The Charity Finance Group has released its 2012 salary survey, which finds that the largest organisations with over £25m income have increased pay while most staff in charities with £1-5m income have seen their wages drop.

Although when taken as an overall average across the sector salary levels have generally remained consistent since 2011, the relationship between charity size and salary has led to a distinct “widening of the pay gap” between large and small organisations, CFG said.

The fact that large organisations were far more likely to give across-the-board pay awards in 2011 also contributed to the gulf.

Caron Bradshaw, CFG’s CEO, said: “This year we really honed in on the differences between small and large charities as we were seeing notable variations between charity size. While larger organisations appear more likely to offer annual salary increases and other tangible financial incentives to staff, smaller charities are more likely to offer a better work-life balance and opportunities for flexible working.”  

The survey attracted 373 responses and was launched at CFG’s members’ meeting yesterday. It also showed that finance and accountancy teams are more “resilient to the impact of the economic downturn and spending cuts” than other departments. Out of the 54 per cent of respondents who confirmed that their charity was taking cost-cutting measures – such as downsizing temporary staff, ceasing overtime and making redundancies – only a third stated that the finance department had been impacted.

Bradshaw said she was happy that in the current challenging financial climate the value of finance teams was still being recognised: “Finance teams are critical to ensuring organisational stability and the burden falls to them to ensure that every pound works harder when times are tough," she commented. "It follows that they are one area where greater investment is often needed and so less vulnerable to cost cutting measures”.

The full 2012 CFG Salary Survey is available to download from the CFG website.