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Is there a line where a charity stops being a charity and becomes nowt but an ordinary commercial business instead?

For example, this is a screen shot from Cancer Research UK's Annual Report for 2018. Look how many employees are receiving more than £60k per annum. Elsewhere the report shows that the annual costs for its 4105 employees was £127.3 million. Is that what folk are donating their money for?

4mastacker wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 15, 2019 8:28 pm

Is there a line where a charity stops being a charity and becomes nowt but an ordinary commercial business instead?

Probably not however the people full time employed by a charity should expect to be paid about what they would expect to receive elsewhere.

John Hill wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 15, 2019 9:16 pm

4mastacker wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 15, 2019 8:28 pm

Is there a line where a charity stops being a charity and becomes nowt but an ordinary commercial business instead?

Probably not however the people full time employed by a charity should expect to be paid about what they would expect to receive elsewhere.

And therein lies part of the problem. Have these people taken up employment with the charity because they have always whole-heartedly supported the charity, or do they view it as just another job opportunity that's going to enrich their lives?

A charity's volunteers don't add anything to the wage bill. Once a charity starts taking on full-time employees, their wages/salaries have to come from somewhere and a good starting point would be the donations made to the charity by people who, in all good faith, think their money is going to be used for the purposes for which the charity was set-up, not to pay some very generous salaries.

I wouldn't mind betting folks don't donate their money in order to line the pockets of lawyers challenging a bequest from a dead person's estate, in order to claw more money out of that estate.

Workers for a charity should be paid the going rate for the job they do.

the going rate

"The going rate" is an entirely circular definition. FTSE100 company C class execs demand multi-million Pound incomes simply because others get that much.

I think a better yardstick ought to be median or mean salaries. £30k to £60k pa seems about right for a charity worker.

Some of the rates of pay being trousered by some greedy scrotes are just absurd and strongly suggest that the people involved are not charitable workers at all.

The Wellcome Trust pays at least one of its managers over £3M a year. David Millipede is on $750k plus a Glex expense account and millionaire lifestyle on the firm with a "charity" in NYC.

It seems to me that such people are there for their own personal self-enrichment. Not for charitable purposes at all.

As for the RNLI, I see that they have 21 full-time salaried staff working overseas. There may be a good explanation for this, but I can't see it.

Here's a quantification of ordinary people's incomes.

It is out of these gross incomes that charity donors give money (after paying income and other taxes).

If I read the accounts correctly the RNLI has 62 people earning more than £60000,9 of whom are directors.

To add a bit of balance to the vitriol dripping here, the RNLI spends about 2% of its income overseas. The international projects it assists in can be found easily on its web site.
The salaries of the directors seem to be in line with the going rate or even a bit less.
One notes that donations to the RNLI have increased in the last few days. Hmmmm.
Anyone want to comment on the pay and benefits package for Royal British Legion employees?

John Hill wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 16, 2019 8:00 am

Workers for a charity should be paid the going rate for the job they do.

I work for a charity and my salary is a big fat 'Zero'. Our CEO also gets a big fat 'Zero'. In fact nobody in the charity receives any remuneration for the work they do. I enjoy what I do, as do my colleagues and we don't seek recompense for the work we do, just the satisfaction of doing it.

Lars, yes they spend overseas. Their responsibility is to save lives in British waters. What remit do they have for foreign aid?

As 4m says, we do charitable work for no wage. I do get expenses for work I do in administration. This is from members' annual subscriptions not from charitable giving. Locally we collect and distribute funds and 4ma is a local recipient. Our main charity has a remit that until a few years ago was entirely focused on international projects, the most notable is Polio Eradication. Another that UP mentioned is Shelterbox.

Where our leadership travels by air it travels Economy. As many can afford it they may upgrade to Club at their expense. Some don't even claim their expenses.

The whole is in stark contrast to our MP s claiming paperclip s.

A lot of it goes back to the Wilson/Callaghan era, when tax was 90% (or 95% ?). Salaries were cranked up so take-home was still attractive, but salaries were never reduced when the punitive rates were thrown out.

4mastacker wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 16, 2019 5:22 pm

John Hill wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 16, 2019 8:00 am

Workers for a charity should be paid the going rate for the job they do.

I work for a charity and my salary is a big fat 'Zero'. Our CEO also gets a big fat 'Zero'. In fact nobody in the charity receives any remuneration for the work they do. I enjoy what I do, as do my colleagues and we don't seek recompense for the work we do, just the satisfaction of doing it.

+2

I do voluntary work and get paid a big fat zero - not even expenses. I believe that is as it should be. My 'profit' is the pleasure I get from the work.

Long time ago, I ran the travel account for the CPT branch of a major charity. The odious woman who travelled the most always arranged her travel to suit herself regardless of cost and on one occasion insisted on travelling to London F class (there was no business class in those days) on a Friday night so she could have dinner with her son on Saturday night - her official business began on Monday morning. I suggested that she might like to travel 24 hours later and save the charity a large sum of money and she told me I had no right to say such a thing. Right or not, I said it, and was then told that we would lose the account if I didn't apologise. Guess what ..... we lost the account.

Cape, since you are one of the individuals that has inspired me since TOP, I think it was you, mentioning those officials insisting to fly F to use the higher baggage allowance to carry materiel for the charity.

Rwy in Sight wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 16, 2019 7:26 pm

Cape, since you are one of the individuals that has inspired me since TOP, I think it was you, mentioning those officials insisting to fly F to use the higher baggage allowance to carry materiel for the charity.

Isn't it a lot cheaper just to pay the excess baggage fee?

Maybe that was a lame excuse to justify flying First. Cape might confirm the story