Talk:William Pears Group

Pears Foundation section

The Pears Foundation section of this article is currently sourced only to a database and to groups that the Foundation has given money to, not of which shows its import. I'm not saying that no better sources can be found and thus this section needs to go away; I'm saying that better sources should be found. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

By "a database" I suppose you mean the Charity Commission register, which includes a lot of detail about the charity in its pages. I've added another source which describes a few more of the Foundation's projects. I don't really see what more could be expected for what is, after all, only a section of an article and not a standalone article. I think it's helpful to have at least some mention of the Pears Foundation, because it is prominent in many areas and I, for one, had assumed it to be connected with soap rather than property, as Pears (soap) has a higher public profile than the property group. PamD 18:36, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

If the foundation is worth talking about, then we should be able to find reliable third-party sources talking about it. Without that, it looks rather promotional. Many businesses do a little charity for promotional/reputational purposes. That the people who they gave money to say that they got money from them does not make it inherently worthy of discussion. That's why we want third-party coverage.

And yes, not only is the registry a database, and thus establishes simply that something exists rather than that it's worth talking about, but, at least at the moment, the link to it is dead. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 18:46, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

In fact it looks as if the template {{EW charity}} isn't working anywhere: hopefully the CC are doing something temporary, rather than redesigning their entire website again. The direct link is here. I've added another ref, though as it's from the Pears Cumbria School of Medicine you'll probably deem it useless. True third parties just don't write about charitable foundations until there's a scandal: they just carry on boringly giving out money. But in a case like this where big things like a medical school get named after them, I think the encyclopedia should answer the question "What's this Pears Foundation?". PamD 22:01, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's true that charitable foundations don't get written about unless there's a scandal. I also don't think that just because they paid to have their name put on some building to get positive publicity, we owe that to them.

Doing a quick newspapers.com search, here's some sources that might be of more use.

• The Evening Standard
• Evening Times

(Complicating searches is that there are other organizations that end in Pears Foundation, such as the Britten-Pears Foundation.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 22:21, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Those two links lead to the same article, already cited in the main part of the article. I've extracted some content about the foundation (rather dated donations figure), and also explained the company name. Thanks. PamD 22:38, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Whoops, I messed up the copy/paste on the second link. It is now fixed. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 22:59, 18 September 2024 (UTC)