# Philanthropy is the new reality TV

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2006/10/26/philanthropy-new-reality-tv-0/
- Published: 2006-10-26T18:33:30+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

[RDF](http://www.rdftelevision.com), the TV company that brought you Wife Swap on
Channel 4, is poised to entertain and enlighten us with a new series “Secret Millionaire”
in which rich people experience how the other half lives and then distribute their
largesse to deserving individuals and families.

According to [The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1927987,00.html),
participating philanthropists include John Elliott who made £60 million from air
cooling units; Ben Way, a new media ‘whizzkid’ and Caran Gill, the ‘curry king’ 
of Glasgow.

They will all live ‘undercover’ to experience how poor and disadvantaged people 
live and, at the end of their experiment, give up to £50,000 to people they’ve met
who they think deserve their cash.

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John Elliott is quoted by The Guardian as saying “I don’t think charities are good
at [distributing cash]. They don’t tend to pick out the most deserving cases. They
tend to pick out the sexy ones and the politically correct ones.”

So, that puts 190,000 registered charities in England and Wales in their place, 
and suggests that, despite their combined totals of many hundreds of thousands of
years’ experience at grantmaking and alleviating poverty and sickness, they still
haven’t worked out how to do it properly.

If only they, like him, had had just 50 or so years’ experience in the air cooling
unit business, then they’d know how to help the deserving poor.

I’m a fundraiser – get me out of here…

 * **[Regeneration charities praised by Charity Commission](https://fundraising.co.uk/2006/10/31/regeneration-charities-praised-charity-commission/)**(
   31 October 2006)
 * **[ChildLine marks 20th birthday with £20 million appeal](https://fundraising.co.uk/2006/11/02/childline-marks-20th-birthday-20-million-appeal/)**(
   2 November 2006)
 * **[Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland is launched](https://fundraising.co.uk/2006/11/04/terrence-higgins-trust-scotland-launched/)**(
   4 November 2006)