Research by nfpSynergy has found that just 3 per cent of the public consider charity chief executives’ salaries as money being spent on the cause.

The data comes from the think tank’s sample of 1,000 adults who were asked in March to categorise a list of charity activities and staff members as either administration costs, fundraising costs, or money spent on the cause.

Three-quarters said they thought of the chief executive’s role as an administration cost, with only 4 per cent considering it related to fundraising and just the remaining 3 per cent thinking this role actually contributes to the cause.

In contrast, a person campaigning to change the law, a therapist giving counselling and a nurse feeding children in a refugee camp were all thought of as roles where money has been spent on the cause, the first of these to the extent of 49 per cent.

Joe Saxton (pictured), nfp Synergy’s driver of ideas, said the results show that charities have a long way to go to make the public understand how they work.

“The public see as ‘admin’ things I reckon 99 per cent of charities would see as spending on ‘the cause’, so people feel their money is being far less well spent than it actually is,” he said.

“Charities have a mountain to climb if they are to change the way the public understands them while still maintaining donations of time and money.”

The research report comes mere days after chair of the Charity Commission William Shawcross attracted controversy over comments he made to a national newspaper about the highest-earning charity employees.

Shawcross told The Telegraph: “Trustees should consider whether very high salaries are really appropriate, and fair to both the donors and the taxpayers who fund charities… [they are] risking their reputations if they are not being seen to get a grip on boardroom excess."

The newspaper's story focused on how the salaries at the 14 aid charities that make up the Disasters Emergency Committee were disproportionate to their income fluctutations, but when civilsociety.co.uk's Celina Ribeiro conducted her own research into the matter, she found it to be rather more complex.

The Telegraph followed up with another story today revealing that executives at Save the Children shared performance-related bonuses worth more than £162,000 last year.

Public believes charities are misusing money

The nfpSynergy survey also revealed that the public perceives a gulf between how it thinks charities should distribute their money between administration, fundraising and the cause, and the reality.

Survey participants estimated that charities spend 25 per cent of their capital on fundraising, 36 per cent administration and 39 per cent on the cause.

But figures they would consider acceptable are in fact only 16 per cent on admin, 22 per cent on fundraising and the remaining 63 per cent on cause.

Saxton said of this: “People think charities spend more on admin and far less on the cause than they find acceptable. The irony is that for the vast majority of charities, what they actually spend on admin is probably even lower than the figure people say they’re happy to accept.”