UKC

Mrs. Fester had a letter yesterday from a charity which neither of us had heard of and certainly not knowingly subscribed to. In essence they were tugging at the heart strings and trying to get her to sign up to a direct debit. I can only assume that her details had found their way on to some sort of "suckers list".

Both of us donate cash - not on line - spontaneously to charities of OUR choice and we are both actively involved doing voluntary work for local charities.

Seems to me that a lot of charities are getting far too big and thus having to raise money to pay salaries to "managerial" people, they are also getting greedy; I once used to donate via DD to a well known charity until they started pestering me to increase my DD.

I thought they might have take heed of this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/olive-cooke-poppy-seller-who...
but they seem intent upon biting the hand that feeds them.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Into the pub for a proper rant!

In reply to FesteringSore:


I don't disagree with you annoyance about fundraising tactics but could you explain this part?

Charities should be brilliantly run, so that your donations are used in the most effective way. This will involve management and governance, both of which involve costs. I really don't understand why people expect charities to operate in a way which is totally alien to any other business - it's perverse.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Please stop calling them Charities..... they are not they are business's. When you look at them in that context everything makes sense.

In reply to Indy:

FTFY
>Please stop calling them Charities..... they are not they are tax exempt business's.

It would be an interesting exercise to audit the charity sector. I wonder how many charities enjoy the tax status, but don't seem to help those less fortunate. See link below.

I think perhaps league tables, where the pay of the execs, number of subscribers, annual costs and income could be compared would help to level the playing field. If charity A is doing a great job with similar resources to charity B which isn't, then pressure could be brought on them to improve. (Though, no doubt, all that would happen is that charities would increase exec pay to match that of others in the sector. )

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lord-lawson-and-his-climate-...

In reply to Indy:


Please don't call them "business's".

In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:


Why?

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In reply to dread-i:

Interesting but I don't think that many people actually think about the charity when giving money just the cause.

In reply to Edradour:




But that's the point, surely. "Business" usually refers to an organisation set up to operate at a profit whereas the concept of a charity is based on the idea of voluntarily(ie unpaid and without profit) providing for those with a need.

What turns me(and, I think, others) off supporting the bigger charities is that they now appear as and operate on a "corporate" basis headed by "fat cats".

We recently had a visit from a "chugger" who said he was collecting for a particular charity. I dug into my pocket and was prepared to donate about five pounds in loose change. He went to great lengths to tell me that he was not taking cash donations but asked me to sign up to a direct debit with a specified minimum amount. I'm sorry, but that to me is contrary to the spirit of charitable donations. It becomes an imposition.

In reply to FesteringSore:

'Blinkered mode firmly on'

I hate chuggers! Why can't they understand that we don't always see charities as important.

The last chugger to upset me was in Milngavie, I had just walked from John O Groats to 'Glasgow' and was somewhat justifiably proud of myself. I wanted a picture of the start/end of the WHW to mark the moment. What happens - a chugger comes along, not only is she disturbing the moment she also has the audacity to wear something with the words emblazoned across her ample chest that related directly to why I had started the walk in the first place.

Even after explaining some of the above, she still wanted to be in the photo!

I ended up stomping off to the nearest pub and gave my donation to a cat charity.

In reply to FesteringSore:

I had a direct debit to the British Red Cross. They kept sending me crap - personalised address labels, greetings cards for my use, coasters. I asked them to stop twice as I wished my donation to go to the intended recipients not used for marketing purposes. They persisted. I cancelled my DD.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Charity begins at home.

I am sick of corrupt charities gobbing off and being a pain in the arse.
I had a British Red Cross guy turn up at my door and try and get me to give money. Despite the CEO giving himself a 20k pay rise a couple of years back.

Charities are blatantly corrupt. It's an absolute joke and an affront. Business is the exact word to use.

Don't even get me on that stupid Kony 2012 sh*te that went round Facebook. And that stupid ice bucket challenge pish. Or those Help for Heroes d*ckheads who wouldn't even give out hoodies to homeless ex forces lads who's clothes had been ripped and left in rag order.

All the money just goes right into pockets. The H4H bloke is a millionaire now.
I know several small business owners who set up charities purely for tax breaks and other lucrative reasons that benefit themselves.

In reply to FesteringSore:
Worth mentioning, and this was correct a few years ago, if it no longer is then apologies, but MREW (Mountain Rescue England and Wales) is the largest charity in the UK with no paid staff. Not just the rescues but every bit of administration, and that's a LOT, is done voluntarily.

Not all charities behave like the behemoth ones. There's a lot of good work done by committed people who need support. If you are queasy about giving to a huge one with a well paid CEO then you won't have to look too far for an inspiring local one doing great work on a shoestring and feeling the pinch right now. Do your research, ask questions and find one to support.

12 years volunteering for a charity, 3 years as a trustee, makes me feel a bit protective when 'charities' as a whole get a bad press.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:


Don't forget the RNLI, totally independent from any government agency and entirely funded through charity. You couldn't put a price on some of things they've done over the decades.

In reply to summo:

Not making any point about worthiness, just numbers of paid staff.

In reply to dread-



This already happens. You can look up any charity on the Charity Commission website and it will tell you the proportion of costs spent on fundraising, governance and charitable activities. You can also look at the charity's governing document.

Furthermore, if a charity has overheads that are above a certain % of its income then it will be investigate and potentially have its charitable status removed.

In reply to Bootrock:


this is a ridiculous generalistIon.

In reply to Edradour:


I would agree, some of them after paying all their staff have a few percent left for good causes.

In reply to FesteringSore:


No it's not. A charity is there for the public good, often to provide services that aren't provided by the private sector or government. Yes, they're not for profit but that doesn't mean they don't incur costs. The people who work for charities still have to pay to live - their mortgages, food and other expenses aren't free because they work for a charity.

The whole way that most people think about charities is fundamentally wrong.

This is a good Ted talk on the subject:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_de...

In reply to summo:

The problem with this argument is that, without the staff (plus other running costs like offices etc) then how does any money get to the cause, whatever that might be?

In reply to Edradour:

I think the argument is the amount of money that their 'charitable' people who work for charities wish to be paid.

I have previously done stuff for cancer research UK, I would do free mountain safety cover for their walks, free technical advice of SPAs wishing to organise abseils off unusual buildings, bridges, locations etc.. in the end Cancer Research was talking the pi$$, or rather their staff were. They would barely lift a finger to do anything, while bossing those giving either time or money to their cause to do even more. I stopped helping them and cancelled my DD, a true eye opener. So many staff on £20-30k wages in the north, doing sod all to earn them.

In reply to summo:

Fair enough.

This is the polar opposite of my experience where charity staff have been paid wages that are considerably lower than equivalent positions in the private sector (and without the job security and benefits) and yet have gone above and beyond to achieve remarkable things with very few resources. And they often have to work against the views expressed in this thread where they are somehow expected to exist without an income.

In reply to Edradour:


because many charities, as you say, have lots of staff, buildings, overheads etc.. perhaps they could streamline. Get rid of lots of paid staff, buildings and other costly assets.. they may raise less money, smaller headline figures, but the amount that actually goes to the cause people think they are supporting may be higher. The people I met were dreadfully disorganised etc.. three of them could easily be replaced by one person, they spent a disproportionate amount of time having chats (I wouldn't call them meetings as they weren't very structured or organised and certainly didn't have outcomes) about how they might do things, rather than one person simply telling them to get on and do it. There were some good people and I got a vibe they were as frustrated as I me.

In reply to FesteringSore:

I have a monthly direct debit for 1 charity. Apart from an occasional update on what projects they've been working on and the annual Christmas begging letter, they leave me alone.

The other charities I've supported in the past have mainly been with my time and some fuel for the car, which I really couldn't justify claiming.

When I take old stuff to the charity shops, I tend to favour the ones that support small local charities.

I generally refuse to donate to charities for one of 2 reasons:
1 - I think there should be more government funding for it/preventing the reasons for it and supporting a charity reduces the onus on the government for it.
2 - appeals fronted by multi-millionaires asking us to "give what we can to help".

In reply to summo:


Maybe they have "streamlined" as much as they can already, without losing their effectiveness? Could it be that the staff "weren't very structured or organised and certainly didn't have outcomes" largely because the charity wasn't able or wasn't prepared to pay the higher salaries needed for more competent staff/managers? I don't doubt there are some very competent people willing to work for below the market rate for a good cause, but in general you get what you pay for. I also don't doubt that there are some charities with highly inefficient staff on good salaries, but I would be very reluctant to generalise that to most or all charities.

In reply to john arran:


I will agree with your first and last. On a recent R4 moneybox there were comments from a London based kids charity (not the publically known one), which has a donation to cause rate of 95% of all monies given. That to me is outstanding. It is shame that some of the big ticket charities don't achieve even close to this.

I think many charities involving certain illnesses, kids or animals do very well out of providing paid employment for well meaning, but not always skilled people and giving a proportion to the actual cause. Some don't even manage 50% of donations, which is dire.

In reply to dread-i:

>Please stop calling them Charities..... they are not they are tax exempt business's.

Replying to dread-i but this is really a response to everyone .

I have an interest to declare. I am the chair of trustees (ie directors) of a charity. Yes, it is a business that is exempt from corporation tax. But as a charity it is not permitted to make a profit. There are no shareholders to benefit from dividends and any surpluses we earn are invested back into the business. The trustees are not permitted to take any salary or other benefit. I spend around a day a week - sometimes more than this (I'm retired) - working for the charity, voluntarily.

We don't support a good cause as such. The charity is an outdoor adventure centre for children which used to be run by a local authority. Being a charity enables us to offer opportunities to children at a price that need not cover shareholders' profits or directors' salaries. Quality of service is our only driver - not maximising profits.

We are not at all unique in this regard. There are many other charities in this and similar fields. We pay the going rate for our Head of Centre (ie chief executive) and our staff, who ensure that the business is run efficiently and offers high quality services.

I feel that some of the comments on here, particularly where they lump all charities together, are not particularly well-informed.

Martin

In reply to FesteringSore:


Straight onto the logburner.

In reply to Martin Hore:


I do wonder if there is a correlation between size of charity and percentage that reaches the end target. I suspect yours like the London kids charity I referred to earlier are small enough so that yourself as a trustee and the chief exec are close enough to both the funds sources and the recipients that there is absolute bare minimum of wastage.

In reply to summo:

I agree with much of John Arran's reply above but the Ted talk that I've linked to above responds to this line from your post:


Worth 15 minutes to watch.

In reply to Martin Hore:

You make some very good points and there is a lot of the charity sector I'm unaware of.

I find it disgusting that I give money to charities and some of those pay their execs very well indeed. It seems I'm not alone in this and it is easy to tar all the charities with the same brush. This is wrong, as there are a lot of charities quietly getting on with doing good work. Nevertheless, exec pay does draw attention to certain charities for the wrong reasons.

I could rail against Eaton being a charity, as the parents are not short of a bob or two. But, I've just done a quick search and my sons nursery has charitable status. So thats me told.

I'm still unclear how someone like the fragrant Mr Lawson can get charitable status for climate change denial. I wonder if people can get charitable status for denying other scientific facts. Asbestos is good for you, perhaps? It's cases like these that go to further muddy the waters as to what a charity is for and who exactly benefits.

In reply to summo:


But actually, this is complete nonsense and the big charities are just being more honest.

What do you consider an 'overhead' and what do you consider 'going to the cause'?

Because I can guarantee you that the charity you're talking about is lumping the vast majority of its overheads (rent, rates, utilities, computers, internet access, web hosting, phone lines etc) in wth its calculation of money 'going to the cause' because it is impossible to exist without paying them.

In reply to dread-i:


But those organisations are multi million pound organisations. Would you rather give money to a charity which is well run and, therefore, extracts the maximum possible benefit from the resources it has at its disposal or would you rather give money to a charity that wastes lots of money on inefficiency because the 'execs' haven't a clue what they're doing?

It has to be the first option and, to get things run properly, you need to pay people appropriately.

In reply to Edradour:

yeah of course they are, the must be their CEOs on 6 figure salaries forcing this policy of honesty through.


obviously a grey area and easily open to interpretation. Something that the recipient directly benefits from. So not advertising, or wages of fundraiser for example.


Do you know this for certain, care to name the charity I referred to? Or are speculating?

In reply to Edradour:

>It has to be the first option and, to get things run properly, you need to pay people appropriately.

I understand that argument, though it still doesn't sit well with me. I don't have a solution to the problem, so one could argue that market forces have solved it for me.

In reply to summo:


Hmmm well what is the correct salary for a chief exec running an organisation with say 5 - 10 thousand staff, often engaged in complex work (think cancer charities) or dangerous work (eg delivering aid in Syria), in which the senior staff are required to meet government ministers, the media, etc, and be on top of very difficult subjects? I'd be genuinely interested to hear what you think is a suitable salary.

In reply to dread-i:


My experience is that pay within the charity sector, including executive pay in the very large charities is considerably lower than you would expect for similar roles in either the private or public sector, there will be exceptions of course, but to me the trend is pretty clear.


I'm a but dubious of the charitable status of a lot of public schools, but the test is public benefit. Possibly a test could be more robust.


The Charity Commission has the same concerns and Lawson's foundation has had to change its set up.

In reply to seankenny:


but if a charity is employing 5000 people then that is a not for profit business, if it needs to raise X to pay a wage bill in the millions, it then needs to employ more people, but the wage bill goes up further, so they employ more fundraisers who need paying, then they employ some marketing specialist to increase the income, now they need to employ some investment managers to look after the money.... and on it goes...

perhaps it they cut back to what is important, they wouldn't lose 40-60% on overheads of the money public gives them. Their goal is the charity, not to keep thousands in employment?

In reply to summo:

They're not losing that money. They're using to further the aims of the charity.

Those thousands employed are delivering the aims of the charity - if you're distributing aid in a remote part of Nepal, for example, you need people to do the work.

There seems to be a slightly bizarre idea that charities have to do everything on a shoestring and that anything beyond a collecting tin on the counter of the bar is some kind of corruption of the aims of the charity. If you're Medecin sans Frontieres, for example, you work in exceedingly difficult environments, for which you need highly skilled staff.

In reply to summo:

What if the aim of the charity is medical reaseach or distributing international aid or providing adoption services or one of a 1001 things that charities do that require paid and professional staff. Your argument is reductionist and frankly shows a massive misunderstanding of what charities are.

Actually the current government want to expand the role of the charitable sector and in many ways I think that is a mistake, but let's not reduce it to this idea that it is only charity if people are not paid.

In reply to graeme jackson:


Pretty much this, along with the Domino's pizza menus, Bobs window cleaning service flier, St Marys Parish Church newsletter, Hampton taxi cards, Virgin broadband offers, Halifax credit card application (only 29% APR) and the letters from the annoying women at the end road who thinks I am interested in buying her Forever Living aloe vera products or joining her pyramid selling scheme.

All these f*ckers have kept me warm this winter.

In reply to The New NickB:

*research*

In reply to Edradour:


I came across a private school where the staff ran a Thames Barge that was registered as a charity. Ostensibly the purpose of the charity was to restore and preserve part of our maritime heritage. In practice it was the proprietor of the school's private yatch that he managed to get his employees (teachers at the school) to crew for him and to contribute to financially as well as getting a hefty subsidy from the taxpayer by way of tax relief.

In reply to summo:


Can you show me a large charity, employing thousands of people, whose overheads are 40% of their spending? All their annual reports will be online and one might have thought the Charity Commission would have noticed something like this...

Anyhow, you avoid my question by claiming a large charity isn't really a charity. Assuming that an organisation which doesn't make a profit, undertakes a social mission and is registered as a charity actually *is* a charity, what do you think the chief exec of a large charity should be paid? If you're railing against high salaries you must have an idea of what would be acceptable.

In reply to seankenny:
Google, true and fair foundation charity report, based on data from charity commission and companies house.

Sue Ryder, age UK, heart foundation have all spent 48% of money received in the past 3 years on their actual respective causes. So that is 52% on overheads. Some charities were even worse.

Don't get me wrong I know some do challenging, worthwhile and difficult work, others are simply tax dodges or taking the pi$$.

Age UK are under investigation for taking money in return for promoting more expensive products to pensioners, how honourable and charitable.