WHO IS CHARITY REALLY FOR ?

I've always had the view that many supposed charities are nothing of the sort but are really just a mechanism for those in charge to con members of the public into paying them large salaries. Last Saturday, an article in the 'Daily Telegraph' provided some evidence for this viewpoint in respect of at least two well known charitable organisations.

 

Anthony Daniels, a former doctor, penned a piece about children in our society and the way in which supposed poverty has been used at the excuse for most of their ills from obesity to lack of education and bad manners. He particularly pointed at 'Save the Children' as one major 'charity' which uses the poverty tag in order to gain public sympathy

 

Daniels claims, probably quite rightly though I have no independent knowledge, that 'Save the Children' is simply a part of what he calls a charitable-bureaucratic complex that infests our society. Of the money it spent in 2009, £88m was on humanitarian assistance while a vastly disproportionate £58m was on staff wages. Worse still, this grotesquely bureaucratic organisation is headed by a man who was previously Communications and Campaigns Director for Gordon Brown, so simply a 'PR man', on a salary approaching £140,000 per year while a further 164 staff were paid salaries of more than £30,000 per year. All this in an organisation supposedly dedicated to eradicating 'child poverty'.

 

Almost one third of the total funds raised by 'Save the children' in 2009 were spent on fund-raising; is this really what people think they're contributing to when they put their cash in the envelope or tin ? Daniels also commented in passing on another, smaller, charity which is far worse; the 'Child Poverty Action Group' managed to spend £1.55m of its total income of £1.99m on wages, that is nearly 80% of its total revenue. How can this possibly be considered to be a charity, unless it's one for its staff ?  

 

'Save the Children' receives substantial funds from various governments including our own which contributed £19m in 2009. The European Union also paid over £12m, meaning that organisations that take our taxes happily chucked over £30m of our money into the 'Save the Children' kitty.

 

Charity is no longer what it once was, small organisations run by volunteers and other well-meaning people on small salaries. Today's charities are often huge bureaucratic organisations, sometimes multi-national in scope, which operate as much for the benefit of their employees as for whatever cause they're theoretically supporting. They have hordes of directors and other people in corporate roles, jobs more typical of industry than of charity and governments seem to be quite happy with all of this, allowing them an assortment of special arrangements and tax breaks.

 

WHY ?