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?

If people are genuinely concerned about charities being well run then they should want staff to be paid appropriately for their skills and experience.

I wouldn't donate to a charity if I knew that they were using some of my money to pay someone a ridiculous salary of over 150k.

If you want to change the world, like many charities do, then they have to pay the right people to do it. If a CEO in a top 100 charity whose income is 100 million + then 150k sounds pretty good value to me.

No you ANBU. Charities are a multi billion £ industry and like any business they need to employ the best people they can afford to make the most of their "business".

Anyone who thinks the size of someone's pay cheque is directly linked to their skills and talent is a fool.

I wouldnt support a charity that paid its people 150k plus. That kind of money is what is ludicrous

Oh for the day when I can feel a 50K salary is a ludicrously small amount. Wow.

OP why are you asking randoms on the Internet about what you (as a professional) get paid?

@overnightangel - for a CEO yes it is and I stand by that.

I don’t want to out myself so I’m going to be sparse on detail but I was brought in to turn around a failing charity and I’ve succeeded in doing that and I know I have earned every single penny. I sleep well at night.

I agree overnight angel. I have worked 30 years for the NHS, am responsible for several large teams of therapists and earn well under £50. I also go to work early and leave a couple of hours after everyone else and sometimes also work from home at weekend. We give monthly to several charities whose CEO's are not on more than £50,000. The world has gone a bit mad and personally I will support the charities where the biggest percentage goes straight towards the need.

I have a Google alert on a certain job type which tends to throw up some mismatches. One of the current mismatches is a repeat alert for a CTO of a charity. It's obviously been written by a HR person and is ludicrous - "we will be responding only to successful candidates etc.", "must have all the following skills etc.", "working at board level".. I can't imagine they've had any decent response given how long it has been advertised.
Why so ludicrous? IT is booming and any CTO worth hiring will earn vastly more than is on offer and can walk into a job.
Yet some people on this thread want to limit the pay based on the fact it's a charity? You have to be realistic.

Oh and Graham Norton is worth two million pounds a year and 17 BBC staff worth over 150k per year...in what universe? OP I think you are overpaid and teachers and nurses underpaid

OP you can’t be that ‘bored’ if you work 7 days a week and are never off-duty.

Apparently if you work for the public sector or a charity you should do it for love and fresh air but if you work in the financial sector it's ok to be paid shed loads.
Despite the reality that there is a very real possibility a mistake could have dire consequences and or you could be prosecuted.

@noenergy your comment about feeding people for £150k just shows a lack of understanding about what charities do.

They dont just deliver aid (although coordinating aid delivery in the middle of a civil war takes sufficient skills and experience but hey, I'm sure retired John from the local rotary club can sort it).

Charities are responsible for driving and pushing for change at a structural level so that there aren't people starving but I guess that doesnt take much skill either and can be done by a student on their gap year

You're a CF. You really are.

Saying that you think a salary of 50K is way below what you're worth.

Pah.

£50,000 not £50 !! Feels like it sometimes.

Of course charities need good people and you clearly work hard/long hours but £150k and above is ludicrous IMO. It’s not just charities either, I am enraged by BBC “star” salaries; the only difference being that the Licence Fee is obligatory.

I don’t donate to charities in order to pay someone’s wages which are literally 5 times what my DH earned at the end of 30 years of frontline policing. You might be great at your job but no CEO of a charity should be on £150k a year so sorry, I agree with your friends.

There's so much misinformation about what charity salaried staff earn. £40k for an admin job 15 years ago, as if. All you'd need to do to see that is rubbish would be to look at the recruitment pages. Oxfam, for example, are currently advertising for a biting position which requires experience in a similar role - it's not entry level, salary just over £19k.

There's a really good TED talk about how silly it is that people expect charity to run on good will and fresh air. I think it was Dan Pallotta.

On the flipside, I've worked for a shoe-string charity that cut costs left right and centre.

Their client-base were some of the most vulnerable people in society..

But, they refused to 'waste' money on line management (using volunteers with no expertise of sector instead) wouldn't provide any training on risk management or health and safety, didn't have a designated safeguarding lead or send anyone on safeguarding training and as a result put in excess of 150 people (staff, beneficiaries and volunteers) at daily risk of harm.

It was an absolutely liability but local funders kept donating because it achieved 'so much' for 'so little'.

That's not to say I don't think there are issues with big charities, but believe me when you pay peanuts you get monkeys and once you start thinking you can do away with management expertise and just rely on a volunteer trustee board that cares about looking good and not human lives things get very dangerous indeed.

I agree with them too. I always look at the salaries before donating to a charity. Even more so where they rely heavily on volunteers to work for free whilst others draw huge salaries.

OP, with so little spare time surely you shouldn't waste it defending your salary on Mumsnet. It's still light outside - go for a nice walk and enjoy some time to yourself.

i never give to charitys which pay senior staff high salaries and the 'dogs bodies' are all volunteers (usually elderly, disabled and not so intellectual)and get nowt....shame on them....they spout on about the poor, homeless etc but dont give a shit about their exploited lower staff

Surely many CEO positions are in the same ballpark. Why should a CEO for a Charity be any different?

Paying 150k pa for a brilliant CEO may well generate an additional 100k over the year.

I think the third sector and the way many modern large charities operate is utterly broken and the whole industry (as that's what it is now), needs a re-think. Scandals, lack of accountability, chuggers accosting people in the street and cold-calling on the phone and at the door, mail-outs with crappy pens destined for landfill, the way bequests are aggressively pursued, fund-raising days where people are encouraged to buy more land-fill tat, sponsored treks where the sponsee jets off to fulfil some long-held dream at the expense of others under the auspices of 'good deeds'. I could go on.

I no longer support the large charities and now support local organisations.

So if you are a CEO at one of these OP I suggest some housekeeping is in order before you start justifying your handsome remuneration.