Red Nose Day shifts to year-round fundraising amid pandemic
This year, Red Nose Day will rise again
April 7, 2021, 6:39 PM
6 min read
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleThis undated photo provided by Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day shows the special Red Nose Day masks that Walgreens employees will wear for the 2021 fundraising campaign. (Red Nose Day via AP)
NEW YORK -- What happened to Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day 2020, like so many philanthropic campaigns during the pandemic, was no laughing matter.
Back in February of last year, Alison Moore, the CEO of Comic Relief U.S., had said the charity was ready to do “amazing things” around its annual day of wearing bright red fake noses to raise money and awareness for needy American children. It had raised $240 million since 2015 and helped 25 million children.
Yet within weeks, COVID-19 had forced the charity into a diminished, mostly virtual event.
This year, Red Nose Day will rise again. And its mission will be more ambitious than before, with the nonprofit expanding its star-studded plans in partnership with NBC, Walgreens and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Most notably, perhaps, Red Nose Day will now become a year-round endeavor, with the idea of addressing children's needs and spotlighting their issues every day.
“How do we use the Red Nose as a symbol of hope," Moore said, “to remind people that the journey is still long for many? The work is not done and, in fact, it’s actually harder and deeper than it had been before.”
“There was a lot of messaging going on that COVID didn’t affect kids, so, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a problem’,” she added. “Well, truthfully their entire infrastructure crumbled. Their caretakers and families were getting sick and losing jobs… It was crucial that we were out there talking about why children need to be at the center of this conversation.”
That mission will be on full display May 27, this year’s Red Nose Day, when NBC will air a fundraising edition of its game show “The Wall” to cap nearly two months of buildup for one day of fundraising. Yet it won't end then. The growing need for its grants and programs led Comic Relief US to decide that its campaign will run all year to ensure that children are safe, educated and healthy, including having enough to eat, said Lorelei Williams, Comic Relief US’ senior vice president of grants programs.
Success stories like Mason, a 5-year-old at Educare California at Silicon Valley who, having received a grant from Red Nose Day, was able to do distance learning to prepare for kindergarten, stick out to Williams. Beforehand, Mason had seemed shy and a little depressed. After working with his teachers and his mother, he connected more with his family and became more sociable.
“Those are the types of pivots our grantees have been making — and doing so with powerful, tangible impacts for young people,” Williams said.
Comic Relief US is hardly alone in fine-tuning its mission in the wake of the viral pandemic and its economic destruction as well as the protests for racial justice intensified by the police killing of George Floyd. A survey by the consulting firm Dalberg Advisors, the Council on Foundations and Philanthropy California found that more than 60% of U.S. foundations adjusted their plans and increased their donations by an average of 17% in 2020.
“We certainly saw a lot of foundations choosing to pivot to focus specifically on COVID-19 recovery,” said Marcus Haymon, associate partner at Dalberg and a co-author of the report. "We saw some choosing to make investments in racial equity — blending it and embedding it into existing programming, as well as standing up new racial equity initiatives.”
That shift is continuing in 2021, in part because foundations require time and additional information to revamp their priorities to make sure their hiring and funding practices, as well as their investments and business practices, support their new mission.
“We heard from foundations saying, ‘We are really interested in making these pivots. We are interested in changing our investment practices,' " Haymon said. "The modalities of how you do that and how you actually operationalize that are far more challenging.”
