To no longer donate to charities

[Foronenightonly01]

Issues akin to those being reported in the papers of ‘One Young World’ mean that when you give money now, more often than not it seems to go into the pockets of profiteers. I do still help out locally giving my time that I can spare to projects in my area and I’ll give extra in scenarios where I know exactly to whom my cash is going. I’m so saddened that people are being conned to lining the pockets of wealthy greedy pretend do-gooders - more than anything else recently this has made me realise how f@cked our Country is. So bloody sad.

People talking about charities have running costs etc, yes of course but the real question is how efficient they are being with donors money. So a charity can use up to 100% (even more if you include gift aid) of their donations to go directly to the cause, and the higher the percentage the more efficient and less wasteful the charity is.

You can look up these figures for any given charity and choose to give to charities with a proven track record in being streamlined and responsible with their income instead of chalking the waste down to ‘running costs’.

sorry but this is bullshit. It might have been a good excuse 10 years ago or before the pandemic but now everyone can wfh, have meetings remotely etc it's not necessary.

In terms of the 'most qualified' people, for the vast majority of charity jobs (finance, admin, customer contact, facilities managers, internal comms, receptionists, hr, etc) why do they need the 'most qualified' people? They just need people who are sufficiently qualified to do the job! You don't get some magic superlative level of admin assistants in London that you can't get in Edinburgh or Birmingham, and if you do then they are likely to soon realise their worth and move to a company who pays them better! If anything the 'most qualified' people might be attracted to job where their (notoriously underpaid) charity wages go further and might actually allow them a decent lifestyle.

If your million pound per annum CEO will refuse to live outside London then either find someone who isn't a complete twat, or pay a extortioante relocation package/ provide direct flights for the 2 days they actually need to be in the office, will still work out cheaper than a central london HQ.

If the civil service, bbc etc can move to regional offices and somehow manage to still "coordinate" and "get stuff done on a big scale" then I think charities can do it, and if they can't they aren't fit for purpose.

Plus it still doesn't explain the second part of my issue - okay charities "need" a central HQ. They don't need it to be a multi million skyscraper in one of the most expensive real estate areas in the country.

And yes - I am having that dilemma now. I could earn much more in the private sector and we are struggling to afford pay rises this year. But I love my job and we are at the 'coal face' as it were. It's a tough choice to have to make.

Part of the problem seems to be the number of charities working for same/similar causes. Surely if there was one charity for the cause, overheads would be reduced.

You can look up these figures for any given charity and choose to give to charities with a proven track record in being streamlined and responsible with their income instead of chalking the waste down to ‘running costs

How do you define 'going to the cause"?

It's incredibly difficult to define what money is 'going to the cause' and what money is not going to the cause.

Of course you need to pay decent wages to get good people. It's a false economy to pay crap wages for mediocre, under-qualified staff, and will ultimately result in poor value for money for funders.

When I took my skills from the voluntary sector to the private sector, my salary essentially doubled overnight, not to mention a massive increase in employer pension contributions, better training opportunities etc. I wanted to stay in the voluntary sector but I had bills to pay and a family to support. We are actually really bloody lucky that so many people are willing and able to stay in the voluntary sector on the very modest salaries that they get...a lot of charities would be unsustainable if they actually paid the market rate for the skills that their very dedicated staff bring to the table.

But no, it isn't enough that people are willing to work for much lower wages than they could realistically earn elsewhere, people want them to be paid nothing. I honestly think they just have no idea.

If your million pound per annum CEO

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEO_compensation_among_charities_in_the_United_Kingdom

Link to salaries of charity CEOs in the UK. Nuffield health is the highest at £840k. "High street" charities like Cancer Research, Barnardos, BHF, Red Cross are between £173k and £240k.

Now admittedly my maths isn't the best, but £240k isn't million pound, is it? Plus the guy in charge of Nuffield health is turning over 946,200,000 and his salary is 0.089% of turnover. The figures are ALL THERE if anyone is interested enough to look.

It's absolutely not bullshit though. I didn't say it's right, but its the way things are for now. Unfortunately the best and brightest are in London. And so are the people they need to meet. We're talking about the very biggest charities here, and they need to be accessible to be efficient and competitive.
Try organizing a meeting with politicians, banks, diplomats, scientists whoever, and tell them they all need to get up to Manchester for day. They will just say no and give their money and time elsewhere.
Just because the BBC can do, doesn't mean it would work for other organisations. If it was that easy, no business would bother paying those rents either.

For everyone arguing about "central locations" for charity offices - the charity office postcode affects some funding grants you can apply for.

Of course you need to pay decent wages to get good people. It's a false economy to pay crap wages for mediocre, under-qualified staff, and will ultimately result in poor value for money for funders.

^^ This

I worked for a national charity which was haemorrhaging really good staff because salaries were so low. Nobody expected to earn what they could in the private sector, but when the pay gap becomes so huge and people have bills to pay they're left with little choice. You need good staff to run a charity effectively and efficiently. I don't know why people can't grasp that.

Because @StrawberryPot they think that good people should be doing it for free or cheap because it's charity .

But they are probably badly run because they aren't paying the staff enough and so don't attract good people to the roles..
Too much in the way of cutting corners can backfire.

Sorry that was meant to be another quote !!

Some charity CEO salaries are too high, but an awful lot of people working in the sector could earn a lot more working elsewhere, so you do have to pay enough to make it viable. There are very, very few charities that could operate effectively with only volunteers, so some staff costs are inevitable.

Yes, without staff costs the charitable activities don't happen. Large charities with many employees will need some sort of HR and dedicated finance team.

I'm fairly neutral on CEO salaries. The large charities have turnovers in the tens of millions or higher and they are run as businesses. Nobody is going to take that role on for £30,000/year.

Of course charities keep money in the bank. When there's floods in Pakistan or an earthquake in South America, the money needs to be there to charter aircraft, buy tents, food packs, water purification tablets and get them to the disaster zone. but these operations are usually not done by charities , these are major relief operations , handful of charities world wide are able to do this,

It's the same at all levels of charity though. I love my volunteering in my charity shop and a few years ago when the manager's job came up I seriously considered it. But financially, it just doesn't make sense.

Currently, the chain I volunteer with is advertising a manager's job, 36 hours a week, £20,252. And for that money, you are doing EVERYTHING with no paid deputy. All the recruitment, money, training, health and safety, compliance, key holding responsibilities, merchandising, cleaning - every thing. Most stores are open 9-5 Monday to Saturday and 12-4 on a Sunday. That's 52 hours a week and you're only contracted for 36. Your job to work out how to cover the other hours.

Or I could go and work in a Team Leader position for Primark, looking after just a department in a store not the whole thing, with lots of other paid management around too. And I'd be earning £28,372 a year with the opportunity for promotion.

Charity salaries are NOT HIGH.

Our trustees spend at least 5 hours a week filling in grant claims. We all work full time so we split them between us. That's on top of the time spent researching what grants are available. We reckon we are successful in less than 1 in 10 applications. We would probably do better if we employed someone with ghat skill set and not an amateur fitting it in between work and family life. Very few grants are for running expenses, mostly new equipment or setting up costs for new services so you still need to run a load of fundraising events that need admin and publicity just to keep going. Raising £100k every year takes a lot of effort and our reseves were decimated during covid as the fundraising didn't happen and our costs hardly went down. Without covid grants from the council we would definitely have gone under and for the last year it's been very close as to whether we could carry on.

Yeah I'm a trustee too and I'm always glad we have a person for that part! It's definitely more efficient if you have the resources. Bit of a vicious circle when you don't.

My original point to the OP, who is disillusioned with donating to charity, is to suggest that instead of giving money they give of their time and skill set, which a different form of donation,

As a volunteer I have received some great training - GDPR/DP2018, safeguarding, MH First Aid, regular meetings on line and in person, all of which make me a better Caseworker. Yes I agree there is some cost involved, but the training is delivered as eLearning which all staff have to do anyway so it's no extra cost for volunteers to use the same modules.

the point of this thread was to state that people's donations get swallowed up with "admin costs" etc. my response was that being a volunteer offers great value for money to the charity and that the volunteer's time far outweighed training and admin costs if they were to be employees.

Whether there is a cost involved is tangential to the fact that volunteering is a good way of directly helping the charity and its clients by "donating" time instead of cash, and it's worth making the point on here that instead of thinking "I'm not donating anymore" think instead what alternative contribution could you make to maximise the value.

you can also leave a bequest in your will, which I'm also doing.

For people who have been out of the workforce for some time due to being a SAHM, it's a great way to gain experience, while not having the stress of a 9-5, you're giving your time for nothing, so the payback is flexibility and learning new skills or applying existing ones.

Often they do need very central offices. It helps attract the most qualified people, needs to be easily accessible for donors, politicians, finance institutions, embassies, other organisations etc etc. I think people underestimate the amount of schmoozing that has to be done by big charities. Getting stuff done on a large scale is hard! When you need coordination both in house and with multiple outside agencies location is important.

Even for smaller charities being more central can bring benefits. We had to move from a central position, with car parking and good public transport links (and it was an amazingly good rent!) because the building was sold.

Everything in our price range had some combination of it was difficult to get to, had no parking, had no room for a meeting space, no or poor disabled access. We eventually found somewhere with poor parking and no meeting space and had to spend a lot of time finding free meeting space or paying for it.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen can you tell me more about the neo-Marxist theories of social change that the National Trust has fallen under? I think I missed the bit in Das Capital where Marx said "once we acknowledge that some of these big houses were built with the proceeds of slavery, then we can empower the proletariat to take control of the means of production."

but don't the 'people working for charities should be paid well' arguments contradict the 'charities need to be based in London' arguments?
e.g. if you NEED to be in London because you NEED the brightest and best, say social media manager but can only afford to pay them £29k and there are social media managers in the private sector on £48k, why would the brightest and best stay with your charity if that isn't even enough to rent a studio flat?

Or you could move to Newcastle, pay the same wage and actually attract and retain the brightest and the best because they can actually afford to live on it?
Unless you think London has a monopoly on bright individuals and the other 50 million people in the country are just thickos working on farms?

And as for the 'important sponsors will refuse to come to Manchester' for a meeting, well hold the meeting online like every other business does since 2020, or, novel concept, send the key staff FROM Manchester to London to meet them.

Often they do need very central offices.

Some charities have premises donated to them, especially if their Patron is royalty. It does help to be centrally located - but an absolute pita for those of us living out in the sticks and very expensive to travel to for official events/meetings.

Having worked for some big name charities I've seen a lot of money spunked by senior management on conferences, pay, bad decisions whilst junior staff get naff all and exploited to work extra hours for the charity's supposed good.

I give all our clothing to the local homeless shelter now. Most will go directly to the needy person and if they can make any money off the things a homeless person wouldn't wear then they are welcome to it ( I checked and they said they would take anything).

I think there is a problem at the top end of charities, there is a great deal of waste.

And duplication - why do you need multiple charities doing the same thing? If I were in government I would review this. Yes I know people want to have funds in the name of their late loved ones, but it's not a good enough reason to have all the duplication.

It's good to donate to local small charities where much more of the money goes to the cause.