The Big Issue magazine subscription

From the publisher

If you can’t get hold of a copy of our award-winning magazine on a regular basis, you can subscribe to get The Big Issue delivered to your door every week.

The Big Issue has challenged and shaped public perceptions, becoming synonymous with provocative, independent journalism, and renowned for securing high-profile exclusive interviews. It has inspired over 120 similar magazines in 35 countries worldwide.

The magazine was launched in 1991 in response to the growing number of rough sleepers on the streets of London, and set out to offer vulnerable people the opportunity to earn a legitimate income through selling a magazine to the public. More than twenty-five years later, our vendors come from a variety of backgrounds and face the myriad of problems associated with poverty and inequality.

However, selling magazines on the street isn’t for everyone. Likewise, not everyone is able to get hold of a copy of The Big Issue on a regular basis. So we set out to create a subscription scheme which offers different work-based opportunities for people facing poverty, as well as offering a different means of buying the magazine.

Subscriptions to the magazine are not discounted, because we won’t undercut our street-based vendors, but by subscribing to the magazine you are enabling us to:

• Create supported employment opportunities for vulnerable people in our subscription fulfilment team;
• Better support our network of 2000 street-based vendors – all profits are reinvested to increase our capacity to provide a ‘hand up, not a hand out’ to vulnerable people;
• More effectively deliver our mission of dismantling poverty and creating opportunity.