I'm not going to get drawn into this thread or the other, but just in an attempt to ensure that no-one goes off at a tangent, every charity has a Board of Trustees, all unpaid and with no personal interests in the financial performance or direct relationships with management team personnel. Their job is to provide oversight of the management team, including budgets, incomes and outgoings. The trustees have no individualauthority, but as a group, their word is God. Oh and there is some personal liability that goes with it......
I am a trustee (for over 6 years standing) of one of the charities detailed in Pittsextra's list above, along with several other people much smarter than me (including finance directors, solicitors etc). Trust me, one of the measures that we scrutinise every time we meet is the ratio of income to fulfillment of charitable objects.
There is a scheme of delegation in place, whereby the management team can approve certain purchases, but for anything above their 'ceiling', it has to be referred upwards. And of course the salaries/benefits of the management team is approved at Board level. We benchmark senior manager salary - did you know that the average CEO salary for a 'sports' charity CEO in 2012 was £75,820pa? And an animal charity? £77k. Medical/health/sickness is £62k. Make of that what you will.
Oh and Pitts, you might want to look at charity numbers 1001064 and 1143118 together, before setting the Midlands Air Ambulance up as an icon of how it should be done ;-). Charitable spending of £6.3m, spend on income generation etc of £6.38m! Not sure what that does to your ratio, but does show that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. I have no idea why they choose to run two charities. None of my business!
Last edited by 206 jock; 28th May 2013 at 13:35.