Charities are not doing enough in response to attacks on chief executive pay, a Directory of Social Change conference heard yesterday.

Jay Kennedy, director of policy at the DSC, said yesterday that charity chief executives had been "hung out to dry" by their trustee boards, and that the whole sector was suffering because other charities were being "tarred with the same brush".

But Peter Wanless, NSPCC’s chief executive, said trustees are willing to speak up but suspects no-one wants to listen.

The pair were speaking on a panel at the DSC’s Charity Question Time event yesterday in response to a question from Civil Society News on whether they feel there is a lack of public understanding on charity chief executive pay and whether the sector should be doing more to defend itself.

Kennedy and Wanless were both members of the panel, which was chaired by the DSC’s chief executive Debra Allcock Tyler, as well as Tesse Akpeki, a consultant at BWB, and Dame Julia Cleverdon.

Kennedy said that he doesn’t think the charities which are paying the large salaries – which he said are justifiable – are doing enough to defend themselves, and neither are their boards.

He said: “In the recent debate about this I almost feel that charity chief executives were hung out to dry a little bit, and not only were they getting pilloried, but they also had their hands tied.”

He recommended a “charity defence league”, like the one that has been mooted in the United States by fundraiser and author Dan Pallotta, that would be able to speak out on such issues.

Kennedy said: “Pallotta has got the point of anti-defamation and I would like to see the larger charities who are paying larger salaries come together and make the case for this - why it is important, why when you have an organisation that is serving millions of different people in tonnes of different countries, you need someone to lead that that has a specific skills set, and you need to remunerate for that. But I’m not seeing that.”

He added that this shouldn’t be left up to the infrastructure bodies like NCVO and Acevo, but that larger charities need to be putting resource into it.

Kennedy did make the point that around 75 per cent of charities do not have anyone called a chief executive, but that smaller charities are being “tarred with the same brush” when these issues recieve mass media attention as it impacts the charity sector brand.

Wanless (pictured), who was recently at the centre of an attack by The Sun on chief executive pay, said that charities, like the NSPCC, should be judged by the extent of their outcomes and impact on the vulnerable people they help.

He said that the nature of the service charities supply is changing, for example the 24 hour age of the NSPCC and the ability of charities to “mobilise extraordinary resource”, such as they have recently done in Syria and Nepal.

He said: “This can mean life and death to very vulnerable people right across the globe so is an extraordinary achievement. So fair play in my point of view to the people that lead and take responsibility for that.”

Explanations of salaries ‘don't fit the script’

Wanless said that if charity chief executives “screw up and aren’t able to deliver what we are supposed to deliver, then we should absolutely be held accountable for that”, but that there is obviously a lot of pressure from trustees and supporters for the charity to succesfully deliver.

He said that charities “could and should get better as a sector at distinguishing between different sorts of charities that exist and the different nature and scale of the challenges”, but that he is not so sure about the merits of telling trustees to speak up on chief executive pay.

Wanless said: “My chair has appeared before a select committee and explained how the NSPCC sets salaries but no-one is interested. It doesn’t fit the script of the story that people want to tell at the moment, so I think he and others are available to tell the story, but will anyone give them air time – I’m not sure.”

Akpeki said she is very certain that the sector needs to remunerate its leaders properly.

She said: “I feel very passionate that people are well paid. I think it should also be linked into chief executive appraisals and reviews, so you can show what is being paid. In the commercial world you get all these benefits and bonuses, which you don’t get any of in the charity sector. I think make it transparent, make it systematic and let us attract the talent that we need.”

Fundraising in crisis?

The panel also responded to a question on whether fundraising is in crisis at the moment.

Kennedy said he believes that there “absolutely isn’t” a fundraising crisis, saying that the data on giving from individuals is steady.

He said that charities have to ask for money, and that "the crisis is that people in Nepal don’t have anywhere to live, the crisis is that people in Syria are displaced, or that the local hospice is going to close down, or children are suffering terrible abuse”. Not that people are getting a “few letters through their doors every month”.

Allcock Tyler said that there are not any major charities coming out to speak about their fundraising techniques, and questioned Wanless on why he thinks that is. He said that he wasn’t sure that that is the case but charities “must be proud about fundraising because that is how they raise the money and do the work they do”.

He said he is happy to speak out about the merits of fundraising techniques but charities can’t be complacent or repetitive in their fundraising practices.