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?

but it's obviously completely irrelevant here

Except it's not, because some charities get a substantial percentage of their income from the general public, and if there is a perception that the CEO's wages are too high, then people on much much lower wages might make the decision that perhaps the CEO could put his hand in his own pocket before asking them.

Well, if you could show that the general public would not only judge as you do but also reduce their donations, and that this would have more of a financial impact than paying a higher salary to someone who might be capable of making the charity more money, it might be something to take into account. Or it might just be something one person thinks but that nobody else is particularly concerned about.

So much money and labour goes into replicating premises, structures and roles, and the promotion of charities through a variety of expensive fund-raising drives and events, ads, "free gifts", chuggers, promo material and literature, lobbying, websites, social-media presence, etc. When that money and labour could be used to work directly on the issues themselves by a properly structured, internally co-operating and adequately tax-funded government. Through the higher taxation civil servants (and others working for government/council) could be brought up closer to the salaries of those on the private sector, and those on the private sector would come down closer to the public sector, so the gap would not be so large any more.

Or it might just be something one person thinks but that nobody else is particularly concerned about.

You seriously think that i am the only person to consider whether, on my pitiful salary, i should pay towards a salary many, many times my own? It comes up all the time in discussions like this, from many people!

And the reality is that I do donate to charities where plenty of people are paid more than I am. I think charities need professionals, and those professionals need to be properly paid. Where I demur is when I think the top-level salaries are so high that they've become unreasonable.

I've stopped giving to big charities for this reason, they don't need my pennies anyways but still.

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.

Oh dear.* Well as my particular brand of research involves lots of people sitting in front of computers all day looking at stacks of numbers, then I obviously can’t justify taking charity money.* We’ll just have to do it all out of the kindness of our hearts then......

It’s insane for them to b

Don’t know what happened there!

I was saying...

It’s insane for them to be paid moe that the prime minister

You seriously think that i am the only person to consider whether, on my pitiful salary, i should pay towards a salary many, many times my own? It comes up all the time in discussions like this, from many people!

No, but then that's not what either you or I said.

Re bringing charities into the public sector, a lot of them could and should be, but there are some doing work that it's better to have some distance from. For example I have worked for some charities providing legal representation to asylum seekers. They were sometimes indirectly funded by the state, but the public sector body that deals with these matters is UKVI and I don't think many of us in the sector would want to replicate what they do! There's more independence if you're not public sector even when some funding does come from the state originally.

Equally though there are loads of things the state should be covering but wrongly get hived out to charities. There must be any number of charities inefficiently doing work where independence from the state isn't necessary or desirable.

Why? A lot of them are more effective at changing things than a lot of prime ministers we’ve had.

It's interesting that the PM thing gets so much traction because being PM is a gateway to some spectacularly lucrative work.

Tony Blair, for example, was a decently successful junior barrister before becoming an MP, by all accounts. Not a superstar in the field necessarily. I think he was commercial, so he could probably have been earning well into the six figures by now if he'd kept at that. The very successful ones can be on half a million a year and more. The salary of an MP and then a PM is much less than that.

His net worth now, though, was apparently over £60 million 2 years ago, so will be more now. He wouldn't have made that in the law. Nor would he be commanding tens of thousands per after dinner speech!

There are more ways of giving time to a charity than going into their office etc..

I make craft items, sell them and give the money to my chosen charity and I know exactly where my money goes.

Slightly off topic, perhaps, but how do others feel about people asking for sponsorship to run a marathon or climb the Great Wall of China etc?

Personally I'm not keen. As said above, how much actually goes to the charity and how much on expenses to go to far flung places?

I will give direct to charities, but I haven't got much money to spare. But I have time. That's why I make things and sell them.

I very rarely donate to people doing sponsored things. Just like I don’t ask for people to give me money to go to the pub, put any change in the charity tin and act like I’m performing a great act of selflessness.

A friend of mine runs a business which provides a marketing/consultancy type service and he was approached by a very large charity wanting to raise a lot of money by running a particular campaign. The campaign would have raised millions, but would have cost millions to administer as well, and the net result would have been a total net income of around three-quarters of a million. Well worth doing, but a huge investment in resources.

My friend rather pointedly suggested that rather than run a huge campaign, why didn't they just sack their chief executive and hey-presto, there would be the £750,000 they needed, without any effort at all.

He turned down the contract

Good for your friend yamadori. That takes guts. I love people who point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

I don't give to large charities for this reason.
The salaries, cars and other freebies aren't what it's supposed to be about.
I give locally and choose charities close to my heart that have min outgoings and no directors on high salaries.
I find it sickening tbh.

Well, let's hope you never need the services of a charity engaged in work that's best done on a larger scale.

Not all are like that and I'm sure the accountants scrutinise everything.

I don't give to people rattling buckets or cans if I don't recognise the charity. Sadly here are scammers who do this for their own gain or more sinister reasons.

yamadori - so your friend's strategy was to give his client a way to raise the money, but no awareness, no increased visibility, at the likely cost of the losing more money elsewhere due to management issues? Genius!

Also, I call bullshit, unless your friend was being asked to fundraise for one of three major hospitals who are the only charities in the UK with high earner above the £600k bracket. And there aren't many above the £300k. Those kind of figures are spectacularly niche - most chief execs are between £50k - £200k which is a lot but nowhere near the sums some people on this thread want to bandy about.

Perhaps her friend thought they were going to get a voluntary CEO in once a week.

I'm finding this thread so interesting. One thing I've noticed is that for a lot of people criticising how charities spend money, 'charity' seems to mean an organisation doing front-line work and campaigning: Save the Children, WWF, etc. I just wanted to flag that independent schools are also, under these terms, 'charities', and that a lot of other organisations with charitable status are commissioned by government to deliver projects and services. They aren't funded by donations, but by public money through other channels, and they tender for contracts just like any other organisation. There's no option to cut admin there, or to de-professionalise what they do. And for those here who've fixated on dontaing toys/clothes-I know a lot of people who were involved in the Calais camps and dealing with the wagonloads of tat people were sending them was really hard work. What they could have done with was a UK sorting and dispatch centre and a stronger lobbying voice to make the UK fulfill its commitments-obviously the speed of the crisis and the diy response meant that couldn't happen, but it would have been more useful.

While you're all here, though-I also used to know Liz Clegg, who practically ran the Women and Children's camp. She and her daughter have just set up the Meena centre for refugee women and children in Birmingham. If grassroots organisations are your thing, you might consider lending them your support.

I work as a funder in the charity sector (basically administering a private philanthropic foundation).

Most charities of a reasonable size addressing a bona fide social need will be getting some public money and this is absolutely not confined to the UK. It actually makes sense because arguably the needs of the end beneficiary are better met by an organisation who understands the context. It also puts some independence between the organisation and the government who in many cases has a legal obligation to provide the service but who may be actually the problem (e.g advocacy for people with learning disabilities). However, bottom line is that some charities would simply not survive if they depended on private donations, not because they are not impactful or needed but because the cause doesn't have the retail donor pull (not cancer, kids or animals or just too nuanced/ complex).

Re CEO salaries, to be honest, there are very few charities paying CEOs more than, say 200k all in, and you need to look at it in terms of how much of a haircut those people would be prepared to take over other jobs they could get. Paying a good CEO 200k is much more cost effective than paying a mediocre one 100k when you're looking at an operating budget of GBP25+million and you need someone who can think strategically, engage with senior stakeholders and make often difficult decisions regarding programmes and funding priorities.

Paying a good CEO 200k is much more cost effective than paying a mediocre one 100k

Thing is, I just don't believe this to be the case. There's plenty of mediocre people being paid over £200k and plenty of excellent people being paid a hell of a lot less. Your last salary is not necessarily an indication of how good you are at your job.

They are not charity organizations, but in my country elderly care homes are not allowed to make a profit. This was done so that the homes would be forced to spend more money on care rather than on CEO's.

What do I see on the news this morning? The homes manage to dodge this law by getting a 3rd party to provide the care for the elderly inhabitants and the 3rd party is allowed to make a profit, which then gets used to line the pockets of the fat-cat CEO's.

Tell me again why these greedy, incompetent bastards need to make more than a 100k? There are plenty of people who have excellent organization and management skills, who would do the job for half and with twice as much integrity, but they are not even being given a chance, because businesses and charities alike aim for high-paid CEO's only.

And to punch some more holes in this argument, may I remind you that female CEO's often get half of what male CEO's get paid for doing the same job. Why do male CEO's need that much money? It's about greed and ego, not about competence.

It's about greed and ego, not about competence I agree and not forgetting their "connections".