Does a lot of (paid) work for charidee

[Patrick Thistle]

Something that Benjm said on another thread has made me wonder how many people here have worked in the charity sector. I spent six and a half years working for a charity in the job before my previous job and it made me quite ambivalent towards charities.

Where I worked we used to produce little pie charts in our reports that split up how much we spent on fundraising and how much we spent "helping families". The salaries of the fundraising team were always included in the helping families bit of the chart rather than the fundraising bit. There was a torturous ethical justification for this, which I rolled my eyes at, but I was quite junior in a very hierarchical organisation. I remember a colleague's husband saying that hearing how our charity spent money made him feel a bit wary of donating to any charity, which I felt was a bit harsh, but then his wife worked in the finance team and saw expenses claims so who knows what she knew about where the money really went.

Just wondered what other people's experiences in the sector are.

[Benjm]

I will come back to this, PT, when I have composed my thoughts on the matter!

[caja-dglh]

This pointed me back to a charity - a pioneer of the 100% model - to see how much the CEO was getting paid. About $400k a year it seems. Not sure how I feel about that, especially how in your face about the 100% part they were.

[Nefertiti2]

This pointed me back to a charity - a pioneer of the 100% model - to see how much the CEO was getting paid. About $400k a year it seems. Not sure how I feel about that, especially how in your face about the 100% part they were.

Cheapskates

https://twitter.com/MerrynSW/status/1178347107054473217?s=20

[ursus arctos]

In the US, we have Charity Navigator, which does a decent job of parsing disclosures (which differ widely according to state rules, not to mention different ideals about transparency)

https://www.charitynavigator.org/

[caja-dglh]

Miliband is 0.11% of expenses. The CEO I was looking at is 0.65%, though there is certainly a lot of crazy that goes on when you get scale.

[caja-dglh]

In the US, we have Charity Navigator, which does a decent job of parsing disclosures (which differ widely according to state rules, not to mention different ideals about transparency)

https://www.charitynavigator.org/

It would be a great day when Churches are forced to file a 990.

[ursus arctos]

Yeah, like that is ever going to happen

[Balderdasha]

I clearly approach this the wrong way. I was director of one charity for six years and I've been trustee of another one for over three years and I've never earnt a penny of salary from either position.

[Patrick Thistle]

I will come back to this, PT, when I have composed my thoughts on the matter!

Feels a little ominous, that. Hope I haven't caused offence.

[Benjm]

Not at all, Patrick Thistle!

I worked for a largish national charity for a dozen years, mostly through the 2000s, and there was plenty going on to support a sceptical view of such organisations. The chief executive was on something north of 150,000 quid a year (income was about 24 million) which was explained away as what you had to pay to attract the right candidates in the sector. Unfortunately the guy cashing the cheques was an internal promotion who had been there for donkey's years and essentially just hung around until he got a turn at the top job. His tenure wasn't a roaring success and the organisation ended up having to merge with its main rival. There were positive things to be said for such a merger but what drove it was that both charities were close to financial collapse due to overexpansion and mismanagement.

Someone donating to a charity may, understandably, assume that service provision to the target audience is its main objective. This may not be the prevailing culture within that organisation. It is not uncommmon for the policy and lobbying functions to be seen as the glamour end of the business, service provision an afterthought, albeit a necessary one to have authority in the debate. If a national organisation is based in London, this skew becomes more likely as senior managers churn through the non-profit sector, quangos and government.

Commercial arms, while structured to be separate legal entities from the main organisation, may also have undue influence over a charity's direction, exacerbated by a cultural cringe that affords undue respect to 'private sector knowhow'. Service provision then essentially becomes a means to an exploitable database.

Charities are also prone to governance issues arising from their histories. Many are originally started by one or a few visionary individuals and grow to mirror the strengths and weaknesses of those individuals. Beyond a certain size, the original structure will almost certainly not be appropriate and it become a question of time as to whether structures will be reviewed and updated before a calamity occurs. The Kids Company mess a few years ago was a fairly extreme example of this.

Many charities do valuable and outstanding work but having objectives that are ostensibly for the greater good does not insulate them from the problems common to all organisations, particularly large ones.

[Nefertiti2]

Miliband is 0.11% of expenses. The CEO I was looking at is 0.65%, though there is certainly a lot of crazy that goes on when you get scale.

what does that have to do with anything?

[Patrick Thistle]

Benjm I have a lot of professional involvement with a massive health charity and have sat in meetings where they have talked about their income on a UK level as between 40 and 50m per annum. They have a team in Wales that dwarfs most healthcare teams and yet pressurise the NHS to spend money on a different new silver bullet every year. They bitch to government if they don't get it and move onto the next silver bullet if they do get it.

I talk to lots of people with that health condition who are trying to support other people with it, and none of them want to work with the big charity for all kinds of reasons but the main one being they take credit for other people's work and do very little to practically help people. It's a standing joke among people with the condition how little help they get.

There have been some good things, but in terms of ROI I think it's quite poor.

[Benjm]

That does sound pretty shoddy, PT. The senior executives of large charities can be very detached from their supposed constituency. It parallels the private sector in that there's a golden circle of directors whose selling point is supposedly their transferable leadership skills rather than any familiarity with the field that they pitch up in.

[Nefertiti2]

like the ability to transition from moving people around the world to be tortured to working for a group called "international rescue.

[ChrisJ]

I don't know if you're specifically interested in UK/western organisations, but a few years ago I spent 6 months working (teaching) for a small Tibetan educational charity. I didn't get paid, but I had a room in the school with the students and the school provided meals for staff and students. The head of the school was a Tibetan refugee and was the only member of the whole operation who was paid (I think) but not much. Staff and students shared all the cleaning, cooking and maintenance jobs to keep the costs down. The directors and trustees of the charity were unpaid also.

[caja-dglh]

what does that have to do with anything?

The scale of the grifting involved?

[Patrick Thistle]

I don't object to charities having paid staff if they can afford it.

Something else from when I worked at the charity was the distinction in staff depending on why they worked there. I was hired into a particular role and stayed in that role my entire tenure. Other people worked for the charity because they really wanted to work for the charity. They often floated around the organisation doing different things in different departments as jobs came up. There was usually friction between the people hired for their skills and the lifers who kept popping up in different places and getting rewarded for their loyalty.

There were some weird appointment processes including a young woman hired to lead up a flagship new project funded entirely by some very wealthy donors. Her main qualification seemed to be being married to a guy who had been an intern shadowing the Chief Executive (and who got the intern job because his dad was buddies with the Chief Executive). That might sound a harsh summary on that woman's competency but the programme tanked, she left on a strategically timed maternity leave, and the new person coming in cleaned up the disaster and effectively retired the project. The CEO wasn't involved in the hiring process that time, so we got someone useful.

[Patrick Thistle]

I don't know if you're specifically interested in UK/western organisations, but a few years ago I spent 6 months working (teaching) for a small Tibetan educational charity. I didn't get paid, but I had a room in the school with the students and the school provided meals for staff and students. The head of the school was a Tibetan refugee and was the only member of the whole operation who was paid (I think) but not much. Staff and students shared all the cleaning, cooking and maintenance jobs to keep the costs down. The directors and trustees of the charity were unpaid also.

That sounds great Chris.

[NHH]

I clearly approach this the wrong way. I was director of one charity for six years and I've been trustee of another one for over three years and I've never earnt a penny of salary from either position.

Legally speaking in the UK, a trustee can't earn a penny from a charity for being a trustee, or else they break the law.

[MsD]

Agree with others' experiences of large charities.

(I've also worked for a couple of small charities. There were some irritations, not on the same scale.)