As a charity, Hay Festival Global operates a mixed-funding model that includes sponsorship, grant funding, ticket revenue, memberships, and donations.
With this income, we are able to fulfill our mission: to create accessible spaces for creativity and curiosity to thrive, provoking collective conversations to build a better future, drawing on the most creative minds and experts.
Like so many charities, we are operating amongst huge financial uncertainty. Sponsorship is a complex ethical space to navigate. Where Hay Festival Global is offered funding, we consider this carefully in relation to our charity’s purpose and the Charity Commission guidelines.
In all of our funding agreements, we maintain editorial independence with a focus on delivering our charitable mission. We believe ideas can change the world and bring together diverse voices to listen, talk, debate, and create, tackling the biggest political, social and environmental challenges of our time.
Festivals like ours are spaces where curiosity thrives, imaginations roam, and our biggest challenges can be explored with nuance and expertise. We believe more than ever that creating spaces to listen, talk and debate is critical to find solutions to our shared problems.
This week, Fossil Free Books has issued a statement asking authors to boycott our next edition in protest over one of our sponsors, Baillie Gifford, and their investment portfolio. Their statement has been challenged by Baillie Gifford.
We have requested additional information from Baillie Gifford and continue to work to safeguard our events as free and respectful platforms for exchanging ideas. We remain committed to reaching the widest possible audiences through our work and presenting one of a kind events in the heart of the Welsh countryside next week.
– Julie Finch, CEO of Hay Festival Global.