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Sarah Hedley
- Tuesday, June 9, 2009
A debate has kicked off in the charity world about whether, in light of the MPs’ allowances scandal, charity Chief Execs should be disclosing their own expense claims. The argument is that the public have a right to know how charity CEOs, just like MPs, are spending their cash.And according to John Tate at the Charity Finance blog, CEOs’ records on expenses are not all good. There is apparently a wealth of posh wine, laptops and business class train tickets to rival MPs’ duck houses, moats and toilet seats.
Clinging onto the Daily Telegraph’s coat-tails this way is understandable, but (to mix my metaphors) a massive red herring. The focus on expenses ignores a much bigger – and more important – problem: that the standards of transparency within the sector as a whole are unfortunately low.
Just look at our charity profiles. Never mind the details of the CEOs’ expenses, nearly half (49%) of charities’ annual reports fail to provide even a broad-brush explanation of where their money came from, or how they spent it.
It’s not just charities’ finances where transparency is lacking either. 62% of charities fail to give an accurate report of their activities by not acknowledging problems they had in the year. Astonishingly, a small minority of charities (11%) don’t reveal how their work has helped their beneficiaries. And hardly any charities successfully talk about the impact they’ve had on the world.
Events at Westminster should act as a spur to increase the transparency of the charity sector. But we need to make sure we get answers to these bigger, more basic questions about how charities have used donors’ money to bring about positive change first. Fussing over how often a CEO claims for a bottle of wine is, in most cases, the least of the sector’s worries.
I saw your tweet and came here expecting to find an apology for NGO secrecy and deception.
In the end - I found myself in full agreement.
I work as a VSO volunteer working in a remote town in Cameroon. I was recently discussing the concept of myself and fellow volunteers making charitable donations after we had finished here.
We all decided that while grass roots NGOs can be little more than a front for personal gain we'd still rather give money to them than huge charitable organisations with their admin cost and expense accounts.
I think transparency will be a huge issue for charities in the future and the one that pays their CEO the least...that most likely where my money is going.
In addition as volunteers (albeit on a living allowance we are somewhat at the sharp end of business) and while we have accepted the pay that goes with such a position there is a lot left to be desired in volunteer treatment.
In our position if we were to find senior staff with whopping expense accounts then I'd be pretty miffed (polite word).
Biggest abuse I can recall - in Hanoi we were all made to, quite rightly, use the train, rather than fly if it was at all possible. The country director, on the other hand not only took the plane but also got his driver to drive through the night to meet him there so he'd have someone to take him around on his arrival.
'Fussing over how often a CEO claims for a bottle of wine is, in most cases, the least of the sector’s worries.'
I'm sure many of us would have seen MPs expenses in a similar light a month or so ago.
Without looking at charity CEO expenses how will we know whether it was just the odd bottle of wine?
Charities with responsible CEOs could put themselves in a good position by publicising the fact.
Transparency, in the end, like truth - is better.