Anyone work in the charity sector?

[witnessprotection73]

Hi

I'm after some advice please.

I work in corporate sales and earn half decent money. ( well it feels less and less decent with COL). But I’ve had enough, it’s just horrible, full of toxic people and I want to do something I’m passionate about and where I’m making a difference.

I'm currently at final stage interviews for such a job with a lovely charity & the role is perfect. However I’ll be taking a 17k pay cut. I know in this sector I can’t expect the pay to match corporate & I’m ok with that but is it possible to negotiate? I really want the role and don’t want to appear ‘grabby’ but I’ve also got bills to pay! Furthermore they want me to commute to their office 1 day a week which is fine, ( I want to), but it’s quite far & so will cost me about £200 a month!

Any constructive advice welcome.

TIA x

I have worked for charities for quite a while and to be honest I want to leave the sector.

As you are already identified pay is really poor (apart from the CEO & directors of course...) for people on the frontline and back office roles.

Also the fact that you are working for a charity does not mean that bullying, office politics or poor practices in general don't happen...

When I took on my current role the charity told me I would only need to commute once a month if that (I am 2 hours away form their office, so a 4 hour ,expensive train commute) then after a few months they tried to make me come in once a week. The main benefit of working for them was the promise of home working so I am looking for a new job as a result as I feel I was misled at the interview.

My advice would be:

• negotiate a higher salary. You need to make sure you can realistically afford a pay cut
• have it written in your contract that you will come in the office once a week so they can't change that further down the line and you end up having to pay more in commuting
• research the charity carefully before you take the job.

@Startingagainandagain thanks responding. Yes I know that moving to the charity sector won’t magically rid my life of toxic arseholes, but I’m hoping meaningful work will make me feel happier & more fulfilled.

They have advertised the salary which is good but do you still think I can try to negotiate? I wouldn’t hesitate in the private sector but this is a different animal!

If you do want to leave the charity space then think twice about corporate. Things changed permanently after Covid and it’s just horrible now. Being treated poorly, more and more expectation for little in return plus the expectation of being back in the office pretty much every day! I’m sure there are some great places out there still though.

You can try and negotiate the salary but you may find that while there's flexibility on how close to the max of the range advertised they'll go they will not exceed it.

Charities only have as much money as donors and funders of projects allow. Council funding is going down and agreements with other funders may have constraints including on salaries.

I work in a role as an outsourced professional in the charity sector - don't make anything like as much money as I could in the profession but the work is MUCH more flexible in terms of when/where I work.

I work across a good number of medium sized charities and mostly I would say they are slightly nicer to work for than corporates on average. But its rare to negotiate much beyond what they stated for the role as that will be the money they have available. I don't think it's cheeky to try but you're not going to get close to a £17k improvement I wouldn't think.

There are charities who pay more - they tend to be those run from America in my experience or if you have very specific skilss that are expensive.

Until recently I used to volunteer for a well known national rescue charity. Most of the money goes to head office and not to directly help where needed. Bullying of volunteers, and bureaucracy is rife. Management turn a blind eye to the bullying. Lots of money goes to waste. Legacy money left from Wills goes to head office and not to the branches it was bequested to.

It might be different for paid employees but I wouldn't recommend working for a charity.

Will the new job get you where you want to be in five years?

Will the reduced salary grow enough over the next five years to keep pace with your costs?

That might be true of the very large national charities but the majority of the charity sector is made up of medium sized charites who don't behave like this at all.

I've worked for a small charity. My boss was lovely her assistant awful. My boss just couldn't handle her so staff left.

Then I worked for a national charity. Now we're in Wales trying to explain to them how it works up here fell on deaf ears in Paddington. They were obsessed with marathons in fundraising, awaiting money in legacies. The staff turnover at HEAD OFFICE was extraordinary, whereas outside the city up north, south west staff retention was excellent.

They wanted big sums of money to fall into their laps whereas in the regions we worked our socks off to collect money with cans, events, etc

There was a hell of a row once when a widow gave us regionally 12k and legacies demanded it because it had been her husband's money inherited.

Other rows over legacies when trustees were threatened because the property still hadn't sold, slow market in the hinterlands.

It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

I wouldn't work for a big charity again.

@Kewcumber sorry if I wasnt clear but I’m not looking to match my current salary. The role is 4 days and I’m wondering if I can negotiate the 5 day salary or as a minimum ask them to cover the cost of me coming into the office which is approx £200 pcm.

@user628468523532453 yes I absolutely think it will. It’s a very specific role and my eventual plan to run my own business outside of the UK doing similar. But I need to survive in the meantime and the salary is on the cusp of being unaffordable if I have a to pay commuting costs.

@Tibbb im sorry you’ve had a poor experience. I’ve read lots of things about this sort of thing but I still want to take my chances and I hope I’ll be one of the lucky ones.

I work for a smallish charity, the people are mixed and the pay is crap, hope that helps!

I work for a charity but a lot of us are in a temporary capacity. A new colleague gave up a permanent role for a less then 6 month job here!

I wouldn't say the wage is bad not at £13.05 per hour for back office and 32.5 hours. Other companies would not pay £22,050 for a full-time job, let alone fewer hours.

Very friendly colleagues. Work is a very bearable pace, can learn some new skills, you leave on time and no extra unpaid time is expected if you know what I mean, none of this turning up half hour unpaid before official start time.

The only thing is invest in thick clothing if working on site in an old building -
I find our building very cold/there is a lack of heating to the point my hands and nose go cold. I hated it at first (despite chasing if I was getting an interview so I must have wanted the job!) but actually for the future it has definitely taught me to give a new job time to settle in and there is nothing better then helping someone in their time of need.

I tried to make a GP Receptionist job work on £13,168 (after a large period of time earning around the 20,000 mark) for 23 hours but such a drop in wage for such a stressful job was my biggest mistake, that I returned to the charity.

You simply can’t generalise about charities. They’re all totally different, all operate differently and all have different functions. It would be much more helpful to know what kind of role you’re applying for or at least the kind of function

fundraising, services, support, policy?

what’s the income of the charity? How well run is it?

There May be a tiny amount of flex on the salary but I imagine very little, maybe a couple of thousand at most.

@Cantbeardarknights i can’t really too specific. It’s role where I’ll be running a specific project including the budget. The charity makes about 2.5-3 million & is big enough to have a royal patron. So I’d say not huge but well respected & v influential.

OH that is a small charity. It's harder to get extra when colleagues are on a fixed salary. Yes it's £200 pcm to travel which actually is around £10 per day, £50 per week, £200 pcm. Which is low. Not sure how far they will move

@justasking111 thanks. Does £10 a day to travel to work not seem like a lot? Um I’ll take the lower pay but can’t also afford £200
a month in travel 😭

Hi op I work in the charity sector. Personally I wouldn't be impressed with any colleagues who were trying to negotiate more pay for themselves individually (as much as I understand why on a personal level they may want/need to do so) as funding is usually a huge source of work and worry for everyone involved and to me that means income should be split evenly among staff who are all doing the same amount of work according to level of responsibility and the rest going to the people being served by the charity. By negotiating it feels like you've still got a competitive corporate head on and that's not the culture in most charities. The lower they can keep their running costs the more money they have to use actually supporting people and carrying out the work.

£10pd to travel to work is a cost you're knowingly taking on given that you know the location/ where you live and the salary offered. I personally don't apply for jobs I can't afford to travel to. I also pay £8a day in parking costs alone not including mileage. Generally mileage is then given to cover any additional travel you do from the office elsewhere.

I wouldn't think this would be looked on favourably in truth and I've seen people be declined and then suggested out of the job and second candidate employed for being overly keen to negotiate salary.

It's one of the downsides to charity sector work that you will be chronically underpaid even with good skills and specialisms.

I would also say that it's very fulfilling, I love my job and generally I've never worked anywhere I've found to be toxic as any good charity will be actively promoting a really honest and open and supportive workplace culture.

The only caveat to that is if the salary is advertised as a scale you might have some wiggle room, but that should be dependent on years of experience and skills etc. So again you wouldn't be expecting someone new to a sector to be coming up at the upper end of their pay scale.

Commuting costs are a matter of location, circumstance and perception. As somebody who spent 20+ years commuting from Northampton to London £10 a day would seem almost nugatory......

HAving been WfH since the pandemic it'd seem a much bigger thing.

Is that relative to your earnings though? My OH send 7k a year but earns a lot so it’s relative.

@Lavender14 i haven’t been offered or accepted the role. I’m merely trying to establish if and how I can try and negotiate a little. The role was advertised as wfh and then they said 1 day in office at interview so this has changed things quite a lot.

I worked in fundraising for 10 years, escaped and not regretted it for a moment.

poor performance isn’t dealt with, loads of numpties banging on about ‘ awareness’ with no real understanding of what the objective was. Bullies and crap people just left in place because there’s no effective HR to deal with them.

one idea could be to ask if you could visit the office only every other week - that would save a chunk.

I work for a small charity having spent 20 + years in the corporate sector. I absolutely love my job. Key for me is that the CEO is highly competent as well as being nice and a great boss. We are a really well run and effective charity and that makes it feel really worth-while. I did negotiate a slightly higher salary when I joined and I think it’s possible to raise it tactfully although be aware the money might simply not be there.

Good luck!

1 day per week at £10 per day is £40 not £200?