[Closed] Why I'm getting angry.

Keep us posted, yeah?

[strong]twinw4ll[/strong] wrote:

they exist just to exist and pay their CEO big bucks.
I

welcome to the world of big charities...

Have you tried discussing your anger with their chatbot?

Don't get angry get even

https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/10-percent-campaign/

Their accounts/annual report are publicly available

This is something that is increasing and the law seems powerless to stop it.

TV ad showing animals in great pain, or being traffiked, small cute kittens cold and homeless.
And a charity that helps, even sends you a cuddly toy.

The truth I think is that that companies do indeed sponsor tigers and kittens and all, but the onus is on wages first.

1.The bottom line is Form a charity to collect money from the public.
2.Deduct a whopping great admin fee, plus of course the wages to the directors,
3.The remainder gets set to the actual charity that works on the ground with the animals.
Their premise will be that they collect funds for them and in doing so it is right they are paid for it. What they seem not to realize is the company is in existence only to provide a wage for a scamming entrepreneur

I think the RSPCA make sure the money gets to where it deserves to be.

I'm sorry if you're suffering OP 🙁 . Arthritis is a ****.

trumpton
Member

I think the RSPCA make sure the money gets to where it deserves to be.

Someone has to pay for all that shiny glass and aluminium (and done forget the directors).....

https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/whoweare/executives

I think the RSPCA make sure the money gets to where it deserves to be.

Ah, bless!

Not dismissing the good work they do, but all charities have flaws, and we're trustees of a couple of small local ones.

Its possible to check how efficient a charity is IIRC ie how much of the money raised gets spent on good causes.

I support a school in Nepal that is 100% efficient - all money raised goes to the school

http://learnnepal.org.uk/

I have a lot of sympathy with you OP, as I’m inherently distrustful of large charities, but ultimately you have a choice not to give them money...

My old man suffered greatly with arthritis in his final years so if it is relevant to you you have my sincere best wishes.

20 years ago I worked in a tiny charity that had been around since 1920 (set up after ww1 to resolve issues around returning men and societal problems really).

It was clear that it was being used by the local authority and Govt as a cheap way of delivering core services with tiny grants and no security for staff. Apart from the CEO (on poor money for the outcomes they delivered) the staff were young, poorly paid, passionate and caring. People stayed a couple of years and got amazing exposure to real world problems. It was basically a launch pad for young, keen peoples' careers in the public sector.

These mega charities are clearly marketing exercises with some (i guess the minimum they can get away with) benefit going to their cause.

Then there are the private school type scams, tax evasion charities.

That list linked is unfair. A CEO with 1000s of staff and volunteers getting 100k isn't outrageous whatever the company format.

I used to work on a ship that was owned by a company that was owned by a charity. We made lots of money for the company doing regular offshore oil and gas work.

It beggars belief that a company can make money from a commercial contract and then not pay any tax as the cash is fed through a charity. The charity itself was providing, essentially, commercial services, not what I would call charitable causes.

In response to the OP's gripe about this Versus Artritis charity, it seems clear from their website that behind the ad campaign that looks like a scam, it was formed from a merger of 2 established and respected research and support charities and has good credentials.

If as a society we don't want to fund healthcare research and support properly then we have to accept the ad driven appeal type charities.

They are comparable in scale and costs (wages, premises etc) to NHS trusts I'd say.

It beggars belief that a company can make money from a commercial contract and then not pay any tax as the cash is fed through a charity. The charity itself was providing, essentially, commercial services, not what I would call charitable causes.

Thats not a problem at all. Thats a perfectly acceptable way to fund a charity's activities. Quite a lot of government tenders are won and delivered by charities too. Some charities have shops where they sell stuff to the public - crazy I know but it really happens.

Donations from the public are quite a small part of the overall funding for charities - they mostly earn money by doing work and getting paid for it, but then put the profit back into their charitable activity rather than pay it out as dividends to shareholders.

I'm pissed every advert seems to be either a charity advert or a gambling advert.

If Wateraid stopped sending me demands by post and sent the money to Africa they’d have doubled my congribution by now.

That list linked is unfair. A CEO with 1000s of staff and volunteers getting 100k isn’t outrageous whatever the company format.

Why should someone on minimum wage consider donating to a charity where the CEO earns 100k? That makes no sense to me.

Why should someone on minimum wage consider donating to a charity where the CEO earns 100k? That makes no sense to me.

What caliber of CEO would a low salary attract...and how well would the charity do then?

easily
Member
That list linked is unfair. A CEO with 1000s of staff and volunteers getting 100k isn’t outrageous whatever the company format.

Why should someone on minimum wage consider donating to a charity where the CEO earns 100k? That makes no sense to me.

I don't think anyone is suggesting they should, but it's up to them. Same as whether they spend their money on plastic crap or fags rather than healthy food and books.

I see both sides but £100K isn't a lot for a CEO, if they're any good they could earn substantially more in the private sector, even the public sector. And if they're any good they can be worth way more than that to the charity.

I think there's a perception that charity directors were not great, and certainly some have actively recruited from the private sector for the benefit they could bring. A mate went into the sector 10-15 years ago; he'd qualified as an accountant, worked up to high up in one of the O&G companies and then due to life circumstances moved to a medium sized charity (that you'd have heard of for sure). He took a big pay cut but was still on the sort of money you might think unreasonable but bringing private sector investment and tax efficiencies to the charity saved them multiples of his salary almost overnight.

It's not cost, rather value.

(I don't know Versus Arthritis though, and there are for sure some that are edging towards scams)

What caliber of CEO would a low salary attract

Maybe it would attract someone who was concerned about getting the money to those the charity is for, rather than to the executives?

easily, how old are you?

That list linked is unfair. A CEO with 1000s of staff and volunteers getting 100k isn’t outrageous whatever the company format.

And yet MSF manage fine on a fair wage. Knowing the work they do and the way they operate they are a good example of best practice.

I think the RSPCA make sure the money gets to where it deserves to be.

Their bank account? They are another lot that exist purely to fund themselves, I wonder how many of their high earners are lawyers? Well known for being a bunch of mercenary arseholes.

Same as whether they spend their money on plastic crap or fags rather than healthy food and books

That's not really a fair comparison. The person donating has already decided they want to use their money on something worthwhile - the charity - but might not have considered that their donation is going to the 100,000+ wages of a few people at the top.

I prefer to give money to small charities where you can pretty much see what the money is doing (in my case that's a local community for people with learning disabilities), and to volunteer time and skills (in the winter I do overnight shifts at a shelter for homeless people, and I help clean up old bikes that are then sold for a local charity or donated to those who cannot afford them).
Obviously there could still be waste going on there, but you can get a pretty good feel for what's happening with your contribution.

@cynic-al

Is that a genuine question or some kind of insult?

I'm 56. I've worked in a lot if industries and on three continents. I've seen enough to know that high pay does not necessarily correspond with high quality. I've seen great work done by those on low wages, and I've seen timeservers earning 100k+

I think most of the public would be shocked at the added cost of providing the public services they expect if they weren't subsidised by charities and all the annoying marketing, 'outrageous salaries' etc that entails.

Cancer counselling and research into pain relief for arthritis isn't delivered by well-meaning old ladies you know. They're professional people who deserve proper wages. As do their bosses who have to manage all the corporate stuff their corporate equivalents do.

@easily - what you think an appropriate salary for thier CEO is?

I got chugged by the r s p c a last year
Turns out the chugger worked for a 3rd party chugging co. They had a deal with the r s p c a to keep a huge whack of all the money raised. Like 1/3 off the top up to run the chuggers.
Needless to say i didnt sign up

Fair enough easily, your view looks naive to me, but I don't discount your experience, I just wonder what alternative there is.

Same as whether they spend their money on plastic crap or fags rather than healthy food and books

That’s not really a fair comparison. The person donating has already decided they want to use their money on something worthwhile – the charity – but might not have considered that their donation is going to the 100,000+ wages of a few people at the top.

I prefer to give money to small charities where you can pretty much see what the money is doing (in my case that’s a local community for people with learning disabilities), and to volunteer time and skills (in the winter I do overnight shifts at a shelter for homeless people, and I help clean up old bikes that are then sold for a local charity or donated to those who cannot afford them).
Obviously there could still be waste going on there, but you can get a pretty good feel for what’s happening with your contribution.

With all respect they're local charities that aren't delivering at the scale society needs to resolve it's big issues. 1000s of people needing cancer support every day needs a corporate scale approach not some seasonal amateur volunteers.

If Wateraid stopped sending me demands by post and sent the money to Africa they’d have doubled my congribution by now.

Please email them and ask them to stop. They will.

On chuggers and costs.  They look expensive but they are compatible to running a campaign in a newspaper as far as I can see.

Complicated really. On the one hand big charities are effectively a part of public services where resources are allocated emotionally rather than rationally hence fluffy animals, guide dogs (check their reserves!) and the like doing rather well compared to issues of addiction say, or housing. This also favours appeal to emotion to raise funds, and a rather unedifying 'our disease is worse than yours' approach, charities scrambling over each other to get a story on page 5 based on a survey carried out by their fundraising dept.

Ah the fundraisers - the sales team. Bright young folks with chuggers at the bottom of the foodchain (remember chuggers?) but same all the way up. The more you employ the more money you bring in as long as they're more than covering their salaries, but it makes efficiency go down, even if a fair bit of this is represented as 'campaigning' and therefore legitimate charitable activity.

But on the other hand - to the OP: do you want to see more research on arthritis? Cures and management across the broad range of conditions from which millions suffer but about which we don't hear much? If you do want to see more research, do you trust that this will just happen? That bright folks in universities and clinical medical academics (who get paid well over £100k, I hate to break it to you - check ACCEA website) will just do this?

Or would you like to see some extra research funds used to fund key projects, attract uni's interest and lever departments to do more research in the area that matters to you? This takes money, and also some political focus with MP and opinion formers on side, probably on the back of some effective campaigning with some public groundswell you can claim to represent. If you do want this, you've got to accept it's not going to happen without some organisation, and folks to run it.

None are perfect but Versus Arthritis are pretty mainstream. Glancing at the accounts, they bring in a bit over £40m, spend about £12m on salaries (3 over £100k, 2 close to this. That would be the board.) Spend about £20m on research, the remainder on campaigning and fundraising. No surprises. I tell a lie: they made £12m a year fron "TNF immunotherapy of rheumatoid arthritis developed with The Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research". That's both unusual and interesting.

Ah yeah, I left out the relationship with pharma and the temptation to join in with astroturfing (e.g. charities marshalling apparent public pressure to get the NHS to make available a particular drug, would be a simple example.) There'd also be an interesting piece to do on medical research charities founded to support the work/obsession of a clinician or group, reorienting to become more user driven, which may be part of the VA rebranding,

(I should say I've no insider knowledge bar working on the fringes of some of these issues over the years.)

What caliber of CEO would a low salary attract…and how well would the charity do then?

Its funny how we have to pay huge salaries to attract talent to CEO type jobs despite there being loads of folk that want to do it but it not needed to up salaries for jobs where no one wants to do it to attract folk like community care.

clinical medical academics (who get paid well over £100k,

Cite? I very much doubt that.

That’s both unusual and interesting.

Yeh, I glanced through and saw the “intellectual property” income.

Without digging I presumed they had something with a value to commercial/state health providers?

Its funny how we have to pay huge salaries to attract talent to CEO type jobs despite there being loads of folk that want to do it but it not needed to up salaries for jobs where no one wants to do it to attract folk like community care.

There's a difference between 'wanting to' and 'able to'. Hence paying to get the best CEO. At the other end, menial jobs will be filled if people get desperate enough (i.e benefits are restricted till they crack).

Cite? I very much doubt that.

Clinical medical academics are paid on the consultant scale - which you can see from the BMA website (the BMA would prefer to play this stuff down) go to over £100k basic:

https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/consultants-pay-scales/pay-scales-for-consultants-in-england

On top of that, clinical medical academics receive local and national excellence awards - rationale being they're so busy doing research they've not time to do private practice, which to be honest and depending on specialty, is a more significant income boost. These awards haven't gone up for some years now but are non-trivial running from £36k to £77k for national awards. Wikki sumarises as well as anywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_Excellence_Awards

And then there are opportunities for consultancy, IP with pharma etc.

I see nothing wrong with this - is it just bankers and city folk and a few lawyers we want to see earning decent dosh in this country? They'd earn a lot more if they went to the US.

csb pure nonsense

We need hundreds of social care workers here and cannot recruit and retain them. Benefit levels are pitiable. Its also a skilled job not everyone can do
There is a finite supply of CEO jobs and enough people to do them. Halve on the saleries and the same still applies

Its really funny how its only jobs at the top that you have to pay to attract talent

Do we really get 'the best' with our CEOs and other 'top people' though? When you see the calibre of those earning loads do you really believe that most of them are extraordinary people who deserve an extraordinary wage? I'd say that sometimes it's true, more often it's not.

I thought we'd realised over the last month or so that the real essential work is done by those who are often earning little more than minimum wage.

The charity Versus Arthritis makes me angry, what exactly are they for?
I call bullshit, I don’t believe they deliver anything worth having, total bollocks, they exist just to exist and pay their CEO big bucks.

Well he’s not doing a great job of it then as he’s only taking home 0.007% of the income.

What is it you think he should be doing that he isn’t?

I used to work on a ship that was owned by a company that was owned by a charity. We made lots of money for the company doing regular offshore oil and gas work.

@seadog101 - It wasn't the Relume by any chance?

For many they wouldn't want the stress and responsibility of a CEO position for lower, they'll get another job for that money with less stress.

As for favouring small local charities, many are badly run, lack an economy of scale and cause the available funding to be split meaning bigger initiatives are more difficult to fund. The people who set up their own charity after a loved one dies drive me up the wall. Go and help an existing charity for that cause rather than duplicating all the costs. Well meaning but ultimately very selfish.

I've never really bought into the 'more stress and responsibility at the top' thing. I've never been convinced that a General has more stress sending people to war than those fighting it; or that a hospital administrator is more stressed than the nurse on the ward trying to fit 40 patients into 30 beds; or that a headteacher has more hassle than a someone teaching geometry to a bottom set year 8 class when the kids haven't even mastered sitting down yet ...

From my experience talent tends to stop at mid-level. There are certain positions where if you go any higher you're no longer doing the thing that attracted you to the work in the first place. Those truly interested in doing good work remain there.
The incompetent, time-servers, and arse-lickers seem to be those that keep on rising. Their only passions are money and prestige so sitting around having 'essential' meetings all day suits them fine.
Look around you. Look in your own place of work. Do you truly believe that those at the top are worth 10x, maybe even 100x, what you earn?

Wow, there's some deep values showing on this thread.

@easily - I'll ask again, and repeat a couple of other questions from the thread.
- how much should that CEO earn in your view?
- what 'shit job' things is the CEO doing - give us an example.

I'll also ask:
- define 'mid level' in responsibility and salary
- what's your job been in life?

I'm talking in general and you're asking for specifics. I might as well ask you what precisely the CEO has done to earn that money, or what 'good' things they have done - give us an example.

I'm really not sure why you want to know about my career - what exactly does this show one way or the other?
However, I've spent most of my life as a school teacher, a diving instructor, and a mountain bike guide*. I'm currently working with adults with learning disabilities.

* This sounds like you might have to be a great cyclist. You don't and I'm not. You just need to know where all the good spots/routes are, and be fit enough to get to them. Oh, and to carry a bag full of spares.

I’d say that sometimes it’s true, more often it’s not.

Swap more often and sometimes around and I'd agree.

I’ve never really bought into the ‘more stress and responsibility at the top’ thing.

In your examples you have picked 3 of the more stressful key worker jobs there though.

Now consider a charity CEO, managing 100's or 1000's of staff, worrying about very variable income streams against very variable outcome stream, meeting strict governance requirements, etc.

Vs someone with a much smaller remit, say designing an advertising campaign or writing the monthly newsletter to send out to their donors.

I've done both - from a lab bench chemist up through middle management to 'the top job' albeit for a division rather than the whole company. It drove me to near suicide, and the money just wasn't worth it. I now earn £35K less per year in a middle management role and while it still has stresses (right now I'm trying to manage projects and workloads for a team of 40-odd to ensure our revenue doesn't tank) it is chalk and cheese.

There are resources online like https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities who do objective analysis on how effective charities are at delivering help to the people who need it, and how cost effective they are. Some charities in are more effective than others.

More generally, bigger charities have to be run like businesses. People are working full time for them, it's not something they do in their spare time. Things like chugging and charity bike rides to Vietnam are all subcontracted to event organisers because the charities aren't going to specialise in running these things themselves.

All you can do is look at how a charity spends its money, what they achieve, and decide where you are happiest to donate.

Look around you. Look in your own place of work. Do you truly believe that those at the top are worth 10x, maybe even 100x, what you earn?

I've seen people at that level who definitely do have that impact on a business through their own competence. And the opposite can also be true. Personally speaking (and I'm definitely no CEO!) I've had fundamentally different positions in a business and in some of them my value was significantly greater than in others.

I think it comes down to tangibility and risk/reward. I guess a prospective CEO must be able to convince the board:
I plan to deliver x amount of improvement to your business.
Here is my track record of delivering x in other scenarios.
To do this, you must pay me a salary of y - which will be small in comparison to x.

The problem for care workers is, wtf is x? How do you make tangible the dignity and humanity provided by a decent care worker? And to be frank, when our society has largely declined to care for the elderly themselves, how do you avoid the embarrassment of the conversation in the first place?

I worked for a charity - a housing association that also had a care home. I ran the care home - complete 24/7 responsibility. I had 130 staff reporting to me and copntrol of well over half the whole budget of the HA The rest of the HA was around 30 staff. I was paid 1/10 of what the CEO was

In other countries we do not have this huge discrepancy between the board and the workforce in salary.

Matt, how about ~3x the lowest paid worker? Everyone wins, if those at the top want a pay rise those at the bottom must get one too. Basic economics keeps the bottom on a fairly competitive field so it doesn't get silly.

Chuggers used to twist my tits something rotten, trying to guilt me out of my loan money whilst getting paid £7.50 an hour to do so.

I agree with you there @squirrelking. I think there should be a solid relationship between ends of the pay scale AND sustainability (financial, social, environmental) of a business. Charity or otherwise.

I'm more interested in the OP's disdain for anyone in such senior roles and what value they can bring. It's also the amount of money he's objecting to, not the relationship with other salaries in the business (I think).

My CEO earns about 20% more than me, and about double the lowest earner, in a national charity. I earn less than most of the teachers we train and support, and I'm no.2 in the organisation...

If the OP is cross with this organisation, he better not look up some of our richest charities. Huge profits, outrageous sums invested and property owned, tax breaks, high salaries for senior staff and many, many managers, all within a ponzi scheme of an industry. All supported by the government (and part funded) by taxpayer money. Universities.

😉🤔

I’m more interested in the OP’s disdain for anyone in such senior roles and what value they can bring...
My CEO earns about 20% more than me, and about double the lowest earner, in a national charity. I earn less than most of the teachers we train and support, and I’m no.2 in the organisation…

You and your CEO seem like precisely the sort of people I'm not talking about.

I worked for a charity – a housing association that also had a care home. I ran the care home – complete 24/7 responsibility. I had 130 staff reporting to me and copntrol of well over half the whole budget of the HA The rest of the HA was around 30 staff. I was paid 1/10 of what the CEO was

What happened when you asked for a massive pay rise?

easily Member

From my experience talent tends to stop at mid-level.

Look around you. Look in your own place of work. Do you truly believe that those at the top are worth 10x, maybe even 100x, what you earn?

(edited quoting)

I work for a charity. The boss earns about 6 x the lowest paid employee. She brings in considerably more than 6 x the income.

Like in all walks of life, and all avenues of commerce, there are some chancers running charities and some really talented, well intentioned and deeply committed people. I hate to burst the bubble but some head-teachers work harder than many of their staff, just the same as some classroom assistants work harder than their heads.

What's sad is that this thread has exposed a tendency for some people to assume that all big charities are run by greedy halfwits, only interested in feathering their nests.

If nothing else, charities' accounts are all in the public domain. By all means do your research, see what the Director/CEO/whatever is earning as a proportion of income, and make your decisions accordingly. But don't assume we're all the same.

(And no, no reasonable charity is expecting anyone on the NLW to contribute anything).

(And no, no reasonable charity is expecting anyone on the NLW to contribute anything).

So basically any of the big names then.

"oh it's only a couple of pints a week"
"you probably spend more on a takeaway"
"you can afford that"
etc.

All heard from Chuggers and doorsteppers who won't take no for an answer with not a shit given to income.

I got chugged by the r s p c a last year
Turns out the chugger worked for a 3rd party chugging co. They had a deal with the r s p c a to keep a huge whack of all the money raised. Like 1/3 off the top up to run the chuggers.
Needless to say i didnt sign up

That is the standard chugging model, if they get you to sign up they get a lump sum. It works out as long as you stay with them for over a year with the same debit amount.

You may not like the model, but charities don't get sponsors for free, they have to attract them which costs them money however they do it. A lot of them pick the chugger model as it works for them.