Helping Hands, a magazine sold on the streets in aid of charities, will increase its cut to charity from €1.05 to €1.50.
It will also start publishing the amount going to charity next to the selling price on the cover.
The change follows a report by The Times indicating that of the €3.50 paid for the magazine, about a third (€1.05) went to a chosen charity. The rest went, in roughly equal proportions, to the vendor and to the company producing the magazine, including production costs.
The first issue to benefit from the increase will be the one in aid of Inspire Foundation, an organisation working among disabled children and whose CEO, Nathan Farrugia, had expressed concern over the transparency in the sales of the magazine.
Helping Hands CEO Reuben Vella said the changes would help dispel doubts and increase transparency. Since it was founded, the company collected over €640,000 for charities and organisations, Mr Vella pointed out. “This was no easy feat but we have always kept and achieved our promised target.”
Similarly, Joe Pace, administrator of Dar il-Kaptan, a respite home which used the services of Helping Hands, said any help they could get was appreciated because the respite home depended on government aid and charitable donations. The fact that they invested no money in the charity magazines was an added bonus.
Fr Ġorġ Grima, of Moviment Missjunarju Ġesù fil-Proxxmu, who recently got €20,000 off charity magazine sales, also argued that the publication played a welcome part in his organisation’s collection of funds.
Magazines such as the Helping Hands Family Magazine were useful, Mr Farrugia said, in that they provided charities with a way of earning income and spreading awareness about their cause with no capital outlay on their part. Things like this, he said, presented less of a risk than a benefit concert, which might end up not generating enough income to justify the effort.
The idea for the Helping Hands magazine is similar to the model used by UK publication The Big Issue, which is sold on the streets by “homeless and vulnerably housed people” to give them “the opportunity to earn a legitimate income”.
However, in contrast with its local counterpart, The Big Issue comes out weekly, covers entertainment and current affairs and clearly states the way it works on its website.
It says: “Big Issue sellers buy (the magazine) for 85p and sell for £1.70, thereby earning 85p per copy. Any post-investment profit generated through the sale of the magazine or the sale of advertising is passed on to our charity, The Big Issue Foundation”.
In Malta, however, the story was slightly different as vendors approach people and ask them to help the charity in question. Here, it is the cause rather than the content of the magazine which drives sales.