JustGiving’s former client services director has defended the profits and salaries unveiled in the company’s latest accounts and queried why it is less acceptable for it to make decent profits than other companies that supply services to charities.

Tom Mansel-Pleydell, who last year moved to a role as social business developer at social business marketplace ClearlySo, described JustGiving’s £1.39m profits as “pretty impressive” and said he had seen first-hand the “slog” of the people involved to get to this point over the last eight or so years.

Professional Fundraising revealed the extent of JustGiving’s profitability last week, and on the weekend the Sunday Times reported that Help for Heroes had advised its donors not to use JustGiving but to opt instead for bmycharity, which recently announced it would stop charging charities commission on donations.  However, yesterday Help for Heroes denied it had said this, though the journalist stood by his story.

In the wake of the row, Mansel-Pleydell (pictured) hit back at the challenges to “the acceptability of profiting from donations”.

“Are Justgiving any different to telecoms, mail, water, office cleaning, lawyers, banks, taxis, consultancies, payroll, marketing, advertising, insurance companies, ICT providers et al, all of which provide a service to charities to help them operate, grow and do the great things they do?” he said in response to PF’s story.

“Charities pay for these services either wholly or in part from donations - though obviously this varies greatly from one charity to another - so if that service represents good value, whether it is associated ‘directly’ with the donation or not, are charities’ beneficiaries and supporters not benefiting regardless?”

He pointed out that the JustGiving investors had not yet been paid a dividend, had revolutionised online fundraising, and raised hundreds of millions of pounds for charities that would not otherwise have been raised.

“Should that investment be decried as ‘unacceptable’?,” Mansel-Pleydell asked. “Contrast this with competitors – some with extremely deep pockets – which have waited in the wings to see which way the wind blew and, now confident that the online fundraising model works, are flaunting not-for-profit credentials as if profit were some stand-or-fall lynchpin: easy to say when your startup capital comes from the mothership.

”Justgiving is successful because it is good at what it does; if it ceases to be good, it will cease to exist.”

The issue dovetails neatly with the primary theme of Charity Finance Live next Monday, where the blurring of the boundaries between non-profit and for-profit organisations will be examined in a head-to-head debate between provocative US fundraiser Dan Pallotta and ex-Shelter chief Adam Sampson.