By Chev. Rodney Davies
This is a question we have often asked ourselves, and one that Robbyn and I have increasing been looking at since we started as Charity Officers for the KnightsTemplars.
On average it is claimed that between 26% to 87% of a donated pound actually gets used for charity activity. That is quite a range!
The Charity commission for England & Wales reported in September of this year that there were over 170 thousand registered charities, with a further 14 thousand linked to the main ones. They in turn had 923,000 trustees and over 7,256,142 volunteers. The generous UK public donated an estimated £13.9 billion to charity last year – up £1.2 billion on 2022 despite the finical pressures on households. Who says we are not a nation of givers?
In recent years with the increased Charity regulator checks and new laws governing charities it is now a lot easier to check every charity to see how they spent your £1. How much do they spend on governance, marketing and advertising to increase donations?
As we start to raise more and more money for a range of charities, we feel this is a subject that needs to be looked at. We all raise funds for different reasons and we all have affiliations to different charity’s which is fine and healthy. However, it does grate when you find out that the charity you are raising £100 for pays their CEO £175,000 a year. By the way this is now the average salary for a large Charity in the UK. There are some paying a lot more. The Nuffield Health trust pays over £900k to their CEO. We do appreciate its turnover related and some of the larger charities are sitting on very large cash reserves and investments.
Moving forward we both feel that where possible we should be supporting small to medium size charities that have a direct effect on their local region that they are based in. It would be nice to think that for every £1 you donated at least 80p actually reaches the sharp end and helps people.
We are both really proud to be supporting you all in your fund raising and look forward to being able to build and support more in 2025.
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