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?

Also to Pies, if by some dreadful turn of events you are dying of cancer, are you saying the Macmillan nurses who sit with you night after night, day after day, in your own home allowing you to pass away in a safe place, do they not deserve to be paid for those selfless, traumatic hours that they spent years of nursing training preparing for?

GleefulGlitch

Is the CEO actually doing this? Clearly a handful of people can work with John, but if necessary, as per NHS, anyone trained should be able to take over, yes.

Look - one way our another you either believe that charities should be that - where people give their time and money for free, or you believe that some should take from the pot. I know that I don't believe in any charity that has paid staff, others may disagree.

1% is an absolutely disgusting amount to cream off for fundraising. It shouldn't be about raising the largest amount of money, but ensuring 100% is spent on the cause.

Can a lay person volunteer organise curing cancer then?

Me!! I hate cancer and often share and like "I hate cancer" things on FB because I'm a very charitable person. I also got an A in GCSE biology and I'm free on Fridays between 3-6pm excluding school holidays and August. Sign me up!!

(so basically, no)

When I give money to charity, I want it to go to help people in need and not to pay the salary of someone who's several times better off than I am.

But that person is helping. In the Ops case her doing her job increased annual donations by a decent amount meaning more resources and more support can be given to those accessing the charity.
Is that not a good thing?

NotTerfNorCis
Actually, you just sound resentful.

I work for a charity. Started off as a volunteer. As charities grow, we can simply not have volunteers doing admin, it doesn't work and also is not fair. The majority of our money also goes to members ( I know I was one of them, and still am before being a volunteer and then a staff member). Volunteers are still a valuable part of ours, and most charities but you cannot expect them to do 10+ hours of admin work a week for free!

Many larger charities run on business models: fundraising, donations and retail operations involving new goods.
When you strip away all the ladia, than your medium to large sized charity has also a money making business side. That is impossible to be run solemnly by volunteers.

So someone has to be accountable. Someone has to make decisions and take responsibility. There often has to be a legal accounting officer or nominated individual.
There aren’t 20 people who could do the job. Getting a seamless handover between the 20 people and keeping tabs on those several billion pounds would prove a challenge. Are we not bothered about decisions about how that money is spent and accounted for? Do we have a changed decision each time another of the seven takes over?

Are the thousands of highly skilled and professionally qualified staff all meant to volunteer too? Are we going to pay them benefits to allow them to volunteer?

What world are you living in? You’re teasing aren’t you?

Look - one way our another you either believe that charities should be that - where people give their time and money for free, or you believe that some should take from the pot. I know that I don't believe in any charity that has paid staff, others may disagree

I think anyone sensible would disagree. The definition of a charity isn't 'people giving their time and money for free' it's the charity giving their expertise to those in need, free of charge to the person receiving the help.

It's bizarre that you think that doctors and nurses should be working full time for no pay, for medical charities and hospices. That accountants, managers and logisitcs experts should be managing multi-millions of pounds worth of funds and equipment around the world to deal with disasters, for no pay.

I donate to charities who use my money efficiently and wisely, on the assumption that they will employ good people to ensure that my money works to its full potential.

Just as a quick FYI I don’t believe I have once complained about my salary. I know that £150k is a handsome salary in relative terms. I work bloody hard for my money as do our volunteers and paid staff. I do not believe I’ve said anything to the contrary on that point but this really was about the perception of the worth or a charity CEO. For many, it seems that the terms ‘charity’ and ‘well paid’ are juxtaposed and that we should work on goodwil alone. Well unfortunately goodwill alone doesn’t pay my bills. I made a choice to take a lower salary, i’m Very happy with that choice but concerned at the lack of value some people place on the employees of a charity. Almost as if we are sub-par and many believe charities should be like communism, all earning the same or little variation despite the roles and responsibilities.

Every single mini-break or extended holiday I have taken with my family has been interrupted and most of the time I’ve had to fly back or at the very least taken a whole day to sort out a crisis. Many other people with lesser paid roles may also have these types of interruptions to your everyday life but just because you are undervalued by your employer doesn’t mean that all employees should be undervalued, that’s just not right and is nonsensical.

Some of the comments on here have been vile and loaded with contempt which is a real shame because I’ve always been happy to see others doing well in love. The amount of my salary should not dissuade you from donating to charities, rather be comforted by the fact that most of the CEOs are very good at their jobs and are helping every day to save lives, actual lives. And if you fail you’re done. There are no personal improvement plans available for us.

Is the CEO actually doing this? Clearly a handful of people can work with John, but if necessary, as per NHS, anyone trained should be able to take over, yes.

The CEO manages the charity well enough to enable trained staff like me to provide that support to John.
No a handful of people cannot work with John as he has trust issues and paranoia. He has also been let down by statutory services and cannot cope with lots of people in his life. John needs consistency. The council who are evicting him are willing to work with me to help John because they have dealt with me throughout so i have provided a consistent point of call.

John is a real client but not real name by the way.

but ensuring 100% is spent on the cause.

You cannot ensure that unless you have the right people with the right skills in place and despite you fairy land thinking there are nit thousands of professionals willing to give up their time for free.
Which would mean poor John receives no support.

When I give money to charity, I want it to go to help people in need and not to pay the salary of someone who's several times better off than I am

Well when I donate to charity, I trust that my money will go to someone who is better able to decide how it should be spent to actively help a cause I only have a basic understanding of. I don’t consider whether that person might have a bigger house than me before I make a donation.

How good are you at pharmacovigilance btw? Or toxicology? Translational research? If you think someone can do all that for free, then go ahead and do it then. Set up your own cancer charity and cure cancer. I’ll wait

Sorry don't know how to quote but yes I do know that the bigger the company the more the admin. What I don't support is that charities have to be huge multinational companies. There are better ways to operate and I am not convinced that the really big ones actually provide long term sustainable help.

So I donate at a local level to smaller charities

I'm not naive nor am I blind to salaries etc I think they have become too big. If you are paying out more in admin than some charities have in donations then I think you have to re-evaluate. There is only so much disposable income people can only give so much so to see it spent on these things is awful.

They are ultimately competing for the same pot. Some spend the money on phone calls and marketing plus admin some spend it on the cause.

I vote with my wallet and wish others would too.

Perhaps not the corporate market who need the glitz and status but for people like me it's important.

I absolutely think a high salary in a charity can be justified. However, I do think the way that the ceo runs that charity should be held to a higher account in terms of financial spending than a private business.

As a trustee (volunteer) on the board of a comparatively small charity, we do our best to ensure that we run the charity efficiently eg no first class travel, and we have long discussions about an acceptable level of pay for senior leaders/executives, balancing the need to retain good staff with moral and financial prudence.

A charity will generally need to ensure a) money is generated b) the organisation is run as efficiently as possible cost wise c) the money left is spent well so that it has the biggest impact. That's a big job, and a ceo that can make sure all of these is done well is definitely worth paying.

Those who want to throw a strop about how much CEOs get paid, do yourself a stint as an unpaid trustee at a charity and see how you go.

Ylvamoon

Completely agree. They are businesses - and should stop exploiting people by paying zero wages to run these businesses. As soon as anyone in the charity other than the cause benefits , it's no longer really a charity, but a business.

Maybe its the lack of transparency I don't like. Every time a donation is requested I would be a lot happier, if it was explicit asked how much should be used by the cause and how much should be donated to running the charity through staff wages - then I would generally accept that was at least transparent.

I still wouldn't allow charity tax breaks to any organisation that paid anyone. If its a choice of 100k of donations going to the cause, or 1m of 2m going to the cause, I'll go with he 100k.

Hello Pissed

Please dont take some of these comments to heart.
Nearly all show how little people understand about big charities and what it takes to provide free at the point of access support.
I agree with pp most who feel staff should work for little pay think all charities are their local hedgehog rescue or elderly lunch club. They do not realise that once staff are needed then costs increase but so does the fundraising and so does the ability to provide better support to more who need it.

Some spend the money on phone calls and marketing plus admin some spend it on the cause.

Those phone calls and the marketing MAKE money for the cause. Do youy think they just pour marketing money into a big hole? Marketing brings the charity's work to more people to encourage them to donate. A TV ad that costs £10,000 wil probably bring in £100,000. That's money well spent, and the profit is money that goes to the cause.

There is an astounding level of ignorance on this thread. Are people really so stupid as to think that major charities can function effectively without paid staff?

I used to work for a charity. I was paid less than half of what I earned when I subsequently moved to a different non-charity job. I loved working for the charity but simply couldn't afford it any more. If you want to recruit and retain good staff, you need to pay them.

I am now a volunteer for a different charity. I've done lots of volunteer work over the years. I am committed and I always do my best to help, and I'd like to think that I make a valuable contribution. However, when I worked for a charity, my role involved managing volunteers, and I know very well that they very rarely add value in the same way as a paid member of staff.

I also donate regularly to a number of charities. When I donate, I want to feel confident that my money is going to a professionally managed organisation that will spend it carefully on strategically important projects that are properly monitored and evaluated. Not to a well-meaning but ineffective coalition of volunteers with no proper management, leadership or accountability. I accept that this means that a proportion of my donation will be spent on staff salaries. Personally, I'd rather that 80% of my donation is used effectively for the cause in question rather than 100% being spent ineffectively.

Some posters on this thread clearly don't have a clue what they're talking about.

saraclara

It only makes sense to the professional charity worker skimming off a wage.

I donate £100 per month to charity. If it goes to a charity that is run by volunteers and is local, then £100 goes to the real cause. If an advert is paid for, and I divert that £100 then now only £80 goes to a cause, and £10 on a wage and £10 to a TV company.

The second charity now has more money, but overall less money has gone to the charity sector.

Winter my charity uses a programme so we can book train travel and accommodation.
If you try to book anything other than the cheapest available it will not let you with out a good reason. So for example the cheapest train arrives too late for a meeting so you can then book the more expensive one. Or the cheapest hotel was too far away from where you needed to be so the extra travel costs would have been more expensive than the closer hotel.

@Pissedoffandbored

So you've been interrupted on holiday with your family- me too, and believe me I earned a lot less than 150k! Your attitude that the rest of us are poor undervalued souls is galling, I venture to suggest that people like me live in the real world, and your I'm all right jack attitude is disappointing.

Pie but from your £100 a further £10,000 could be raised because of the TV advert.
This could mean 100 more people/hedgehogs can be helped instead of just 10 from your original £100.
Isn't that better for the cause?

I donate £100 per month to charity. If it goes to a charity that is run by volunteers and is local, then £100 goes to the real cause. If an advert is paid for, and I divert that £100 then now only £80 goes to a cause, and £10 on a wage and £10 to a TV company.

No- you can give 100 to your hedgehog rescue, and save say, 10 hedgehogs, or spend 90 on a tv advert (plus 10 for someone to organise it) which raises 900 and save 90 hedgehogs. Net hedgehog gain: 80.

@AlexaShutUp, you were doing so well up to that last sentence.

Caplin

I've said several times that where the money is being paid at arms length on the cause I have no issue - the money has to be used for there cause. So paying a nurse doesn't seem to me to be an issue.

However, administration and fund raising are not the cause - and this is the side that should be volunteers only.

You may believe that people believe the money they give should be used to raise more money - but I don't. There is a fixed amount of money people are willing to give, and beyond this it's unethical.