How much in the £????

SeanTowers · 24 December 2018 at 12:08PM

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

It's a hard thing to quantify in terms of straight percentages though: 'league tables' for schools tell you what % of pupils got what grades, and now they do at least offer a 'value added' figure, BUT I'm sure people very often still just look at the final figures.

So one charity may spend 50% of its income on charitable activities, and another may spend 75%. That doesn't tell you which is making best use of its funds, or even which is best run.

Look at Chester Zoo, cuddly or not so cuddly animals in a disaster hits the news, and out come the cheque books. AIDS victims, not such an easy sell: you may need to employ more fundraisers and communications staff to raise each £.

I would have to disagree slightly, your purpose as a charity is to do charitable things and spending 50% on non-charitable things shouldn't be acceptable, no matter how well you manage the other 50%. When the public donate £1 they assume/expect it to be spent on the cause, not 50p on the cause and 50p on raising more money. However I agree that charitable spend alone doesn't tell the whole story, you need to look at staff wages, particularly management and where all the money goes ideally. The main point being that charities need to be more transparent so that the public can make a well-informed decision.

Savvy_Sue · 24 December 2018 at 7:57PM

SeanTowers wrote: »

I would have to disagree slightly, your purpose as a charity is to do charitable things and spending 50% on non-charitable things shouldn't be acceptable, no matter how well you manage the other 50%. When the public donate £1 they assume/expect it to be spent on the cause, not 50p on the cause and 50p on raising more money.

True enough, however that 50p wouldn't be exclusively spent on raising money, and I'm really just giving broad examples.

SeanTowers wrote: »

However I agree that charitable spend alone doesn't tell the whole story, you need to look at staff wages, particularly management and where all the money goes ideally. The main point being that charities need to be more transparent so that the public can make a well-informed decision.

I am not sure charities could ever be sufficiently transparent to enable the majority of the public to make a well-informed decision ... It's like the Ofsted reports I referred to earlier, you can do the whole 'value added' thing, but what are most parents going to look at? How many pupils got Grade C or above in 5 GCSEs including Maths and English. (And I know that's out of date, mercifully mine left the system before this latest nonsense ... )

And when you come up against the whole 'charities shouldn't have any paid staff it should all be done by volunteers' mentality, you just want to weep, don't you?

I will declare an interest, I do work for a small charity, and if I do my job right then the staff who work with our clients will have a much easier time, because they won't have to fix the photocopier, or (today's delight) worry about whether or not we're insured, or wonder whether they'll be paid on time.

I've been fortunate to have good managers who recognise that replacing our computers BEFORE they break or grind to a complete halt will improve productivity and staff morale.

But I know that in some charities spend on 'admin' and 'staff resources' would be regarded as a necessary evil to be kept as low as possible - regardless of improved productivity.

SeanTowers · 24 December 2018 at 8:57PM

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

True enough, however that 50p wouldn't be exclusively spent on raising money, and I'm really just giving broad examples.

I am not sure charities could ever be sufficiently transparent to enable the majority of the public to make a well-informed decision ... It's like the Ofsted reports I referred to earlier, you can do the whole 'value added' thing, but what are most parents going to look at? How many pupils got Grade C or above in 5 GCSEs including Maths and English. (And I know that's out of date, mercifully mine left the system before this latest nonsense ... )

And when you come up against the whole 'charities shouldn't have any paid staff it should all be done by volunteers' mentality, you just want to weep, don't you?

I will declare an interest, I do work for a small charity, and if I do my job right then the staff who work with our clients will have a much easier time, because they won't have to fix the photocopier, or (today's delight) worry about whether or not we're insured, or wonder whether they'll be paid on time.

I've been fortunate to have good managers who recognise that replacing our computers BEFORE they break or grind to a complete halt will improve productivity and staff morale.

But I know that in some charities spend on 'admin' and 'staff resources' would be regarded as a necessary evil to be kept as low as possible - regardless of improved productivity.

I'll also declare my interest, I'm a trustee and treasurer of a small local charity.

50p in the pound is spent exlusively on raising more money in this instance. Staff wages, fixing the photocopier, insurances, admin and new computers all fall under charitable activities if they are being used for charitable purposes. I'm not objecting to the overheads of running a large charity, I'm objecting to excessive fundraising spend. Fundraising takes money out of the charity sector into profit making companies and often the result is just convincing someone to donate to charity A rather than charity B. As an examle, we work in the homeless sector and there are 2 homeless charities in our town. If we ran a fundraising campaign we would increase our income but some of that would be diverted from the other homeless charity and some of that would be diverted from charities with a different cause. It's true that some of it might be from people who were not going to donate to any charity otherwise but there is no accurate data on the split.

Savvy_Sue · 26 December 2018 at 12:39PM

SeanTowers wrote: »

I'll also declare my interest, I'm a trustee and treasurer of a small local charity.

50p in the pound is spent exlusively on raising more money in this instance. Staff wages, fixing the photocopier, insurances, admin and new computers all fall under charitable activities if they are being used for charitable purposes. I'm not objecting to the overheads of running a large charity, I'm objecting to excessive fundraising spend. Fundraising takes money out of the charity sector into profit making companies and often the result is just convincing someone to donate to charity A rather than charity B. As an examle, we work in the homeless sector and there are 2 homeless charities in our town. If we ran a fundraising campaign we would increase our income but some of that would be diverted from the other homeless charity and some of that would be diverted from charities with a different cause. It's true that some of it might be from people who were not going to donate to any charity otherwise but there is no accurate data on the split.

I don't know if this would work in a smaller place than ours (large city with multiple charities and 'random' groups of various sizes) but there is an annual sleepout organised which any group can take part in - it's the culmination of a week of homelessness awareness activities. It's great to get them working together rather than in competition.

How much in the £????

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free