An open letter to The Charity Commission’s William Shawcross
Guest Blogger | 6 August 2013 | Blogs
Dear Mr Shawcross
I read your comments regarding charity executive salaries this morning with an increasing sense of incredulity.
Of course, the media being the media, you may have been misquoted, or taken out of context. Even so, I hope some constructive feedback is useful.
Advertisement
No matter how well-intentioned your views on ‘very high’ or ‘disproportionate’ salaries of senior charity personnel, there is an obvious danger that your words will be used by the media for damaging scare-mongering (especially in a slow-news August). I guess that can’t have been your intention.
For what it’s worth, my time in the sector (since 1986) has given me a rather different view to your own. Having worked with many good causes – from the local to the international – far from regarding them as profligate, I can only marvel at their resourcefulness in achieving amazing things on limited budgets.
Today it requires a truly exceptional individual to run a major charity. She needs to be committed, compassionate, articulate, analytical, financially uber-literate, culturally attuned, managerially adept, both strategic and fleet of foot, and a true leader.
If someone is able to bring together all of these skills, and deploy them to run an organisation dedicated to making the world a better place, and do so pretty much 24/7, and do so for a salary way less than such skills and dedication would command in the commercial sector, I believe you should be applauding them. Instead, you risk ringing tabloid alarm bells.
Let’s set aside for a moment the moral argument (the one that says somehow bankers deserve a bonus (bonus!) of £1,000,000 a year, while someone leading a complex, global, humanitarian cause should think twice about accepting £100k salary (with no bonus). Let’s set that aside.
Let’s look instead at the impact of good causes, or return on investment. Paying someone a £100k to lead an organisation generating tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds of income which is used to save and enhance millions of lives and, in so doing, deliver flagship humanitarian relief that should make us proud to be British, while providing purposeful employment to thousands… well, that £100k strikes me as a bargain.
Am I saying that high salaries are always right? Of course not. Any trustee should ensure that they get best value from their senior executives. And if senior executives fail to deliver, I’d be quite happy to see them replaced by others who can deliver. The work of our sector is too important to be entrusted to overpaid incompetents – and, fortunately, I don’t believe there are any (always happy to hear evidence to the contrary).
In leading the Charity Commission, I want to see you talking loud and proud about the achievements of the causes who are part of the Disasters Emergency Committee. And other causes too of course. Equally, I want to see you dealing very firmly with corruption and malpractice. Sadly, I think you have given the impression that fairly rewarding outstanding individuals is somehow questionable.
You urge charity trustees to be cautious, yet offer no evidence that they lack caution as a rule. Is there any?
In these austere times, I have no doubt that charity trustees are having to take incredibly tough decisions. Pay freezes, pay cuts, redundancies; these are all currently commonplace, and all while trying to maintain quality of service provision against a backdrop of unprecedented welfare cuts.
Are some salaries ‘very high’ or ‘disproportionate’? Possibly.
Does that justify you using words that may be deployed by the media to impugn the financial probity of so many good causes? Absolutely not.
There is a risk that you underestimate the sophistication of the public. Those who give their time and money to good causes (and, as you know, there are many millions of these lovely people in Britain) know that the sector has changed. They know that good causes have to carry a burden of care that was once met by the state. They know too that overcoming poverty and injustice are not quick fixes. If they were, we’d be living in utopia already.
Moreover the public know that there are different terms of engagement for different roles with charities. When I work as a volunteer, or trustee, or school governor, or give my money to good causes, I don’t expect payment in return. I get a different reward. The causes I engage with give me so much more than I give them – they offer me the chance to put my values into action, to be purposeful, to make a difference. If they are going to benefit from what I, and millions of others, give, then I expect them to be professionally run so that they deliver impact. That means paying good people good salaries for good work.
It’s this delicate balance between an amateur spirit (doing something for the love of it) and a professional delivery of services that has a positive social impact, that makes our sector so important. And in that context, your views seem, well, indelicate and potentially damaging.
Yours sincerely
Derek Humphries
About Guest Blogger