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How to mount a defence against a tabloid press obsessed with high pay 2

Governance | Tania Mason | 16 Jul 2010

Tania Mason offers three key messages charities could use when the media puts the sector in the spotlight in its campaign against high pay.

Pay is the new expenses. This week alone, London’s Evening Standard has been full of stories attacking Brussels bureaucrats for trying to award themselves inflation-busting pay hikes, and London’s state school headteachers taking home up to quarter of a million quid a year.  Housing association chiefs have already had their pay scrutinised and criticised.

So how long will it be before other charities are in the firing line?  And, more importantly, how will they defend themselves?

A quick scan of Civil Society’s latest survey of CEOs' salaries shows there is plenty of ammunition for a tabloid press obsessed with high pay. The UK’s highest-paid charity employee, at Nuffield Health, earned just over £800,000 last year.  The next highest-paid executive, at the Wellcome Trust, earned around £580,000.  Among the household-name charities, Cancer Research UK and Barnardo’s were among the highest, paying around £250,000 and £160,000  respectively.

So when the call comes, as it inevitably will, will the sector seize the opportunity to start educating the public about the realities of running a modern charity?  Here are a few simple messages charities could use:

One:  A chief executive is not an ‘overhead’

If the charity did not employ any people, it would cease to exist and then would not be able to house the 50,000 homeless people/rescue the 100,000 stray dogs/offer care and support to the 70,000 troubled kids (delete as applicable) that it will help this year.  This obsession with ‘wasting money on overheads’ such as staff is a false measurement – employing people is core to achieving any organisation’s aims.

Two:  The charity CEO’s salary pales in comparison to the pay of executives of companies that arguably contribute to the problems charities are trying to fix

Compare the salary of, say, the chief executive of CRUK (£250,000) with the package of the CEO of British American Tobacco (£5.1m). Or the £100,000-odd paid to RSPB’s chief executive with the £4.4m paid to BP’s Tony Hayward.  Or the British Heart Foundation's £180,000 and the £4.6m package pocketed by David Brennan of drugs company AstraZeneca.

To paraphrase US fundraiser Dan Pallotta, it’s an upside-down society that values the management of illness 24 times more than its eradication. Suddenly our sector salaries seem great value for money. 

Three:  If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Talent costs money.  But surely the value of a charity’s chief executive should be measured by the outcomes the charity produces, not the zeroes on its CEO’s salary.  Return on investment is a much better measure of effectiveness.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of ideas, but it’s a start.  If you have any others, please enter them in the comment box below.  This could be an opportunity not to be missed.

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