To feel outraged at my friends re charity salaries?

[Pissedoffandbored]

Have a group chat going with a load of my girlfriends. There have been some additions to the group chat this week, some I know well and others are just acquaintances. One girl I don’t know sent a link to published salaries for charities. Girl didn’t know I work for a National Charity in a senior position and slated the amount I earn saying people don’t deserve to earn more than PM. At this point I interjected making her aware of my position and she proceeded to have a go at me. I defended my position but most of my friends agreed I earned too much since I worked for a charity.

So AIBU to be pissed off? Also, is this the general consensus or are my mates just dick heads?

Just googled the PM's salary - £150k. I dint think that's a lot FOR RUNNING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY! Yeah there are extras like free accommodation and so on but still, I know many people on a similar wage. It's not a fair comparison.

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. People who generously donate to charity should know that their money is being used properly. 100% to the charity is unachievable. Competitive salaries are essential- or the good people will go elsewhere.

People spouting off about how everyone earns far too much should spend a while looking through the Charity Jobs website and they'll soon see wages are less than private sector and public sector. The average salary for a retail store manager in the uk is £24k. Charity is paying £17/18k.

You’re not seriously thinking the PM survives on £150k, are you? There’s free cars, drivers, staff, food, a beautiful country manor, free accommodation in London, generous expenses for etc. You’re right, it’s not a fair comparison. Particularly as most PMs are very, very wealthy in their own right and have lifelong high earning potential.

@donkeyhohtay

"Just googled the PM's salary ......... If you pay peanuts you get monkeys."

^^ I don't think you intended to make this link, but it is an important one (if perhaps rather off topic!). IMO MPs are not paid enough for their (required) skillset, and there are many business people who would make brilliant politicians but who choose to pursue better paid jobs.

DonkeyHohtay PM doesn't need a high salary because it comes with power that most jobs don't have, and because upon leaving it you can establish a consultancy and take board positions that will bring in seven figures a year for the rest of your life. It's not the salary that attracts people to it, it's the access to the wealthiest and most powerful people on Earth.

Yabu to be surprised that people hold this view and feel strongly about it.
Yanbu to earn what you earn.

Indeed, a MPs salary is £75k. For the hours they do, the late night votes, the being away from home and the absolute shire they have to put up with, not to mention the death threats.

Nick Clegg is a VP at Facebook now earning USD 4m a year. So probably worth the late nights.

I can see why they have to do it.

If they only paid a salary of 50k they're not going to get the best calibre applicants when those applicants could do the same job for a non charity organisation for 3x or 4x more.

So you end up with someone not as good who ends up costing the organisation more than the 100k difference by not bringing in as much revenue I guess.

MPs are not paid enough for their (required) skillset,

Depends on the MP. My local MP was until very recently a Band 5 nurse. Went straight from being a front line nurse to being an MP. She's quite a shit MP and I can't think what particular skillset she has, certainly not apparent. Guess if someone is taken ill in the house of commons she would be good at looking after them. However I should imagine she's quite happy with her leap in income.

Agree re nick clegg. But he was a very competent, well educated guy before he was a MP. Not all formerMPs walk into $4 million roles at Facebook.

Also agree that some MPs aren't worth the money. On my area of Scotland we have a Green MSP is how was elected at the age of 21. I'm sure he's a very nice lad but has no experience of anything other than being a student and before that a school pupil.

Yet the Scottish government are paying him £62k.

There are examples of people not being worth the money in all walks of life - including CEOs.

I've mixed feelings, but on balance, I feel that the salaries of charity executives are appallingly high.

Part of me understands that they are businesses like any other but those heart rending adverts requesting just £3 a month really piss me off, that's a lot of £3 to cover those £150-£160k salaries.

But, are they "businesses like any other" when they're supposed to be helping people who are truly in need. I can't help feel a bit

I work as a regional director for a grant making foundation (i.e. we make project specific grants to charities). One of the issues with the public's/ funders' obsession with "admin costs" is that it impedes scale of effective interventions because it's almost impossible to grow unless you put an administrative framework in. You can't have a charity with more than a handful of employees and a very flat hierarchy without proper payroll and HR. You need IT, finance and donor management teams. You need to pay rent on a premises and have a server and wifi and possibly an office manager. All that is admin because it doesn't relate to the direct costs of a person doing frontline work or the premises that those projects are taking place in. However, the frontline worker cant do the work without the team and systems behind him/her.

Now, that isn't to say that some charities aren't inefficient and ineffective. They absolutely are. However, some charities are inefficient precisely because they lack a strong administrative and strategic framework and for perspective I see more mid-size charities which lack these than which have over-invested in them.

Charities which say "we spend every penny on beneficiaries" are good to support as very local charities doing mainly alleviative work on a small scale. However, they won't ever be more than that because they cant grow beyond the founders and some committed staff and volunteers. The other possibility is that the board or a specific donor covers the admin costs, which is rare but I do see it. It still only works up to a certain size though.

Not rt whole ft yet but my take on it is that if you are being paid 150k then what you are doing must require skills not every Tom, Dick or Harry has.
Also your job has social value - what you do is important, it saves lives. Can your 'friends' say that their jobs do this? There are CEOs of normal businesses, making washing machines and trainers who earn that salary or more. Lovely to have the products but hardly life saving.

There is a lot wrong with the way some charities have been operating, but that is a separate issue to whether someone who directly generates millions of pounds for an organisation deserves their 150k salary.
I think for the skills required, probably they do deserve it.

I think it’s vitally important for a charity to have a very competent CEO - an incompetent CEO can lose a hell of a lot more than £150k a year by screwing up which is a pretty easy thing for the wrong person to achieve. And £150k is on the lower side of normal for the OPs position. If your friends have no experience of positions in that salary bracket, it’s understandable that they would get it.

I think it’s all relative- that amount for a small charity, ludicrous, that amount for a large national salary, fine. I think many people are very unaware what chief executives do. I think they just believe they sit in their ivory towers. People more often than not, have absolutely zero idea what the roles and responsibilities are. They just see the £££££ signs, and start shouting ‘it’s unreasonable’. (Note- I am not a CEO, they’d have to pay me one hell of a salary to be one!).

Also the comparisons with the PM’s salary are stupid. The PM doesn’t earn enough for the responsibility. Yes most will be set for life after the gig but my husband doesn’t earn far off that and while he would say his job is stressful, it clearly isn’t comparable to being PM.

Indeed, a MPs salary is £75k. For the hours they do, the late night votes, the being away from home and the absolute shire they have to put up with, not to mention the death threats.

I am being a bit hyperbolic, but nurses and teachers put up with similar levels of late nights, being away from their children, being threatened - often directly - by members of the public (well teachers not so much on that last point but you get my drift) and paperwork. Some of them would be glad for half that pay.

However I agree that the big charities have to compete for the best people to run things effciently and that necessitates paying equivalent private sector salaries.

Saying 'My money wont go to the people its meant to help' is silly of course it still does, just not in a direct way. By paying towards the salary, you are helping the charity to administer what it does to the people it is helping. In fact you may be helping them conserve money - because if it is well administered less money should be wasted on inefficiency. This in turn means more money is available for others not less.

I do question the renting of huge buildings in expensive parts of London though. Not sure how that's justified.

I think there is a bit of a trend in the charity sector to be paying large wages when they could recruit staff for less. I can’t really see any need for any member of staff in the charitable sector to be earning more than the PM, sorry. I think that people who claim that charities need to compete with the private sector are wrong-charities are funded by donations and it’s right that their salaries should be lower.

In addition many people in the public sector and charitable sector justify huge salaries with no accountability on the basis that this is what the private sector pays. The reality is that the demands are different in the private sector and many who work in the public or charitable sector wouldn’t get equivalent work in the private sector.

You could earn £450k a year outside of the charity sector? What on earth is your profession? I understand the need for talented, experienced people who need to be paid fairly, but I donate to local charities to be honest as it doesn't sit too well.

It's vitally important for a charity to have all sorts of comptetent people involved in it. Some of those competent people will work for nothing, some will make genuine financial sacrifices. Working for £150,000 plus is not really a sacrifice in most people's minds, as it offers the chance of an extremely comfortable lifestyle. Talking of charities running properly, it is possible they would run better if, eg, they paid their shop managers more and their CEOs less. That is unlikely to happen if the CEOs make the decisions, of course. All that said, I really don't think £50,000 a year would attract a high calibre of CEO as it is too far removed from what happens in other sectors. Society will not function as anyone wants it to if it rewards the most venal excessively, but expects those who work with the most vulnerable to be saints. Society will rapidly find that way that it is in very short supply of saints. Sort out executive pay in general if it is too high, don't just pick on the low hanging fruit.

You could earn £450k a year outside of the charity sector? What on earth is your profession?

She's a CEO. Google CEO salaries for any major company you can think of.

Eg CEO of M &S earns 800K PLUS bonus and benefits.

In addition many people in the public sector and charitable sector justify huge salaries with no accountability on the basis that this is what the private sector pays. The reality is that the demands are different in the private sector and many who work in the public or charitable sector wouldn’t get equivalent work in the private sector. For Dh’s sector this is definitely not the case - public sector is the tougher option as you find yourself subject to press scrutiny - which is often just shitty populist journalism with little understanding of the complexity they are poorly attempting to analyse. Dh turned down the role of CEO in the public sector and now advises the person who took the job - still using his expertise without losing our privacy and earning a lot more. Previous colleagues in the same sector left the public sector and tripled their salaries - at the top level the public sector are comparatively underpaid and their skills are very transferable.

It’s lunacy to compare the chief executive of M&S with that of a charity. It appears that Oxfam pays its chief exec £150k which did surprise me as I’d have thought they’d be on the highly paid side.

Comparisons between the public, private and charity sectors are pretty meaningless. In a long career in the public sector I’ve worked for a lot of chief execs, only one or two of them could have hoped to get a comparable job in a private company, the majority wouldn’t have had a hope.