.
At the
inaugural Fortune Forum Summit in London, six generous
patrons purchased “Trees for Life” prizes. Each prize will
fund the planting of 10,000 trees back into a threatened
forest environment in sub-Saharan Africa.
Without
sustainable farming techniques, soil degradation forces
people to practice shifting agriculture and continued
deforestation. The forest established with the money raised
by the charity auction for Trees for Life will be used to
assist a Miombo forest community in central Mozambique to
build sustainable livelihoods.
Land-use
change is at the heart of what is happening in this area -
agroforestry, forest rehabilitation and the sustainable
utilisation of timber and non-timber forest products.
African Renaissance will be supporting an ongoing initiative
that addresses food security issues, introduces cash crops
and manages environmental degradation.
400
families in the Nhambita traditional community have embraced
a programme to transform the way they use their natural
resources. This programme involves a move away from shifting
or “slash and burn” agriculture on 500 plots or clearings
with subsistence crops planted on rapidly degrading soils to
cash and high value food crops. Central to changing land use
is tree planting and this typically means an additional
average income of over $140 per hectare to the farmer
from the sale of Voluntary Emissions Reductions (VER’s)
carbon offsets (previous average annual income was $40 –
80 per annum) and an additional $35 paid into the
community fund for the planting and care of trees on
their land. Community members earning income and direct
benefits from the project have surplus time for other income
generating activities for the first time.
The 60 000
trees that these generous donations will fund will be
carefully chosen to bring maximum benefit back to this
forest community. To maximise the long term impact of this
initiative, the focus will be on planting orchards that will
become the seed banks and source of invaluable grafting
material for the future transformation of this landscape and
the community who live here. By grafting improved cultivar
top-stock onto low value local trees, this programme adds
value
to existing trees transforming them into valuable
producers of fruit and nuts and reduces deforestation.
Buying in the improved cultivars is expensive and beyond the
means of most Mozambique farmers – producing them locally
will make a difference.
Implementation programme for
Trees for Life
1.
African Renaissance will hold a series of meetings with the
Nhambita
Community Council to identify the sites for the
planting and plan the programme of
planting. The Council
represents the 6000 residents of the Nhambita Traditional
Authority in the buffer zone of the Gorongosa National Park
in central Mozambique.
2. We
will immediately commence with a seed collection programme
for
indigenous species, the germination of root stock and
acquisition of grafting
material for fruit trees.
3. Community nurseries will germinate and prepare all of the
trees for the planting
we envisage that the six sponsored
tree planting projects to involve the production
of close to 65 0000 trees.
4. The
planting will include a mixture of:
(a) the
planting of special orchards for the supply of seed and
grafting material for
agroforestry planting such as fruit
and nut orchards, wood fuel, timber, fodder,
traditional
medicines and nitrogen fixing species; and
(b)
reforestation planting which will involve either the
re-establishment of Miombo
forest destroyed by unsustainable
agriculture or charcoal production, and the
replanting of
specific high value species “high-graded” by illegal
logging.
5. These
special orchards will provide the community with a valuable
long term
resource to produce seed and grafting material for
the production of trees for the
commercial market. The
orchards will provide “scions” for grafting on
to local,
hardy rootstock to improve cultivars and give farmers the
opportunity to produce
marketable produce.
The benefits of grafting: Grafting fruit trees enables the
cloning of the commercial
qualities of a particular fruit
variety on another local hardy tree – this has great
advantages over seed germination as the quality of the fruit
from trees grown from
seed can be highly variable. Grafted
trees come into production much earlier than
trees grown
from seeds - they usually bear fruit within 2-3 years while
using
traditional methods trees grown from seed would only
crop after 5-10 years.
How do
we do this? Community nurseries produce large quantities of
seedlings in
plastic bags and trained workers graft them
with commercial varieties. These
seedlings are then
distributed to farmers for planting in their plots and
around their
homesteads. Top-grafting is used to transform
existing low-quality fruit trees, by
pruning them and then
grafting them with commercial varieties grown in the
special
nurseries.
The
income generated from the sale of these improved trees
provides a long term
income into the community trust fund
and enhances sustainability as a big market
for improved
cultivars exists within Mozambique.
6. All
of this activity will generate employment and income for the
local community
during implementation phase and the
successful forests/orchards will generate
long term income
for the community.
7. The
produce from the orchards provide a valuable source of food
for the
community.
8. The
planting of nitrogen fixing trees interspersed with food
crops addresses the
degradation of soil fertility typical of
shifting agriculture, reduces the time required
to keep a
field in fallow and increases yields.
WaterAid were extremely grateful in our silver jubilee year to be involved with the inaugural Fortune Forum event, where generous bidders bought five water and sanitation lots. WaterAid is the UK’s only major charity dedicated to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the world’s poorest people. Each lot represented the cost of delivering a sustainable supply of clean water, sanitation and hygiene education to a thousand people (including office overheads) in one of the 17 countries where we work.
In Nepal there are four million people without access to clean water and 18 million lacking effective sanitation, globally the figures are 1.1 billion for water and 2.6 billion for sanitation. Now thanks to the compassion and contribution of Fortune Forum attendees those figures have been reduced by 5,000. WaterAid has now provided water sanitation and hygiene education to over 3% of the rural Nepalese population. An injection of new money at this time was also very important for Nepal as recent political developments have led to an end to the conflict that had hampered development work in previous years.
Imagine living with contaminated water and having to
use the streets as a toilet. This is
the reality for four
million people living without clean
water and 18 million
living without effective sanitation
in Nepal. WaterAid’s
work is delivered through local
partners, engaging the
community in designing solutions and
supporting them
to build and maintain their water and
sanitation
systems themselves. Our approach
ensures that
projects are sustainable.
This is just one of 17 countries
where WaterAid could
put your money to work. Every lot
sold is enough to
give clean water and toilets to 1,000
people – helping
them to escape a life of poverty and
disease.
The Fortune Forum has made an
important
contribution to the continued growth
of WaterAid;
through generating considerable funds
to benefit
water and sanitation projects around
the world,
invaluable global publicity for world
water needs and
instilling goodwill in those
attending.
