Charity bosses salaries

[MsChalloner]

AIBU to think charity bosses shouldn't earn more than the Prime Minister? She appears to earn about £150k. Am I being naive to think this?

The issue I have with high wages for CEOs is the growing gap between the highest paid in the organisation and the lowest paid. For example third sector charities delivering direct services, such as home care, who 'win' big contracts by having the lowest hourly rate for their frontline workers. It's a wonder they can still call themselves charities as they are basically businesses and have lost what made them unique

Overall there is a growing gap between highest paid and lowest paid in every sector, but I think charities should be held to higher account. I say that as someone who works in the third sector

I don't mind how much they earn, because I make sure I don't help pay their salaries.

Slane have you ever worked in the third sector? Do you have inner knowledge of the daily processes, hierarchy, strategy etc?

Slane - yes! I know loads who do all sorts of volunteering whether as trustees or front line volunteers. And most senior Charity personnel i know do tons of volunteering too for other charities. Because they are motivated to make a difference.

And Senior city people as trustees for charities. Most charity trustee boards will have unpaid trustees from the city, finance and investment industries - they couldn't function without them. Many are super rich but want to give something back.

I'm the Executive Director of a charity, why should I be paid less than someone doing the same job with the same skills at a for proft company? Pay less for this role and I won't do it, I'll work in for profit and you can find someone with fewer skills and less experience to do a less competent job.

We provide a service (access to education) that will ultimately improve communities and reduce goverment spending (on crime, benefits etc). Everyone benefits. If you don't want to donate, attend our events etc, that's your call, but don't hit non profit salaries.

Google a couple of household name charities websites and look up their trustee boards (they are unpaid volunteers). Read their biogs - nearly half will be from the private sector/finance.

Bouledeneige, I routinely work a 50-55 hour week, I've spent 5 hours today grant writing. I don't know a single nonprofit CEO or ED that has a spare second to volunteer for other nonprofits. The day I eat lunch (at my desk) before 4pm is a quiet day....

My board of directors are all volunteers, all from private sector or retired CFO, CEOs etc and all most serve on more than one board however......

Charities do report their accounts to the Charity Commission, and remuneration costs of the highest paid staff are there for all to see.

However - many of the largest charities also have trading companies, and the information regarding the remuneration packages paid to the directors of those is not always so readily available.

Someone could be an executive of a registered charity and earning £100k a year, and also a director of several of its trading arms, and be paid hundreds of thousands by those as well.

Most people running large charities have already taken huge pay cuts. I'm close friends with the CEO of one. He makes just under £200,000. At his previous job he made 5-10 million with bonuses, and if he'd kept at that he'd be at a point where he could effectively retire and still make millions just by doing a little consulting when he felt like it. Instead he regularly works 100 hour weeks.

Since he's taken the charity over donations have skyrocketed due to his changes. He's paid for himself thousands of times over at this point. There were other, much cheaper candidates for the job who just planned to run things as they'd always been run. If the charity had gone with one of them it would have saved about £130,000 a year on the CEO salary, but missed out on hundreds of millions in donations.

All big charities are corporates now, I used to work in the sector and it was sickening to see how funds were wasted and disguised for auditing purposes and yes, the very useless CEO earned an obscene amount. All my friends stopped donating to such organisations and they, me included, now give to local charities who don’t have the money to waste, can’t afford to advertise and are crying out for help, they are genuine and honest and all funds are used wisely, it’s fairly easy to find these worthy causes, eg hospices.

Of course there are good and bad charities, good and bad chief execs, good and bad trustees. Look at the Kids Conpany debacle. Millions of money from govt went God knows where and the organisation had a huge profile.

Also re. trustees. Where I worked, some were good, some used it just as a talking shop and others definitely used it to get in with the "great and the good" of the county. One went on to become Lord Lieutenant when the person in that post (who was a patron of the charity) retired. So it obviously serves them very well as a way of networking and improving their own social standing.

On a separate note she started a charity that I supported generously. She became so busy with the charity she hired herself to work ( part time during school hours). So I was a bit hmm, you just invented s job for yourself because you couldn't find one.

Is her charity worthwhile? Is it doing a good job? If the answer is yes to both I'm not sure I see the problem, unless you're one of those who think charities should have no paid employees and should be run completely by volunteers?

I see no sensible reason why charities shouldn't be able to pay what is needed to get decent talent to run them. Having worked for a major charity I would say a bigger issue might be that they don't pay enough and therefore are dependent on people who are prepared to do the job way below comercial market rate. If you are lucky they have made all of their money and want to give something back, if you are unlucky they haven't been that successful and fancy a knighthood to make up for that. My DH used to get exasperated and state he would do a better job of running the organisation and I used to point out he would have to take a major pay cut and he wasn't anything like a ceo. I studied hard, worked hard and didn't deserve to be managed by muppets just because I worked for a charity.

OP I think your comments show a fundamental lack of understanding of how charities operate. To run an organisation like Bernado’s Is like running a large corporate. They have an income of over £300 million pounds, do you think that an organisation of that magnitude and responsibility can be run by either a volunteer or for £70k a year? A CEO of such an organisation needs to be incredibly experienced, they’d earn multiples of that in the private sector, the responsibility is immense and they will bring in far more revenue than their £150k salary through the work and profile they generate.

It makes me so cross that people think like this. One of the reasons Kids Company went under is precisely because Camilla Whatsit didn’t bring in a proper CEO, someone who actually had the experience to know what they were doing. Pay peanuts or get someone without the skills and you get another Kids Company.

And the poster who criticised their friend for paying herself a salary. Again, a possible lack of understanding of how charities work. Many charities will likely have a combination of “unrestricted” and “restricted” income. Unrestricted is money, usually from donations which can be used for any purpose. Restricted income is money earmarked for a specific purpose and will often be money given by a funder for a specified project and the money given will quite rightly include staff costs of delivering the project so don’t assume that all salaries come from donations from the public, they’ll very often be paid for by a trust or foundation to allow a project or campaign to be delivered.

Volunteers have their place in charities, they form an absolute backbone of them but once a charity grows to a certain size, and often to enable them to grow they need to pay staff. And those staff need to be paid a fair market rate. Volunteers are great but why should they take on the level of responsibility of a full time senior role without fair remuneration?

Okay explain this. Two air ambulance charities local ish to me. Both fly same number of helicopters and turnover 5 million. One CEO earns 70k other approx £150k.

I only support smaller charities with no staff. Usually with time.

I don’t and won’t support any of the larger corporation type charities.

. I don’t think 150k is that much

Lol. I'd love to live in your world

somewhereovertherain maybe one trust was failing and the higher paid CEO was brought in to sort it out. Maybe the lower paid one hasn’t been good at negotiating for themselves. Do they have identical CVs before their current roles? There’s many reasons two people in comparable roles might earn differing amounts.

Falang £150,000 is a lot of money, but it’s not wildly high in relation to senior executive roles. A third rung HR person in a FTSE250 might be earning £250,000 and they’re not even running the whole business.

Don't kid yourself, there is nothing charitable about charities
All the big ones are just big business. I would scrap charitable status if it were up to me
I stopped supporting amnesty, I would have later but for different reasons, when I found out what the CEO earned and that paying for his kids private education was part of the package

I worked for a large well known charity and the CEO got paid about £180k a year.
She was amazing, worked tirelessly and has produced startling change and results. In a commercial setting, she would get paid considerably more than £180k, I really don’t understand how people expect charities to run without well qualified, dedicated staff and it wouldn’t be fair to not pay them a decent salary surely?

And I don't agree with public money going to charities
Kids company was a prime example. Public services are subject to all kinds of regulation as are the professionals working in them
Kids company wasted far too much public money

Bouledeneige - but public schools ARE charities mainly set up to educate the poor. They get full charitable status, state funding and all the advantages of being a charity. Think tanks and academy chains likewise.
How much do people think the CEO of Nuffield Health gets? 860k basic in 2011, the London clinic paid senior executives over a million in 2011. Both organisations are charities.
No 150k is not a large salary for a senior executive in a complex organisation.

Justhooking firstly, most restricted income comes from Trusts and Foundations. Some of those are from publically donated money such as Lottery and Children in Need. These deliver incredible programmes which make a huge change to local communities which simply couldn’t be delivered on the same scale without that support. Others are family foundations set up by philanthropists whose mission is To give money to charities to help whatever mission they have decided. These are excellent use of money. It would be naive to think that shaking a tin in a shopping centre, couple of marathons and a fundraising bingo night will bring in enough money for a small charity to operate, they need to bring their income in from a variety of sources or they don’t have the resource to do what the need to do.