BU over charity director salaries

[Happydoingitjusttheonce]

Is the criticism shortsighted? CEO of NSPCC criticised for earning £167k. At its peak a few years ago the charity was turning over £150m. Anyone with the skill and experience to manage that level of income could be remunerated in the private extremely handsomely and much more so than Peter Wanless is. Do people really think the charity could get someone in for buttons, or for nothing, to do that job?

Charities are just a reflection of the huge gap between senior executive pay and the rest of the workforce

The highest earner in a big charity probably earns 10x what the lowest FT worker earns. In a private company this would be more like 100x.

300k is peanuts to their billions.

Bloody hell, some people understand absolutely nothing about how businesses work.

First of all, as a PP pointed out, if a charity got free utilities automatically, millions of new charities would somehow, magically, appear. What then - utility companies have to "assess" them all to decide if they're "worthy"?

Secondly, just because a utility conglomerate has a turnover that may be measured in billions doesn't mean that they have piles of cash just sort of lying around to be slept on or given away. Profit margins are not large and providing writeoffs to charity might well put them into the red. So then all utility companies collapse (or put up their prices to paying customers steeply; imagine how popular that'll be) whilst charities leave all their computers on all night (why not?) and heat the office to 25C and all the other offices in the same building figure out ways to steal their power from the charity.

Strange as it may be to comprehend, the people already working in these sectors are often quite bright and altruistic and understand the factors involved slightly better than people on the outside. It's the height of arrogance to think that, as an uninformed outsider, you can come up with simple ideas that will solve these problems.

I feel I can make a much bigger impact giving my time and skills for several hours per week than I could giving a fiver to a charity every month.

Let's take that to it's logical conclusion though. How well could MacMillan support and care for cancer patients if everybody donated in "time"? How much help could the Red Cross give to victims of war and crisis with no money? The fact is a lot of these organisations are staffed by skilled people who need to feed and clothe themselves just like everybody else. A few hours a week of Joe Public's time isn't going to impact the issues they have to deal with.

If you offer less you limit yourself to people who aren't remotely qualified

But, kmc1111, there would still be plenty of people who were extremely qualified, and willing to work for say £127k rather than £167k. You only need one good candidate and for £127k you would still get plenty. And possibly more.

It will depend on what skills you can provide with your volunteering, how much money you'd have and what the charity does. There are also probably some people who have the niche skills the charity needs, but who could still potentially do more good by using those niche skills to get paid by someone else, and then giving the money to the charity.

Oh and yy re computers. Whatever sector you're in, there comes a point when the tech is sufficiently crap that the amount of time staff need to invest in it makes it more expensive than getting new. I experienced this in the private sector too. I spent about 20 minutes of my day fucking around with the photocopier, for months. They were billing me out at £100 an hour at the time, so it would only have taken a couple of weeks before the new copier would've paid for itself.

Bloody hell, some people understand absolutely nothing about how businesses work. I'm afraid you're in the dark on how the world works.

are often quite bright and altruistic Yes, great job they've made of the world so far.

there would still be plenty of people who were extremely qualified, and willing to work for say £127k rather than £167k. You only need one good candidate and for £127k you would still get plenty. And possibly more.

Well, yes, but £127k is still a lot of money and a lot more than many people (including some on this thread) think charity CEOs should be paid.

This might be of interest to those people who want to be more effective in their giving:

www.effectivealtruism.org

Interestingly, I believe that site actually specifically recommends giving to some of the big international development charities to make the biggest impact by addressing major issues like clean water or malaria, and also comments that volunteering can often be dramatically less productive than giving an hour's salary to a charity instead.

Obviously, this doesn't mean you shouldn't volunteer - it can be really fun, and give you access to new friends and skills and many charities do have loads volunteers can do - but there is a good argument that it's less effective than a cash donation.

I agree, Violet, but in this specific case - the NSPCC - bringing a CEO salary down from £167k to £127k would at least be a start. It's entirely possible to have a lavish life on £127k, especially when you know you've got a civil service pension tucked up for later.

Why would you have a civil service pension in a charity? As I mentioned before you'd struggle to get a full board With the highest paid director on £127k- what would you offer a finance director, £100k? You'd be lucky to find one

Bubble because the CEO in this case came to the charity from a senior civil service job, and that's a pretty well-worn path for jobs of this type. It's not like they've had lives of struggle before being asked to survive on a salary of £167k, even if it is lower than what they could have got in the private sector.

Oh I'm sorry- I thought you were saying that generally that's why a £127k salary would be acceptable

Anybody in a senior civil service job who thinks that private sector employers will be queuing up to offer them jobs at multiples of their civil service salary is deluded, to say the least.

Unless you’ve been chief exec of HMRC, and one of the big four decide to take you in to turn you into a gamekeeper turned poacher, forget it! It is really difficult to move out of the public sector once you’ve been in it for a while, because it has a reputation for being crap.

That doesn’t stop people working in it regularly bleating about how they would earn twice as much if they were in the private sector. Bollocks. The people saying that, who I worked with, were overpaid for the little they delivered. Strangely, they never left for the mythical generous salaries they definitely could have earned.

(Sorry for slight derail)

It’s not just the directors salaries that people get shitty about. In CRUK you obviously want to be attracted the most talented scientists you can. My dbro is a post doc geneticist at CRUK. He got his PhD over 10 years ago and has worked for CRUK since then. He earns about 35k which he has had people telling him is immoral. After completing his PhD he was offered a job in pharmaceuticals for 150k. Charities pay so much less across the board because the have to. They also sometimes suffer because of it though.

I'm torn about this, as I think charities operating only uk exist mainly to pick up the bill that government should be paying through taxation. I don't think it should be up to people's charitable mindedness to fund medical research, hospices, food banks, child safeguarding animal welfare, etc. Thus all this could be done more efficiently through properly organised governmental organisations communicating with each other. This would reduce the outgoings on replicating structures and streamline delivery. However, in this country, raising taxation (for the rich, particularly) seems to be a no-no and people would rather have everything done by charities in a costly, hap-hazard way, so I guess I'm in the minority. What would happen if suddenly nobody have to charities? Would the government be forced into action? Or would they just let people die? I'm not sure. Just thinking aloud, really.

Funny that so many people dissed pipple for their post
I'm a finance & business manager for a very niche area in the public sector and my team needs to be the absolute best of the best. .... Its a lot of money but they are highly skilled intellectuals who we NEED to have or the whole country will be fucked

From that post and my knowledge of the niches in the public sector I have a pretty good idea which area they are
and the rudeness show the same lack of understanding
as the people who think that stuff is more useful than money

PS I do Charity accounts - ringfencing of donations is bollocks and legally almost impossible to do.

Bubble no, that's specific to this case, but just not uncommon in other cases.

I would judge anyone who thinks that £127k isn't an adequate salary for anything at all, though, regardless of how much they could get elsewhere.

Excuse typos! Was being harrassed/loved by a cat, there, but I think you test the gist of what I'm trying to convey...

I'm torn about this, as I think charities operating only uk exist mainly to pick up the bill that government should be paying through taxation

Ironically, a lot of UK charities get our tax money which seems insane to me.

Yes, it is insane. Why have this double layer structure? I get charities that offer terminally ill children a chance to go to Disneyland Florida. That's not something that government can/should provide, but the adverts of the likes of where "little Johnny is afraid of going home, because his dad abuses him and comes into his room at night" piss me off. Why should that be up to individuals to save Johnny? Isn't it the governments job to safeguard children (and adults)?

Well, as a researcher who has recently been awarded a multi-million pound grant from a medical charity I'd be more than pleased for people to decide that their donation should go to research rather than charity overheads. Their £10 would really help out towards my photocopying costs this week.

I agree that charities pick up a lot of things which the state should be doing. But you'd be waiting for hell to freeze over before the current Government would do half of the stuff the charities are. What would happen to all the people being helped now in the meantime? And also some charities are the experts in their field - hence why they do get some Govt funding.

Ah, no, sorry, zeezeek - photocopying counts as admin. You are only allowed to buy pipettes and bunsen burners with your multi-million pound research grant.

Agree it's a difficult one, but I just donyt think people would let the government get away with not funding these, essential things, if charities didn't exist. Change is always difficult and it's a long-standing problem in the UK, so I don't think it's going to change. But it's just a inefficient (for everyone), unorganised solution.

So what these discussions generally come down to is some people saying the charity concerned could get a suitable person for less than that offered, some saying they couldn't. Neither of course are able to evidence it either way because the post hasn't been advertised at that, though I'm always more inclined to pay attention to the ones who can offer some kind of industry rationale and examples of similar posts etc.

I notice as well people talking about how they don't think any more than X is ever needed, they'd judge people who didn't think X amount is an adequate salary, it shouldn't be a sacrifice to do this job for this amount etc. Which is all absolutely fine, and you're entitled to think that, but it's obviously completely irrelevant here.

I also share people's feelings about CEO salaries being high generally and about things being hived out to the voluntary sector that the government should be doing. Meanwhile, charities are stuck operating in that context regardless of what I have to say about it.