Door to door charity fundraising...

vikingaero

qetu1357 wrote: »

And if someone is CE of a charity with a turnover of £250m how much should they get paid? You will find that these jobs are just as demanding as similar jobs in the private and public sector and the latest survey showed that, on average, charity workers are paid 20% less than private or public sector workers.

You've contradicted yourself there qetu, both here and in other threads. You maintain that a charity should pay the going rate for a CE... and then say that charity workers are paid 20% less. I don't see any CE of a chairty giving up their 20% in a hurry.

qetu1357

Here is Guide Dogs Annual Report

http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/fileadmin/gdmain/user/About_us/Annual_reports_and_accounts/Documents/Annual_Report_and_Accounts.pdf

You can see how much they raise, how they spend and how much they have on reserve.

I don't think they have too much on reserve.

qetu1357

vikingaero wrote: »

You've contradicted yourself there qetu, both here and in other threads. You maintain that a charity should pay the going rate for a CE... and then say that charity workers are paid 20% less. I don't see any CE of a chairty giving up their 20% in a hurry.

Don't believe I have contradicted myself. I've tried to look at all my posts to see whether I have but got a bit bored!

Let me clarify what I think. The "going rate" for a CEO of a charity is less than the "going rate" for a CEO of a company.

For a large charity the going rate can be £100k and more. And will be around 20% less - on average.

What I have argued against is people who expect the CEO to be paid £30k or £40k.

This research explains more on comparing salaries between 3rd sector and private sector:-

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2009/10/02/52401/charity-bosses-pay-trails-private-sector-ones-by-a.html

fallen121

I read the Charity Commission Guidance on reserves

The guidance does set out the difference between general reserves of a charity and "restricted funds", i.e. funds which have been set aside for a specific purpose. This is fair enough. It basically means if some rich benefactor makes a large bequest and states it is to be used for famine relief only, these funds can't be used to shore up the Company Pension Fund, for example. I would expect most companies to have basic rules like this.


In the main, I found the Charities Commission Guidance to be very disappointing. In particular:

Charities would appear to be able to set their own reserves policy.This sseems to me to rather negate the point of having Charity Commission "guidance" in the first place. Presumably this reserves policy could be be adjusted to prevent a single Charity from having to curtail its fund raising activities even though it had large reserves.

Charity law requires any income received by a Charity to be spent within a "reasonable" period of time. But the definition of "reasonable" is that set forward by the Charity's own Trustees. So it could be 50 years, for example, provided the Trustees could provide a reasonable excuse. Alternatively, provided reserves were not restricted in any way, they could quite reasonably be used to attract new "talent" in the form of a New CEO or other salaried officials. So for example, there would be nothing to prevent a Charity from paying its CEO £90,000 PA + pension bonus + golden handshake for predecessor + other benefits from these reserves over a 10 year period and thus be seen to have disposed of £1.2m or so of reserves quite openly and legally....without a single starving child or whatever ever seeing a cent of this money.

If a Charity has a reserves policy, then it has to be stated in the accounts. Similarly, if it doesn't have a reserves policy, this also has to be stated in the accounts. So it would be quite acceptable for the majority of Charities to simply "opt out" of this process, and merely state this in their accounts, without ever having to justify the amount of reserves being accumulated or having to state what they were being used for (unless of course, they were restricted funds set aside for a specific purpose).

All this explains, in part, the comments of the previous poster, who stated that only a couple of charities had been found in breach of their stated reserves policy. The simple way around this is for the charity not to have a reserves policy!

None of this reassures me in any way that Charities are accumulating "appropriate" amounts of reserves to guard against unforeseen circumstances such as recession, where they would have to continue to provide services during a period where receipts from donations might be down.

fallen121

qetu1357 wrote: »

Here is Guide Dogs Annual Report

http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/fileadmin/gdmain/user/About_us/Annual_reports_and_accounts/Documents/Annual_Report_and_Accounts.pdf

You can see how much they raise, how they spend and how much they have on reserve.

I don't think they have too much on reserve.

I thought these accounts were genius. They never state exactly what they have on reserve (apart from the restricted funds, fixed asset and project costs), which is why I presume you weren't able to state an exact figure yourself. Their accountant(s) is/are obviously very talented.

What I found intriguing was that their investments earnt a healthy slice of interest during a period when many of us would consider a couple of percent on a notice account to represent a good deal. Their pension fund on the other hand, made a hefty loss.

What all this tells me is that of the £10 I might give to buy a blind person a guide dog, some of this will go towards research/training/dogfood/trainer remuneration, but a hefty chunk of it will be used to remunerate a Director or shore up the Pension fund liabilities of that Director, and some of it may be salted away for future pension fund liabilities, for example.

The only way I can ENSURE that my £10 is used solely for the provision of a Guide Dog is to restrict the use of the funds in some way. Which probably isn't possible and would no doubt attract some kind of administration overhead.

With all this woolly "guidance" and "self regulation" I can't help feeling we have made it easier and easier for charities to become cottage industries, where the maintenance of Pension Funds, potential to attract "Talent" and the provision of attractive "benefits" are becoming almost as important as the Charitable work itself.

Yes, I understand that it costs money to raise money, but everything is so glossy and so corporate standard. And anyone like me who does stand up and ask for a bit more accountability might just be accused of lacking in charity themselves.

Yes, these accounts are readily available to anyone. But most people accept them because they don't really know what they mean. And anyone auditing them is likely to be employed by the Charity themselves. I though the Charities Commission might actually provide a little more than "Guidance". But their excuse seems to be that it is so difficult to set rules...so why not just leave it up to the Charity to tell us what we want to hear?

qetu1357

fallen121 wrote: »

I thought these accounts were genius. They never state exactly what they have on reserve (apart from the restricted funds, fixed asset and project costs), which is why I presume you weren't able to state an exact figure yourself. Their accountant(s) is/are obviously very talented.

What I found intriguing was that their investments earnt a healthy slice of interest during a period when many of us would consider a couple of percent on a notice account to represent a good deal. Their pension fund on the other hand, made a hefty loss.

What all this tells me is that of the £10 I might give to buy a blind person a guide dog, some of this will go towards research/training/dogfood/trainer remuneration, but a hefty chunk of it will be used to remunerate a Director or shore up the Pension fund liabilities of that Director, and some of it may be salted away for future pension fund liabilities, for example.

The only way I can ENSURE that my £10 is used solely for the provision of a Guide Dog is to restrict the use of the funds in some way. Which probably isn't possible and would no doubt attract some kind of administration overhead.

With all this woolly "guidance" and "self regulation" I can't help feeling we have made it easier and easier for charities to become cottage industries, where the maintenance of Pension Funds, potential to attract "Talent" and the provision of attractive "benefits" are becoming almost as important as the Charitable work itself.

Yes, I understand that it costs money to raise money, but everything is so glossy and so corporate standard. And anyone like me who does stand up and ask for a bit more accountability might just be accused of lacking in charity themselves.

Yes, these accounts are readily available to anyone. But most people accept them because they don't really know what they mean. And anyone auditing them is likely to be employed by the Charity themselves. I though the Charities Commission might actually provide a little more than "Guidance". But their excuse seems to be that it is so difficult to set rules...so why not just leave it up to the Charity to tell us what we want to hear?

I am neither an accountant or an auditor but the accounts seem clear to me.

On reserves Guide Dogs state this:-

Free reserves comprise general funds, the revaluation reserve and the pension reserve. Net free reserves at the end of 2010 amounted to £67.8 million (£96.5 million at the end of 2009).
When someone becomes a client as a guide dog owner we make a commitment to provide them with a guide dog for as long as they require. The average working life of guide dogs is between
six and seven years, so a client may require eight or more dogs during the period of our commitment, with the time taken from a puppy being born to the completion of training being between 20 and 24 months. Furthermore, the highly specialised nature of our work means that
we have to train our own staff, for example to recruit and fully train a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor takes over three years. Also, the expenditure on our buildings and supporting infrastructure is fixed in the medium term and, together with our breeding and training requirements, results in the necessity for a long term cost planning horizon. It is estimated that the total cost of our commitment is in excess of £200m, and is made in the context of our income being derived primarily from voluntary giving, particularly legacies, which can fluctuate significantly.
To mitigate the risk to the delivery of our commitment to each guide dog owner, it is Council's view that free reserves should normally be maintained at a level equivalent to between one and two years' operating costs. However, Council recognises that there may be occasions where investments lead to a reduction in free reserves to a lower amount, with such investments only being undertaken when Council believes that free reserves can then be re-established at the policy level within a reasonable period of time.

So they are having to call on their reserves to fund their services. Also they spent £41m last year on providing guide dogs and they raised £34m in net income. Their current free reserves is £68m which is around 18 months provision of service.

On your point "And anyone auditing them is likely to be employed by the Charity themselves", not true in the overwhelming number of charities. Indeed Guide Dogs have independent auditors:-

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP
St Bride’s House
10 Salisbury Square
London EC4Y 8EH

Anyway what's my point. From my reading on the accounts I think Guide Dogs is a fine charity to give money to.

And if you want to give to a charity and you want to ensure that as much of the following goes to end client I suggest you do the following:-

1. Check out this website http://www.guidestar.org.uk/ and the Charity Commission website
2. Check the last annual accounts to see how much net income is raised and what the ROI is on getting that income
3. See how much of that income is spent on the end client
4. Check out the salaries if they really concern you - although charities cannot pay peanuts for most roles
5. Contact the charity if you have a question
6. If it is a large donation, see if your donation can be restricted so it is spent on a specific project or purpose
7. If you don't want the charity to contact you after the donation tell them when you make your donation.

pmduk

I've collected for St John Ambulance in the past, when I was a member. Back then we had to be specifically licensed to do so (through the organisation) and door-to-door collections were limited to a 2 week period each year, with just one flag day per annum. People were very generous. If only those restrictions were still in place.

Falafely

as a "chugger" the best people were always the honest people,
"I actually don't care about animals," "I'm really !!!!ed off, I don't want to talk to anyone let alone you," "I know I can afford x amount a week, I just don't want to give to charity."
And I really can't understand what winds people up so much. If you have a geniuine reason for not wanting to give to charity, then say it, if you rant and rave and moan then it's unlikely the reason is genuine.
It's like thinking traffic wardens don't drive, they know how frustrating it is to get a ticket, but it's gotta be done.

Waffling on about what you read in this paper or that paper is just dull, and fundraisers aren't paid to debate, as much as most of us would love too.
It's a hard job, but it is a job. People tend to forget that, it's also mainly students, who work whilst studying. It's a form of advertising for charities, resulting in more monthly donors than TV ads, so is particularly useful for smaller charities. Oxfam, Shelter, RSPCA etc have their own 'inhouse' set up.

New guidelines means the decent agencies will only sign up those over 25 and in full time employment.

I now play a game with them... the next one who came I shouted "come in" to which he tried to open the door.... the next one I barked at like an agressive dog bashing the door at the same time to see him running.

This is just tragic, and besides, he got paid a fair bit to stand at your door whilst you wasted time winding up kids.

Never trust Cobra. They are dodgy as hell. Or the ones in suits, the decent companies are full of hippies and other odd looking people, but they never wear suits.

qetu1357

Came across this.

This a very interesting report and explains more what the Charity Commision do.

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Library/track_11.pdf

fallen121

qetu1357 wrote: »

Indeed Guide Dogs have independent auditors:-

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP
St Bride’s House
10 Salisbury Square
London EC4Y 8EH

Much of the information provided here has been extremely valuable. Not just to me but to others.

I have heard of Crowe Clarke Whitehill as they won some kind of Award for being "Pension Auditor of the Year". To be frank, I don't rate these kind of industry awards very highly because the larger firms tend to take it turns to "win" based on who has done the most Business in the last 12 months. I'm sure the Partners and their wives had a good knees-up at the Annual Awards dinner, though. Good luck to them.

Apparently, as well as Pension Funds, CCW also audit a large number of charities (something I admit I was not aware of before today). However, it is precisely BECAUSE the same large conglomerate audit such a large number of UK charities I have to question their impartiality. They have a vested interest in making sure all these charities appear squeaky clean and above board because otherwise it throws their own business model into disrepute.

Crowe Clarke Whitehill were previously known as Horwath Clark Whitehill. A company which was severaly reprimanded by the ICAEW Investigation Committee over a property audit in 2008. So please don't assume they are squeaky clean. No large company is.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will. Perhaps I will never be convinced. But I am reassured by what others have said on here that I am not the only one who is concerned that the >£50k salaries paid to the chief executives of some of these "charities" are more to do with being seen to be a big player and being on a social par with wealthy benefactors. And I really do feel that salaries ought to be paid for from some kind of ring fenced fund set aside for that purpose paid for by some kind of subsidiary business; not funded by public donations intended for famine relief or whatever.

Please, I am not saying for a moment that charities should be run by hippies living in caravans on a salaries of £10,000 a year. That would never work. Even I realise that.

All I am arguing for is that you look beyond the heart tugging adverts and accept that some of the money you are paying out will inevitably end up paying for that nice house, prime time TV advert or seat at an awards dinner. If you can afford it and accept that then fine. But please, if that £8 a month deprives you or your children of something then please remember those Bank reserves. That starving child in Africa will NOT die if you do not sign that DD form, and if they do die then it is probably as a result of a whole host of other things which include corruption in some foreign country that even the most honest and transparent charity is never going to be able to prevent.

I am now going to shut up and give this thread back to the chugger discussion with much apologies for hijacking. If anyone else wants to send me links or suggestions or advice then please feel free to send me a PM.

Thank you for a honest and frank discussion - no-one has chucked any insults or disputed anyone's opposing point of view and I truly appreciate that.