It’s astonishing what we take for granted. Back in early 2010, the most the Evening Standard had ever raised in a campaign was £250,000. That was considered a pretty good result back then for the paper’s traditional annual Christmas drive, which typically solicited funds for a chosen charity. Today, a Standard campaign that raises anything short of £1 million can seem like a failure.
The game changer was the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund, which I launched in 2010 under new proprietor Evgeny Lebedev and then editor Geordie Greig. Our exposé of inequality in London began with the heart-wrenching story of a young teenager who had been saving for months to raise the £19 fee he needed to apply to university and it resulted in dozens of £19 cheques being sent in by readers — and a place opening up at a London university.
