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?

Who says Joan can volunteer for any role she likes - that's a huge leap you've made there!

It could be £4bn, it makes no difference

Actually it does. The more money raised the more admin is required by the charity commission.

Next year, everyone involved decides to take a personal fee of £1000 for their efforts in organisation, marketing, managing the helpers, producing posters, managing the accounts, ensuring h&s is followed etc. This results in £20k now, as we've taken a wage of £20k between us.

So stealing then?
A personnel fee is not a wage. A personnel fee would be stealing.
If you decide to pay wages then you must follow the policies laid out by the charity commission. You must have experienced qualified staff to ensure you are following legislation as you can be heavily find if you dont.
Each staff member will need a contract.
Also each wage will be scrutinised by the commission as 1 person working for 1 hour a month would not be able to claim a £1000 wage.
You will also need to publish your incone/costs on line.

The uproar would be huge - we'd be accused of stealing the charity money. It's really no different.

If you didn't follow the above you would be stealing.
If you did it by the book you would be another none profit making charity.

So what's the problem?

Who says Joan can volunteer for any role she likes - that's a huge leap you've made there!
Whos to stop her?

You must be able to see that the paperwork makes no difference in reality whatever you call it - everyone is a professional, can bring the appropriate skills nd have a contract - the outcome is the same.

People have suddenly started syphoning off money for their own gain.

The issue is that people really didn't give money for it to go to the people administering the charity. It's just stealing.

I would have thought Joan would be stopped by the trustees or volunteers who have been originally put in charge - volunteers can create a hierarchy in just the same way!

You must be able to see that the paperwork makes no difference in reality whatever you call it

Of course it does!!
If you do not have the correct paperwork the charity commission can fine you huge amounts or shut you down.

everyone is a professional, can bring the appropriate skills nd have a contract - the outcome is the same.
Who would draw up the contracts? Who would pay the legal feels not every service can be donated.

&People have suddenly started syphoning off money for their own gain.*

No they are earning a living providing a skilled service that is required to meet the needs of those accessing the charity.
There is no syphoning off. Are you thick?
They pay tax and NI like everyone else.

The issue is that people really didn't give money for it to go to the people administering the charity. It's just stealing.

It is not stealing. The wages are all published on line!
Then those people are as dumb as you if they think that a multi million pound charity can run legally and serve 1000s of people safely and correctly without paid staff at every level.

I would have thought Joan would be stopped by the trustees or volunteers who have been originally put in charge - volunteers can create a hierarchy in just the same way!

But Joan is not happy about this. You are discriminating. Where is it written she can't do the role. Joan is now going to the papers to tell them your charity bullied and dismissed a lovely volunteer just because you dont like her.
With no PR who talking to the press?
Who is managing the fall out?

All of a sudden this couple of hours a week volunteering is now taking 10 hours a week for Alan the chairman and his wife is complaining so Alan is fed up with the stress of this Alan steps down.

Pies the strangest thing about your posts (and believe me, there is some tough competition amongst the utter bull you’re spouting) is your constant reference to the villagers raising £40k. Presumably which you then donated.

You do realise that fundraising is only a small part of the charity don’t you? Charities then go in to actually provide the service they’ve been set up for... ir clean water, domestic abuse services, air ambulance, scientific/ medical research, homelessness...

I'm not sure anyone needs to earn 150k to be honest. Despite understanding that charities need to compete to some degree with the private sector for candidates for particular positions I think like many other careers eg medicine/ teaching someone should be wanting to take that role for reasons other than just a high salary. Having said that I think that once you had told the person your job role it wasn't very nice to continue with the conversation or for your friends to join in as it was clearly going to feel v personal.

The tone on here has become vile. Anyone who doesn’t find it normal to be asked for donations to pay a fat cat salary is being called ‘thick’, ‘uneducated ‘, ‘jealous’. I couldn’t live with myself if I was getting 150k in a charity setting, sorry, no can do. The insults flying around make me think there may be a few guilty consciences on here.

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.

...

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.

Pies I can understand and empathise that you don't understand what it takes to run a charity that helps more people than your village £40k, but if all charities were run with the above logic a great many less people/animals/causes would be helped by charities in total. If you're more interested in the principal of every penny of your own £100 being spent on the cause than helping many times as many people/animals, that's a funny old sense of charitable ethics to me.

Let's invent an imaginary homelessness charity, TinLid. Your strategy gets Larry the homeless person a hot drink and hot meal indefinitely, well done.

There are 3 people in your village who are homeless. Your village's homelessness charity is struggling to feed all 3. Luckily MaxiTinLid is a national charity with a CEO and staff and can pick up the slack. Not only can they feed the three homeless people, they can consistently give advice, a place in a hostel, drug and alcohol abuse counselling, domestic violence advice and counselling and fund a wheelchair for poor anne who is in a bad way. They have been lobbying the government to stick to their legal commitments to helping the homeless that they've been shirking - in fact, there was recently a court case won by MaxiTinLid which means that the government provides a council house to 2 of the homeless people in your village. MaxiTinLid gets all 3 of your homeless residents back on their feet. TinLid would have struggled to feed them, and not had any of the resources to help them get off the street. In the next village along, nobody gives enough of a crap about homelessness as a cause, and their homeless people would be screwed if it weren't for MaxiTinLid.

Why on earth would you place more important on every penny gong to end user than

The OP could work for a FTSE 100 company, not contribute anything to society (in some cases be actively detrimental to society) and earn many, many times what she earns now. Even when the company (or bank) has a very bad year, or bad few years.

They earn in 1.5 days what their employees earn in a year. Their pay rises exponentially when everyone else's is frozen.

£150k in my view should be the near top end of salaries for any job, no-one should earn more than 10x more than anyone else, IMO. But the OP is entirely the wrong target for your approbation.

When I give money to a charity (as opposed to a volunteer run collection) I absolutely do expect its employees to be paid market rate for their role and understand it will have advertising, premises, vehicle, insurance, accounting, legal, hr, travel, tax, training, etc etc costs to meet.
I think it’s naive to expect or even think that 100% of what I give to say the woodland trust, to go to the planting of trees. Without all of the associated non tree planting/protection costs there would be no woodland trust.
Charity accounts are available for scrutiny. The charity commission oversees and regulates the running of charities.

Of course it’s important to scrutinise how much of your donation goes to the ‘charitable cause’ but that scrutiny/pressure shouldn’t mean skilled professionals committed to the charity should be paid low wages so the charity can’t recruit necessary skills or that they shouldn’t have national advertising strategy etc.

As for 150k for a senior charity position - it’s a huge salary. It is likely to be a huge job. There are many doing huge jobs who are paid nowhere near this. And many who are paid far more. Many injustices and inequalities.

According to figures I've seen it is less than 0.5% of charities that are paying this much of their senior leaders. My question is what is so special about that 0.5%?

Also, charitable status is quite a broad thing. It isn't all starving kids in africa and donkey sanctuaries. Many private schools have charitable status for example.

As for those saying salary multiple caps are stupid, they work perfectly fine in Sweden.

We also have no idea what type of charity OP works for! There are some that do very intense and complicated work that requires high skill levels. I know someone who works for an international nature non-profit and her job is to make investments into environmentally sustainable projects that protect flora and fauna. Her background is in investment banking. If you advertise that role for 50K you're not going to get someone with the experience level to do that work. They will stay in banking and the work won't be done because banks don't invest to save the environment.

Pies, I say this in the nicest way but I think when we say charity you are thinking donkey sanctuary/ charity shop/ bake sale/ hospital transport / hospice piano player etc and the rest of us aren't.

Haven't had time to catch up with everything posted overnight so someone may have pointed this out, but the donkey sanctuary at Sidmouth is one of the richest charities in the country.

Pies - I do think many things currently done by charity should be done by the state. Part of the reason for this is that charities can pick and choose what they do and who they do it for. But since we're not in that situation, the charities that exist need professional, paid management. Even within a paid structure I've been managed by some absolute fucking numpties. I've also been managed by volunteers. I'll take the paid managers any day because they at least have to work to a job spec. There is a back up if things go wrong. Volunteers managing a small charity - absolute fucking nightmare to work for and I've vowed never again. This is a common experience.

It's quite insulting to think management doesn't require professionalism. It really does.

OvernightAngel:

"@Pissedoffandbored if you think a salary of around 50k is “ludicrous” you should be nowhere near running a charity, I certainly wouldn’t trust you to handle money with that attitude. You’ve actually made my blood boil."

Couldn't agree more.
What a twat OP is.

Thing is most people donate a certain amount every year. Maybe a direct debit or two. A few sponsorships of friends and family. The amount donated probably doesn’t fluctuate much relative to disposable income. So all charities are doing via competing against each other for where that money goes. If one charity has done really well then another has probably lost out.
If all the CEO’s were forced to take a huge pay cut simultaneously there would be more money overall going to good causes and less into people’s pockets.

Where is this never ending steam of volunteers desperate all todo. 2 hours a week? Our charity shop really struggles. Struggles to the point that we've had to close the doors as we haven't the minimum of two competent adults in at any time.

Good volunteers are like gold dust - the people who will turn up week after week and have experience and skills. Even In a charity shop we need people with knowledge of ceramics, or jewellery or books. So that we're not pricing a valuable first edition book at 99p.

Even something as simple and low commitment as our local parkrun is constantly pleading for enough volunteers to put the race on.

The whole "charity should run entirely on volunteer" argument is stupid for a lot of reasons. But even if it weren't, there just aren't enough people willing to do it.

Any management, accounting, fund raising, marketing, PR, legal, regulatory, policy, lobbying are all admin that should be provided by volunteers. Nothing here needs a specialist - but if specialists are available it helps.

I certainly wouldn't ever part with my hard-earned cash to a charity that had no specialists involved in the management of that charity, in handling the accounts or in complying with regulatory policy. Might as well piss my money up the wall instead.

I'd far rather donate my money to a professional organisation which used a proportion of my money to pay people a fair wage to carry out this work to professional standards.

Oh and in the real world, volunteer manager Joan when confronted with an awkward situation she doesn't wasn't to deal with will just mutter "fuck this shit" and walk away. Because she's there to contribute and make a difference and do the nice stuff, not deal with the police and read policies.

The whole "charity should run entirely on volunteer" argument is stupid for a lot of reasons. But even if it weren't, there just aren't enough people willing to do it.

Exactly. And even the people who are willing don't necessarily have time to donate as many hours as would be needed, because the vast majority of them will need to earn a living as well. I love my vounteering role, but if there is a clash, my job has to come first and that's just the reality.

Indeed @AlexaShutUp. I do 8 hours a week volunteer work during term time. I'd love to do more - and sometimes do - but I have my own business to run and have to earn money for doing it.

Most of our volunteers are retired and awesome. But they take holidays and get sick like everyone else. They want time off to see their grandkids or whatever. At the other end of the spectrum you have the 14/15 year old Duke of Edinburgh volunteer who does their bare minimum of 1 hour a week for 12 weeks then pisses off again. They contribute zero.

Also you can't force volunteers into roles they're not comfortable with. On a Wednesday morning I do the banking, adding up the previous days takings, investigating discrepancies, running it over to the bank. Nobody else will do it because they dont want the responsibility. Lots of or volunteers refuse to go on the till. Others refuse to use the computer to google items which might be of value. One of our very best volunteers has special needs and is very competent on the till but can't read or write.

This idea that there are oodles of skilled people is a myth. There isn't.

Bahahaha! Some of the stuff on here (no names mentioned) is gold star batshit!

For the record I'm not saying everyone who thinks £150k is questionable is thick, but I'm afraid, frankly, some are.

Donations make up minimal income for a lot of charities. Much money comes from grant making foundations funded by private wealth that was invested decades/centuries ago. Who manages those funds? Who writes application to access them?

Some people clearly have no idea of the risks and responsibilities involved in helping people that most need help, and how complex that is.

Collecting data to evidence the impact of the work so we know it's actually doing some good and not just keeping Joan busy cos she's bored? Lobbying government to take some responsibility for the fact that people are in these situations? BACP and other professional registrations, professional indemnity insurance for people working with violent clients? Reserves to make sure that, if you lose the big tupperwear box with you 40k in it (ffs) you don't just let everyone starve?

It's things like this that stop vulnerable people being exploited. That volunteer who does SO MUCH that she thinks she's the bees knees and decides to invite a homeless person into her house...only to accuse them of stealing and get them arrested. The vulnerable girl who's been sexually abused by a family member who falls in love with her 'counsellor', who's really just Steve from down the road who did a 2 hour online course three years ago and now thinks he can 'fix' people.

Honestly, if you think 100% of money raised by charities should go directly to the people charities help, you're not really speaking in the best interests of those people.

I bet you're glad you opened this can of worms OP! I'm genuinely flabbergasted at the ignorance of a lot of people here. And bloody glad they don't work in the charity sector.

I dont think anyone who disagrees with the £150k wage is thick.

However those who believe a big charity can run only on volunteers, paper work is not needed, that paid staff are stealing their wages and have no concept of the legalities around supporting vulnerable people are thick. There is no other way to describe those who are so blinkered they dont see that those vulnerable become even more so if the service they need is not run professionally.

GleefulGlitch, thank you for saying what I tried to articulate in such a succinct, less ranty way.

Volunteers are brilliant at fundraising, and that includes working in the charity shops.

But charities do complicated work. Volunteers conducting terminations at Marie Stopes? Navigating potentially dangerous situations in refugee camps and in the aftermath of natural disasters? Managing the political and legal and logistics aspects of huge relief operations? Supporting people through MH and DV crises with no qualifications, experience or professional supervision?

And the PP who said they prefer to give money directly to people on the street: some charities might be picking up the fall out from that.

You know how people say all that traumatised orphans from war zone orphanages need is love, and rush to adopt, and then find they cannot deal with the huge issues that ensue, and the adoption breaks down? (adoptions break down FAR more often than most people know and with devastating impact for all concerned) , that’s a symptom of this naive charity = volunteer-only view.