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I looked into this, as I have agreed with family I’d do a charitable donation instead of Christmas cards this year–I am always slightly put off though when I see what some CEOs of some charities earn, this one is a certain David Neiswander who earns US$271,165 p/a.

Is anyone else put off donating to charities when looking at CEO salaries? What runs through my mind is (a) why is my donation propping up their (in my view) excessive salary; and (b) why doesn’t the CEO donate (at least) half their own salary (or more) to the cause, and so lead by example?

I had been thinking of NSPCC for my Christmas donation, but again, when I checked, a massive CEO salary, doesn’t seem right to me, to ask for donations from the public when CEOs are ‘fat cats’ and most of us could ony dream of salaries of that order…

I think the usual argument is that they would earn significantly more in a non-charity position and often the donations they can attract through contacts etc outweighs the salary. But, yeah, it does grate, somewhat.

According to their financials, more than a third of their annual income, over $10 million, is from “social enterprise revenue” (i.e. an actual business), with contributions forming the rest. Of their $24.3 million expenses, 5% is for management – i.e. $1.2 million.

What do you think is a fair salary for someone running a $10 million business and $20 million charity?

@dhague it makes me think they don’t need my money!

As a counterpoint: whenever we’ve run a story on Singletrack about WBR, their UK Chief Executive has mailed me to say thank you – she notices the extra donations coming in. I don’t think that would happen if they were raking in tons of donations every day and the bosses were off living it up!