shocked at charities..

[cuckoooo]

My brother is an auditor in the charity sector and he was telling me that the big charities, particularly the 'sponsor a child' ones are pointless.

He was telling me that the biggest childrens charity - UNICEF - only 14p in the pound gets spent on actual causes the rest of the money goes to advertising, offices and staff costs. He also added that Unicef's boss has a company Rolls Royce and $1.2m salary.

He said for worldvision/plan uk/save the children only between 15p and 23p in the pound gets to the children sponsored and not even directly to the child - just allocated to the local area. The majority of costs are rent, advertising, mysterious 'consulting' costs, and staff costs. He said they have swanky offices in really expensive places - Belgravia/Mayfair etc and the execs have high-ish salaries with lots of perks (chauffeur, paid holidays, lots of annual leave etc)

He said Red Cross was the worst offender of all, but wouldn't go into details.

I just felt a little outraged, though not entirely surprised. It feels like that even the good things of this world are corrupt.

Another professional fundraiser here. I work for a range of clients including a hospice and could get paid within the 40K range if I wanted to be but tend to work for small charities which pay poorly because of my professional interests. OneMagnumisneverenough it would absolutely be appropriate for a senior fundraiser to earn 40K to keep a hospice running. Their job would be highly strategic, they would be working on building projects liaising directly with architects and contractors, raising revenue for salaries across the organisation and sourcing project money for wards and outreach services. I work 2-3 years ahead of time, my job highly skilled and there are a lot of people relying on me for their services, their jobs and to keep their organisation on track and true to its ethics and values. Its fab that your hospice has a volunteer that was so productive in fundraising but its very unfair of him to be outraged that those of us that work to keep these essential services a float should be undervalued. Fundraising is hard, hard work and a highly skilful, strategic and political job and there is a world of difference between a productive volunteer and a professional holding the pressure of raising funds to keep charities and third sector organisations afloat in the current political, social and economic climate.

An experienced and skilled face-to-face fundraiser who can command a salary of £40k per annum will typically generate at least £500k or more in new funds raised every year. There aren't enough people with these skills and turnover is high as they will typically get poached by another charity after 18-24 months in each job. Many charities have unfilled vacancies for these jobs that they can't recruit for. If they are effectively losing more than £4000 per month in donations that won't be received if no one is doing the job, then it's not ridiculous to bump up the salary offered to poach a talented fundraiser from another charity. And so wage inflation continues.

Part of the reason why there are so few people available to do this job is because our collective cultural distaste for talking about money or (shudder) asking for it means that lots of people who do have the inate talent wouldn't consider it as a career. If we could get over ourselves and agree collectively that giving to charity is a great thing and we should all be eager to do what we can then the wage inflation might get a bit less silly.

I have never met anyone so grasping as the people I met who work in the third sector, project management fees in excess of the funds paid to the builder, who is clearly actually managing the project, consultation fees in excess of 10k to use a free room and stand around for a day then write a ten page summary, invoicing for work not done, refusing to pass on information or make phonecalls unless they are paid to do so, fake business plans, false claims of signing leases, fraudulent submissions, corralling councillors to vote through plagiarised and inflated business plans, claims of massive funded support and ongoing contracts that can't materialise when documents are asked for, claiming to have no insurance to try to lever public funds to pay for damage, underreporting company assets to release community funds, faking back to work programmes to get more public funds, exploiting mentally ill and vulnerable people to work for free, etc etc etc. Its a horribly grubby sector

Lanark2 I have seen very little of that and have worked in the sector for years -although I have started to see management consultants on extortionate rates appearing to scoop up some of the funds released by our current government designed to 'support' charities to adapt to neoliberalism. Where you seen this happening (not suggesting you haven't just interested) most of the people I work for and with are very value driven and incredibly hard working.

I'm glad to see so many pps speaking sense.

I worked in the voluntary sector for years. Some people up thread day say that they prefer to give money to smaller charities as they think the money is less likely to be spent on admin. Of course it's great to give money to small charities (or any charity). But small charities are much likely to go under and close down than big charities. This is because they are more likely to be run by volunteers, who might not be able to commit long term. Small charities are less likely to have staff or volunteers with the range of expertise to keep it going in the long term (finance, HR, fundraising etc). Running a stable organisation costs money. It requires administration and management. Those things need paying for.

I used to work for action for children and could really proudly say that 90p in every £ donated went in to direct work (a fact we were told in our induction), a few years later they launched a massive rebrand and ad campaign and could no longer say that, I left shortly after.

This sort of conversation makes me so sad. I sometimes struggle with the fact that I have a paid-well 'charity' role when I know people put money in the pot to pay for my role and, if they saw what it was written down, they may think it's not worth the while - why not get a volunteer? That's not direct care? Outrageous! This person is greedy, money grabbing, big charity is a business.

But - I also do a voluntary charity role in my spare time. This involves significant hours, so I'm not just dabbling in my voluntary role. I experience both ends of the charity conundrum.

I doubt anyone would do the full-time charity role I do 'voluntarily'. Put up with the shit that we put up with to do the best for the people we're trying to support. Keep on going despite all the challenges. I have built up experience, knowledge, and skills that I hope do the best for those people. I choose not to claim a lot of the expenses that would be normal for people in other businesses.

If I worked in a smaller charity that many are advocating supporting - I think I would be pullled 1000 ways and wouldn't be able to do the job I'm meant to do. I wouldn't be spending your money in the best way. There are positives to both small and large charities, but the large charities are in the firing line.

You know that all large charities started off small once upon a time?

I understand why charities are under scrutiny. We should be. Those who donate deserve to know what we do. But please don't assume that 'big' means 'evil business' and 'small' means cute, fluffy and does good. Most of those working or volunteering in both are aiming to spend your money well, and in the right way.

I do both, and I can assure you in both most people are committed to that, despite what the Daily Mail would have you believe.

I don't mind charity people being paid £££ if they are giving good value for money.

I'd like to think you get what you pay for but I'm not so naive to know that's not always the case. But it should be.

I don't work for free so I don't see why anyone else should.

These threads are always populated by posters who have no experience of the sector saying second hand things they've 'heard' or their dad's said.

For a charity to deliver its charitable aims it has to operate effectively like a business or it will go under .. to get good people you do have to pay them.

I could go on but the ignorance makes me too angry

I've not read the whole thread. Did your brother really tell you that or do you actually work for the Tories who seem hell bent on attacking charities at the moment

I've worked in the charity sector for many years and a good fundraiser in a medium sized charity can earn £40k, the head of fundraising in my last job earnt about £55k and absolutely deserved every penny of it. Fundraising isn't shaking a tin and organising a sponsored 10k, it's highly strategic and an enormous responsibility where a charity can sink or swim dependent on the money you bring in. There are so many aspects to fundraising and to pay a low salary, and £25k is not a high salary, can be a false economy. A £25k fundraiser salary is a 3-4 year experienced person in a London based charity. To deliver the kind of work that the charity wants to and to be able to demonstrate impact it needs to be someone with the skills and experience to deliver at a high level.

Fundraising is often made up of different strands, the bog standard shaking tins, fun runs, sponsored hair cuts etc. Then there's legacy fundraising which was mentioned above. There's major donor fundraising where one aims to develop relationships with wealthy enormous go people that they might make a contribution, corporate fundraising where one competes with every other charity in the vague hope that marks & spencer or someone similar wants to collaborate with you and trusts and foundations fundraising where one submits a bid for specific projects in the hope that you can actually deliver your services and stay true to your charitable objectives. Ever tried making a £1m application to the lottery OP - well it's a bloody nightmare and needs soneone with real skill and business acumen to do it. The last one we worked in took 11 days to complete and in about 6 months we will know the outcome.

Volunteers are great and are vital to the charity sector but successful and influential charities are rarely run entirely by volunteers. My volunteers are great but school holidays - sorry don't be in for 6 weeks, training - no sorry that's on a Tuesday and I play bridge on a Tuesday, different role in the company - no sorry don't use computers. Charities need skilled professional people to be efficient and effective and we deserve a fair wage to enable us to do that.

sistersweet you did a 1m bid to the lottery in 11 days! my last one of that size took about 18 months!

I work for a well-known charity (not mentioned on this thread AFAIK although not read it all properly). Our office is shit and our wages aren't great - I took a pay cut to come here from the public sector. Income mainly goes on staff costs which is exactly as it should be, we offer a specialist service and make a massive difference through the work that we do. I'm sure there are some dodgy charities out there but that's exactly why we are audited and have checks and balances via trustees etc. Anyone seriously taking the piss wouldn't be allowed to operate.

The background work was obviously in place. Stage 1 was about 4 days and we had all the data so it was 11 days of work to write stage 2 but we could only do it that quickly because we had all the evidence and figures prepared. We've actually done a few, successful big lottery applications and been successful, so had a good idea of where we are going with this one. But hey, we could easily have done it on a volunteer.

I am amazed when people ask me if I get paid for working for a charity.
Of course I do. I get paid a very low salary but raise in excess of £100,000 a year.
Additionally I educate thousands of young people each year.
There are so many ignorant people who think fundraising is a cake sale and a flag day.

Where are you OP? Can you come back and clarify a few things?

OK that makes more sense. All TBL bids I have done over a million are building projects that have three stages and vast, vast amounts of paperwork. The last one I did was about 35 000 words long and with the architects drawings, budgets and cash forecasting on top was the size of a doorstop. But as you say - something that a volunteer could easily do

waitingforgodot apt name to ask that!!!
Op is a shit stirrer.

It's worth it if it stops a car crash like Kids Company!

Savage beauty OP may well be a shit stirrer but there were quite a few people who agreed with them upthread which is pretty depressing. someone also pointed out that charities are a target for this government (which is true) and maybe we are going to see more of this type of attitude in the future. That's an interesting and depressing speculation.

Yes it's depressing itchy

Itchychinychin, charities are a target for this government. It's really depressing. Hopefully people will see through crap like the original post on here and question it but doubtful.

I was talking to a colleague last week who (like me) works for a range of charities and CIC's cross-sector and he said that in his opinion there would be no trusts and foundations left to fundraise from in 5 years (apart from perhaps The Big Lottery) and that he is advising all of his charities to start to move their income streams away from grants as soon as possible. He thinks almost all small charities will fold in the coming years or they will become cashless, volunteer led, grassroots projects that only meet vulnerable peoples' very basic needs (i.e. a soup kitchen in a church hall, manned by volunteers and run from food donations)

Its a bleak picture.

That is utterly depressing Itchy.

I know. I agree with him too.

I am a trustee for a couple of charities as well as doing my day job and its really hard to press this message home. A lot of the small projects and services I work for are sleep walking into a situation where they will almost certainly fold unless they radically change the way they operate - which is a very hard thing to do when delivering activities at the same time on reduced resources.