12% of Manchester Pride income went to good causes in 2007

Apparently this info appears on some LGF posters around the village at the moment. A friend has grabbed one for archive use, though I haven’t seen a copy of the poster myself yet.

Financial overview:

Income: £803,000

Ticket sales, Trading & activity, Sponsorship, Business contributions, Grants, Donations.

Expenditure: £708,000

Safety, Productions, Operational, Irrecoverable VAT, Overheads, Marketing & entertainment, Parade, Professional fees, Site and licenses, Operating costs 2008.

Safety: Security, stewarding, policing, first aid, emergency services.

Production: Stages, marquees, sound, lights, transport & equipment.

Operational: Cleansing, toilets, waste, fencing, road closures, signage.

Professional fees: Legal, finance, insurance, tax, audit.

Operating costs 2008: Start up costs for Manchester Pride 2008.

Operating surplus:£95,000

(£23,750 to the following four categories, shown as pie chart divided into four equal
slices on official LGF propaganda, no other figures available at time of going to press).

1) Lesbian Gay Foundation Free Condoms & Lube Scheme

2) George House Trust HIV Welfare Fund

3) Manchester Pride Community Fund – Administered by the Lesbian and Gay
Foundation providing grants to LGBT charities and groups in Greater Manchester.

4) Manchester Pride HIV/AIDS Fund – Funding awards for organisations who provide services for people living with HIV.

In August the Pink Paper said that ticket sales were up a ‘massive 200%’. But if we assume that snippet of information was misleading, as has happened in the past, and that overall the typical 35,000 tickets were sold as in previous years. At an average of £14 each, it comes to £490,000 from tickets.

All the other sources of income would then have been only around £310,000.

Less than 12% of total income goes to charity in 2007 and I estimate about 19.5% of ticket money

Income of £803,000 with £95,000 for good causes means that just under 12% of the total Pride income goes to good causes in 2007.

In previous years, Operation Fundraiser sold the tickets and I reckoned that 30%-35% of ticket and collection bucket money reached a good cause in the end after Operation Fundraiser handed over a large sum to Pride to cover running costs (£200,000 in 2003) and took off its own costs (£59,520 in 2003).

As of 2007, Manchester Pride is a charity in its own right and the £803,000 figure includes income from other sources as well as ticket sales.

To make a like-for-like comparison with previous years, if we reckon £490,000 was gross income from tickets, then £95,000 for good causes would represent about 19.5% of that ticket income figure. Which must be one of the lowest percentages ever. Pride is very secretive about exactly how many tickets are sold these days, but ticket prices are on an upward trend year-on-year, while charity amounts head in the opposite direction.

It’s pretty shameful when you consider that Manchester City Council gave the recent International Festival £2m. Also considering the profits made by bars and clubs during Pride.

If you take the UniChallenge club night in 2004 as an example. Their website reported that it was completely sold out, which means 4,500 tickets were sold at £20 each. So they had income of £90,000 just on the door.

So one club night took almost as much on the door as the total amount raised for good causes from the entire ten days of Manchester Pride this year.

But doesn’t a Pound from every UniChallenge ticket go to good causes? Well actually, no it doesn’t…

UniChallenge gives £1 from the ticket price (£22 a ticket this year) to Manchester Pride. That is part of the £803,000 Pride 2007 income and finally £95,000 goes to good causes. So just under 12% of that £1 from your £22 UniChallenge ticket.

12p… And 88p goes on Pride running costs. So about 0.54% (1/183rd) of your £22 UniChallenge ticket reached a good cause in the end in 2007!

Of course, as mentioned, Manchester Pride itself has been ‘reborn’ as a charity in its own right. There’s lots of potential there for spin. For example it could, in theory, say ‘all’ the Pride income goes to ‘a charity’ (itself), even though it then spends 88p of each Pound on costs and only passes on 12p to another charity or good cause.


1 Comment

  • Rachel26 says:

    I can’t beleive these fugures! Every year we stump up money to go and pay to drink over priced drinks in our own bars… all for charity … and int he end its not goign to charity at all – like those who need it. Further more I woudl like to see lGF give money to LGB(and T groups!) acorss the North West NOT jsut the 10 Greater Manchester authority areas….

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