I’m turning 80. My birthday wish? Take the Big Issue when you buy

This week I turn 80. I’m fascinated as to why a poorly raised slum body who often ate nothing managed to survive to be an octogenarian. But here I am, on the eve of my big birthday, with my thoughts preoccupied with the Big Issue, like on many an eve before this.

My 80th, to me, is a celebration of 80 years of the Big Issue. But you might point out, it’s only been going 34 years! 35 in September. Well, look at it this way: if I hadn’t been through all that lived experience stuff – poverty, homelessness, rough sleeping, wrongdoing and incarceration – if I hadn’t inherited poverty – there wouldn’t have been the Big Issue. I wouldn’t have had the dispassionate drive to do something completely different from what the 501 other homeless groups were doing when we started in 1991.

Whichever way you look at it – 35 or 80 – the Big Issue has its own milestone birthday to celebrate this year. But sadly, it’s not all cakes and candles. 2026 will be one of the toughest years in our history. A multitude of factors are coming together to put pressure on our ability to deliver for our vendors. We will rise to the challenge, but the public has a big role to play in ensuring our survival too.

Read more:

• This is why Big Issue is ripe for reinvention
• Want a reason to be cheerful? Across Europe there are people trying to do the same thing as Big Issue
• I’ve written a Jane Austen spinoff for my 80th birthday. Help me sell a million copies

One reason for the Big Issue’s shifting fortunes is because of kindness. It would seem that the public do love our vendors – indeed many are giving their money, but choosing not to take the magazine. It is not poorly intended. I can appreciate why people may think they’re doing a good thing by leaving their vendor with a copy they can sell on to another customer. But this destroys the income Big Issue needs to make to run itself, and undermines the very principles we were established on back in 1991.

The whole point of the Big Issue was never charity. It was bringing homeless people to the marketplace to earn their own money through trade. Working, not begging. A way of restoring respect and dignity back to people left with none.

This was the revolutionary principle on which the Big Issue was founded three-and-a-half decades ago. But our pioneering ‘trade not aid’ model has been punctured by some customers not taking the magazine when they give money to our vendors.

A reminder for those who need it: the way the Big Issue works, and has always worked, is that our vendors buy the magazine off us, and they sell it on for double the price, earning the profit. In today’s economy, this means £2.50 for every copy sold goes to the vendor, and £2.50 comes back into us at Big Issue.

This is crucial income for the Big Issue operation. We use it to support vendors in their trade and in other areas of their lives, like their housing, wellbeing and skills training. We also use our cut to make the magazine they sell. Creating and printing a new edition of the Big Issue every single week doesn’t come cheap.

So it’s really important to take the magazine, because that’s part of the micro-business element of the Big Issue. Not to mention the fact that the Big Issue is a great read, a unique read – the only magazine in the world dedicated to ending poverty. We platform people and organisations working to dismantle hardship and social injustice, like in our annual Changemakers list, set to celebrate a whole new cohort of 100 trailblazers for 2026 very soon. Real social impact championed in our pages every single week.

As we hit milestones like 80th or 35th birthdays, we reflect on the foundations we were built on. For the Big Issue, that foundation is providing hand-ups, not handouts. We are the first rung on a long ladder to escaping the punishing poverty that many of our vendors endure. So my birthday wish is for you please to respect that core principle, and when you buy the Big Issue, take your Big Issue.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words from our archive.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life this winter.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and how we fund our work to end poverty.

You can also support online with a vendor support kit or a magazine subscription. Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.