Charities

[Crundy]

Although this rant is probably going to sound horrible I thought I'd put it out there anyway.

What the hell happened to charities? I seem to remember the days when they were run by volunteers rattling tins outside shops, organising fundrasing events, and getting free sponsorship from churches and shops to put an ad up asking for donations. Any money made would go a good cause and if you didn't make too much one month then id didn't matter. Nowadays it's a full-on multi-million pound competitive enterprise where everyone gets a good wage, there is a fat cat director / chairman earning 6 figures, and they use every aggressive marketing tactic in the book to squeeze as much money as possible out of the public.

The reason I ask is because I got completely raped by a hyperactive woman on my doorstep armed with a direct debit mandate. They seem to be very proficient in every trick in the book to prey on your manners, guilt and politeness to get as much as they can from you. I love the opening line as well, which is always "Don't worry - I'm not selling anything!". No, you're not. You're trying to get money out of me without any exchange of goods or services, which is even worse than if you were selling something.

Also, of the £6.50 per month I'll be donating to deaf kids (or whatever the hell it was), I find out that the psycho woman gets just over a pound of it. Along with the expenses of running the charity, (reduced) tax, and a nice slice for the fat cat at the top, how much of my money will actually go a deaf kid (or whatever the hell it was)?

I just feel that charities have gone the wrong way. The techniques they use to get money out of people would never be used by any other kind of company. I seem to remember getting cold calls from a couple of charities a while ago, even though I'm registered with the TPS (which makes it illegal). I presume they don't bother cleaning their lists with the assumption "no-one would grass up a charity".

Perhaps Ron Hubbard was wrong, starting a charity and being the chairman is the easiest way to get rich. Just make up a duff cause (like Camel Toe Sufferers, or Itchy Scrot Syndrome), blackmail and badger money out of people, give a slice to a few people with the condition and take home £100k. Sounds like a winner to me.

I should add the disclaimer that charities do a lot of good work, and I'm not slating their humanitarian views, just the manner in which they fund themselves and the chunk taken out for the employees.

</rant>

 

[geni]

Given the size of many larger charities 100K isn't that much for the chief executive. The only place you will find people running larger organisations for less money is the public sector.

However that is big charities. Smaller charities will still tend to have an all volenteer upper tier with maybe one person employed to answer the phone.

 

[Lothian]

I just feel that charities have gone the wrong way. The techniques they use to get money out of people would never be used by any other kind of company.

What charities do is outsource fundraising. Outsourcing is common among businesses.

 

[fuelair]

Although this rant is probably going to sound horrible I thought I'd put it out there anyway.

What the hell happened to charities? I seem to remember the days when they were run by volunteers rattling tins outside shops, organising fundrasing events, and getting free sponsorship from churches and shops to put an ad up asking for donations. Any money made would go a good cause and if you didn't make too much one month then id didn't matter. Nowadays it's a full-on multi-million pound competitive enterprise where everyone gets a good wage, there is a fat cat director / chairman earning 6 figures, and they use every aggressive marketing tactic in the book to squeeze as much money as possible out of the public.

The reason I ask is because I got completely raped by a hyperactive woman on my doorstep armed with a direct debit mandate. They seem to be very proficient in every trick in the book to prey on your manners, guilt and politeness to get as much as they can from you. I love the opening line as well, which is always "Don't worry - I'm not selling anything!". No, you're not. You're trying to get money out of me without any exchange of goods or services, which is even worse than if you were selling something.

Also, of the £6.50 per month I'll be donating to deaf kids (or whatever the hell it was), I find out that the psycho woman gets just over a pound of it. Along with the expenses of running the charity, (reduced) tax, and a nice slice for the fat cat at the top, how much of my money will actually go a deaf kid (or whatever the hell it was)?

I just feel that charities have gone the wrong way. The techniques they use to get money out of people would never be used by any other kind of company. I seem to remember getting cold calls from a couple of charities a while ago, even though I'm registered with the TPS (which makes it illegal). I presume they don't bother cleaning their lists with the assumption "no-one would grass up a charity".

Perhaps Ron Hubbard was wrong, starting a charity and being the chairman is the easiest way to get rich. Just make up a duff cause (like Camel Toe Sufferers, or Itchy Scrot Syndrome), blackmail and badger money out of people, give a slice to a few people with the condition and take home £100k. Sounds like a winner to me.

I should add the disclaimer that charities do a lot of good work, and I'm not slating their humanitarian views, just the manner in which they fund themselves and the chunk taken out for the employees.

</rant>

When someone knocks on my door unbidden, they do so at their own risk. I do not ever buy, I almost never contribute, I am always armed (though they can't see it). Door-to-door is so 1950s it's not even funny. I have no concience with salespeople I have not contacted for information.

 

[Francesca R]

Charities have to publish audited accounts, same as regular companies, so you can see what the costs they charge out are. Philanthropy is bigger business than it was. That needs talent to manage. I prefer it that way to not knowing where the money goes. There is huge scope for corruption if charities are unregulated, and if those working for them are not compensated in an above-board and competitive manner.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Given the size of many larger charities 100K isn't that much for the chief executive. The only place you will find people running larger organisations for less money is the public sector.

Do you have any source for the claim that public sector wages are lower than comparable jobs in the voluntary sector?

 

[blutoski]

Do you have any source for the claim that public sector wages are lower than comparable jobs in the voluntary sector?

I think he meant that the public sector and volunteer sector both have lower remuneration for directorships than commerce, for organizations of equal size.

 

[geni]

Do you have any source for the claim that public sector wages are lower than comparable jobs in the voluntary sector?

No because that wasn't my claim. You do get odities in the public service where people will be running very large organisations on comparitavly low pay levels.

Going by http://society.guardian.co.uk/salarysurvey/table/0,,1042677,00.html and http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2006-10-23b.95495.h the highest earning charity people are about level with whatever they call permanent under-secretaries these days. Generaly fairly good value for money.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Do you guys have anything in the UK like CharityWatch? That's run by the American Institute of Philanthropy and rates organizations based on how much they spend on actual programs. (Their accepted minimum to get a C, or barely passing, grade is 60%.)

Even they warn that you can't always tell if the ones with higher program expenses are really spending money on education or whatever their stated goal is... If you include a "Smoking Kills" sticker in a fund-raising solicitation, for example, you can write-off portions of the fund-raising as being "program expenditures".

It's a US site, but interesting reading. I check in from time to time just to learn what new scams pseudo-fundraisers are up to.

http://www.charitywatch.org/index.html



Warning: My first encounter with the site was much like the first time I discovered SWIFT... I read for hours and hours.

Oh, and as to "executive" salaries. You can't really trust the figures. Many executives of non-profits also, through friends or relatives, own the fundraising companies they hire. This is a common scam. They earn a hundred thousand on paper, but they pay the fundraiser millions.

 

[Lothian]

Do you guys have anything in the UK like CharityWatch? That's run by the American Institute of Philanthropy and rates organizations based on how much they spend on actual programs. (Their accepted minimum to get a C, or barely passing, grade is 60%.)

We have the charity commission who regulate and investigate charities. I recall (10+ years ago) that they are interested in charities whose admin costs (including salaries) exceed 20% of income; that however is just a rough rule. Ultimately they want to ensure that charitable funds are spent on the causes they were given to.

 

[Tanja]

Lothian, do you mean all staff salaries, or admin/management salaries, or something else?

Sometimes spending on salaries is actually spending directly on the cause - in the charity I work for we employ specialist caseworkers who directly help our charity's clients. The purpose of many charities is not to give money to their targeted clients, but some kind of service or information etc.

 

[Darat]

For English & Welsh charities: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ For Scottish ones: http://www.oscr.org.uk/

You can find pretty much all the details about all UK based charities from those two links.

 

[Foolmewunz]

For English & Welsh charities: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ For Scottish ones: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/

You can find pretty much all the details about all UK based charities from those two links.

Thanks. As the resident do-gooder at work, I like to be on top of this stuff. A lot of the UK based charities solicit over here, and I want to know who I can smack in the chops (figuratively, of course). The worst here was those wonderful folks at Oxfam who organized a Charity Walk for SARS. Brilliant! The city was in the midst of an epidemic involving an easily transmittable (but with details of transmission not known) disease! In the advert in the newspaper it actually stated that since the government had recommended that large groups of people should not congregate, people could support the "walk" by staying home and sending in donations! (I wish to Hell I'd kept a copy of that edition of the paper!) They never said who they were raising the money for or what they were proposing to do with it. Obviously it was organizational fund-raising. Cretins!

 

[Lothian]

Lothian, do you mean all staff salaries, or admin/management salaries, or something else?

Sometimes spending on salaries is actually spending directly on the cause - in the charity I work for we employ specialist caseworkers who directly help our charity's clients. The purpose of many charities is not to give money to their targeted clients, but some kind of service or information etc.

It is just a rough rule and the starting point. The actual percentage depends on the charity. Their responsibility is to the donors to charitable funds. They want it spent on the right thing and the aims of the charity are relevant.

A 'charity' which ran some shops with unpaid staff that made £50k a year, paid the chief exec £45k and donated £5k to research, would I expect get investigated and its charitable status would be under threat.

Where the 'staff' are what the donors know they are paying for it is a different case.

 

[sophia8]

Thanks. As the resident do-gooder at work, I like to be on top of this stuff. A lot of the UK based charities solicit over here, and I want to know who I can smack in the chops (figuratively, of course). The worst here was those wonderful folks at Oxfam who organized a Charity Walk for SARS. Brilliant! The city was in the midst of an epidemic involving an easily transmittable (but with details of transmission not known) disease! In the advert in the newspaper it actually stated that since the government had recommended that large groups of people should not congregate, people could support the "walk" by staying home and sending in donations! (I wish to Hell I'd kept a copy of that edition of the paper!) They never said who they were raising the money for or what they were proposing to do with it. Obviously it was organizational fund-raising. Cretins!

'Walk For Health' to Raise Funds for SARS Prevention

Through the activity, Oxfam Hong Kong hopes to raise funds to assist marginalized groups in their SARS prevention efforts.
Oxfam Hong Kong said it has been closely monitoring the impact of the disease on marginalized groups. It had allocated a fund of 500,000 HK dollars (US$64,103) for applications by community bodies for their efforts in helping marginalized groups in preventing SARS.

 

[Foolmewunz]

'Walk For Health' to Raise Funds for SARS Prevention

Thanks, Sophia... I was looking for stuff at the Oxfam site. Didn't think to check news archives. The advert itself actually mentioned the "bad idea to congregate"... but the article is pretty accurate. I remember thinking that I'd just walk over to the pub and claim that I'd taken part. So, I stand corrected... it wasn't "stay home". It was "choose your own route so as to avoid being in contact with others".

It was still dumb.

 

[The Atheist]

I should add the disclaimer that charities do a lot of good work, and I'm not slating their humanitarian views, just the manner in which they fund themselves and the chunk taken out for the employees.

Well, what else should they do?

If they were able to rely on volunteers, they still would, but it just doesn't happen. That's the main reason street appeals have disappeared - they can never get enough volunteers.

Government assistance has decreased worldwide while costs have spiralled. As a result, charities have had to become much more business-like and pretty much all charity "collectors" are commission-based. Most charities use telemarketing, of which about 25% is paid to the successful marketer.

I work with a number of charities and I can assure you that [in our neck of the woods for certain, and most likely everywhere else] they struggle to make ends meet and pretty much all staff make sacrifices by working in an industry which is poorly paid - usually because they feel the need to work in the area.

It does tend to look bad, when you realise that a sizeable chunk of your donation is going on costs and commissions, but until people put their hands in their pockets without coercion, the charities have little choice.

As noted, the salaries may look large, but a charity can actually save money by having a better-quality CEO and paying more than would seem necessary. Nowadays, charities are competing for discretionary dollars with a lot more different types of targets than happened 40 years ago. I can remember counting money for a 3rd-world-aid charity 30 years ago, when their collection was $3m nationally. Now, that same charity has an annual budget of <$2m. Taking 10x inflation into account over that time, they are surviving on a fraction of what they used to get.

 

[Crundy]

Well, what else should they do?

If they were able to rely on volunteers, they still would, but it just doesn't happen. That's the main reason street appeals have disappeared - they can never get enough volunteers.

Government assistance has decreased worldwide while costs have spiralled. As a result, charities have had to become much more business-like and pretty much all charity "collectors" are commission-based. Most charities use telemarketing, of which about 25% is paid to the successful marketer.

I work with a number of charities and I can assure you that [in our neck of the woods for certain, and most likely everywhere else] they struggle to make ends meet and pretty much all staff make sacrifices by working in an industry which is poorly paid - usually because they feel the need to work in the area.

It does tend to look bad, when you realise that a sizeable chunk of your donation is going on costs and commissions, but until people put their hands in their pockets without coercion, the charities have little choice.

As noted, the salaries may look large, but a charity can actually save money by having a better-quality CEO and paying more than would seem necessary. Nowadays, charities are competing for discretionary dollars with a lot more different types of targets than happened 40 years ago. I can remember counting money for a 3rd-world-aid charity 30 years ago, when their collection was $3m nationally. Now, that same charity has an annual budget of <$2m. Taking 10x inflation into account over that time, they are surviving on a fraction of what they used to get.

I don't dispute that they are struggling financially, or that they have to perform in a business manner. What I object to is the aggressive marketing tactics used which are justified by the fact that they are a charity organisation.

Would it be acceptable if they started utilising pickpockets to steal two pounds out of the pocket of everyone on the high street? After all, they're a charity and should be allowed to.

At the end of the day, if a broadband company send round a spotty teenager to knock on my door asking if I want to switch my provider, they will get the door in the face, yet to do so to someone clutching a direct debit mandate would probably result in me being lynched. If the competition from other charities is too great then shouldn't they merge?

 

[The Atheist]

I don't dispute that they are struggling financially, or that they have to perform in a business manner. What I object to is the aggressive marketing tactics used which are justified by the fact that they are a charity organisation.

What other tactics can they use?

If they don't ask, they don't get - that much is clear; standing on a street corner with a collection tin doesn't work, the collectors have to physically ask for money.

Next step: who is going to do the asking? Every salesperson worth his/her salt is already in a good job, earning much better money than they can for charity, so the charities are left with the dregs. So, from a well below-average workforce, the charity has to train people up to get money for them and hard-sell tactics are used for two reasons: it works and it's easily understood by the people employed. (Usually, it's the only tactic they understand)

Charities are caught in a vicious circle. If they pay their staff well enough to attract top-flight staff, they will be slated for spending too much income on wages, if they use spotty teenagers, they're slated for being unprofessional and pushy. When in a no-win situation, one makes the best of it, which is what charities do; every single day.

If the competition from other charities is too great then shouldn't they merge?

Not a very practical answer, even though there would be benefits from economies of scale.

 

[Crundy]

What other tactics can they use?

If they don't ask, they don't get - that much is clear; standing on a street corner with a collection tin doesn't work, the collectors have to physically ask for money.

Sorry but I disagree with that. If the company I work for starts losing business and profits drop then I would not think it acceptable for them to employ people to knock on doors, bug people on busy street corners, and phone random people at tea time to increase income. I would leave if they even considered it.