How UK’s ‘Poverty’ Charities Are Run by Cynical Fat-Cats

  1. Home
  2. World
By Harry Phibbs | 4:28 am, August 15, 2016
Read More

British charities have never been noisier.

There is the aggressive fund-raising using chuggers and tele-fundraising. Typically a chugger agency will be paid around £100 for each direct debit they get signed up. So perhaps for the first year or longer the charity doesn’t get a penny of what is supposed to be a charitable donation.

Although they result from high pressure, at least the donations made this way are voluntary. Often charities obtain a big chunk of their revenues from the state. This means they find it advantageous to divert ever-more of their resources into political lobbying.

A depressing part of the mix in this cynical environment is that those who run the charities are often rather well remunerated – while they fill the letters pages of newspapers and TV news bulletins with high-minded indignation.

While making political demands for equality, charity pay policies often show they are not averse to “fat cat” pay packages for their own chief executives. Typically staff are also rather better-paid than those who make donations in good faith – the pay in these organisations is well above the British average.

“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons,” as the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked.

Consider some of the notionally “anti-poverty” charities in the UK:

War on Want

This is a left wing “charity” which campaigns against free trade. It has even joined other far left groups such as the Communist Party in the “People’s Assembly against Austerity“.

Their annual report, listing all the demos they organise – against everyone from Israel to Boots the chemist – reads like the Dave Spart spoof in Private Eye.

Of the £2.1 million it raised last year there was £65,380 from the Department for International Development, £131,733 from the European Commission and £140,981 from the Big Lottery Fund. It has 18 full-time and three part-time staff – so roughly 20 full-time equivalents. Wages and salaries come to £705,974. That’s an average of £35,300 – comfortably above the average UK salary of £26,500.

Shelter

This outfit, which has charitable status, styles itself the “National Campaign for Homeless People”.

Some people who donate to this charity might imagine that it provides shelter. Yet it does not provide a single home.

Instead it spends its money on political lobbying – often of a misguided nature which worsens the problem it is supposedly seeking to solve. For example, it opposes the reform which allows councils and housing associations to charge market rents to rich tenants.

Yet charging higher rents for those who can afford it would fund an increase in the supply of housing for those who need it. If, when asked to pay a market rent, the wealthy tenant moves out, that frees up a property.

If they stay and pay a higher rent, that means money is available for new building. Perversely, the Department for Communities and Local Government hands over £2.525 million a year of our money to this organisation which campaigns against Government policy.

Shelter’s own high-ups don’t need to worry to much about paying for their housing.

Its chief executive is Campbell Robb who formerly worked for the Labour Party. According to the accounts he is paid between £130,000 and £140,000.

There are also another five Shelter staff paid between £80,000 and £90,000 and two more paid between £60,000 and £70,000.

The Child Poverty Action Group

Another very political “charity”. It lists its activities as assorted demands to increase public spending and “contributing to Fabian Society research”.

An indirect source of state funding is charging for the public sector to send staff on welfare rights courses. CPAG’s chief executive Alison Garnham is paid between £70,000 and £80,000 a year.

Salaries and wages come to £1.5 million for its staff of 40 – that comes to £37,590 per person, over £10,000 more than the UK average.

Oxfam

Another organisation with charitable status but no stranger to political controversy.

The actress Scarlett Johansson resigned as an ambassador for Oxfam in 2014 after a “fundamental difference of opinion” with the charity over Israel. Oxfam objected to her also being a brand ambassador for SodaStream, which has a factory in the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the West Bank.

Oxfam declared the company’s operations “further the ongoing poverty” of the Palestinians. That is evidently not a view which is shared by Palestinians who choose to work for the firm – alongside Israeli staff being treated equally in good employment conditions.

An example of Oxfam's well-funded activism
An example of Oxfam’s well-funded activism

Often it seems that Oxfam is more concerned with equality than poverty. Last year it’s “Even It Up” report claimed the richest 1% had 48% of the wealth – an analysis that was widely derided as flawed.

Yet when it comes to paying its own staff Oxfam would seem to be “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” as Peter Mandelson used to say.

Mark Goldring, Oxfam’s chief executive is paid between £120,000 and £130,000.

There are two more staff on over £100,000. Plus 31 more at Oxfam on between £60,000 and £100,000. Kerrr-ching.

There are 55 Oxfam staff who work on “communications”; 141 on “campaigns and policy”; and 305 on “corporate functions”. Funds from the taxpayer include £11.2 million from the Department for International Development.

Christian Aid

This charity is chaired by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who was notorious for abusing his status to attack Conservative policy via the pages of the New Statesman.

Christian Aid has spent money on posters that compare free trade to a tsunami, and once paid for newspaper advertisements with the slogan: “Tell Tony Blair to stop backing free trade policies”.

The global poverty rate has been halved in 20 years – thanks to free trade, and not to Christian Aid’s staggeringly misguided campaigns.

Loretta Minghella, the chief executive, is paid between £120,000 and £130,000. Another 15 staff at Christian Aid are paid between £60,000 and £100,000.

The average paid is £37,500. “This is the richest generation in history. It is also the most unequal,” says the charity in its annual report.

Quite so. When the organisation was founded in the 1940s, under the name Christian Reconstruction in Europe, could the founders have ever imagined that such exorbitant pay packages would be sanctioned?

There are plenty of other charities out there which are doing effective practical work to alleviate poverty both in the UK and overseas.

According to the Charities Aid Foundation the UK is now the most generous nation in Europe and the sixth most generous country in the world.

But before you give, do make a few checks that your generosity is not being abused.

Advertisement

Related

New Questions For Cameron Over CBE Given To Camila Batmanghelidjh

Fraudsters Beware of Charity Scams Claiming to Aid Hurricane Matthew Victims

Also ...