Huge wage hike for top charity bosses

26% increase in charity chiefs paid more than £60,000 as a result of an intensifying arms race for donations.

The number of staff at Scotland’s biggest voluntary organisations on a basic salary of more than £60,000 has risen by 26% in just three years.

Among the highest-paid is Stuart Earley, the chief executive of animal welfare charity the Scottish SPCA.

His basic wage has gone up from £160,000 to £185,000 higher than the annual salary of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is on £135,000, and the £142,000 earned by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Other top earners include Laura Lee, executive in charge of much-loved cancer charity Maggie’s Centre who’s on between £110,000 and £120,000.

Bosses at Quarriers, Capability Scotland, Scottish Autism and SAMH are all on wages around the £100,000 mark.

The big pay packets are being linked to increasing competition between charities to attract sponsors.

However, charity campaigner David Craig blasted: “This tells you all there is to know about our bloated charity industry.”

Our investigation looked at 100 of Scotland’s biggest charities by income. Of that total we stripped out religious organisations, educational facilities such as private schools and universities, arm’s-length council bodies, scientific research organisations, think-tanks and philanthropic groups set up by well-off families. That left a list of 15 charities.

Our probe revealed that, across those organisations, 57 members of staff enjoyed wages of more than £60,000 in 2014. In 2012, the number was 45. Over the same period wage inflation has stalled at just 2.2% in Scotland since October 2012.

The boom in charity high earners comes at a time that giving to worthy causes has never been higher. Some charities say they offer large pay-packets to attract top talent to run their organisations efficiently. But other organisations like Mary’s Meals say they are committed to running their charity on as low a cost as possible.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, CEO and founder of the anti-hunger charity, explained: “We have a conviction that those who are paid to work for Mary’s Meals should never be paid high salaries. This is because we work with some of the poorest people on earth, as well as tens of thousands of volunteers all over the world, and we would find it hard to do that while paying ourselves high salaries.

“This has sometimes been a difficult thing to manage and there have been times when potential candidates have been unable to accept paid posts with Mary’s Meals because of our salary policy. However, we feel very blessed to have a team of good, talented people with a very deep vocational attitude to this mission.

“Of course, it is one thing to say ‘We will not pay high salaries’, but another to work out exactly what that should mean in practice. Our staff have to live and bring up families like everyone else. This is a complex issue that sometimes is used in the wrong way to hit good charities over the head. We have chosen a particular way with Mary’s Meals but that doesn’t mean we think charities taking a different approach are necessarily doing something wrong.”

A report last week estimated generous Britons donated £10.6 billion to charity last year. It found poorer families were proportionately the most generous with those earning less than £9,500 a year most likely to give away around 4% of their earnings.

John Low, of Charities Aid Foundation, which carried out the study, said: “Many people remain concerned the money they donate may not be used to best effect, and charities must ensure they are properly communicating the achievements of their work to the people whose funding make it possible.”

Politicians have questioned the wisdom of paying boardroom experts large salaries to help get their chosen charity to the top.

Scottish Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone said: “People donate and raise money for charities with the best of intentions, and often make considerable sacrifices in doing so. However, I think they would be appalled at some of the wages being handed out, and to see where their cash was actually going.

The body that represents the charity industry in Scotland, the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations itself a charity with two members of staff on more than £60,000 believes the level of pay afforded to key charity staff and chief executives “should reflect the requirements of the job”.

A spokesman said: “As in any other sector, there are a lot of considerations to setting senior salaries in charities. A senior role in a charity comes with significant levels of responsibilities and demands. The leaders of Scotland’s largest charities manage average annual budgets of £37 million and 1,215 staff.”

Mr Low added his organisation encouraged charities to be transparent about what they paid senior staff. Scotland’s charity regulator OSCR now lists Scotland’s top 300 charities by income, updating the list on a daily basis.

There are more than 23,700 charities in Scotland and 180,000 in England and Wales. But OSCR will stop short of revealing the pay packets of top staff.

This information, however, must be listed in the annual report and accounts of charities with a turnover of more than £500,000. Under rules put in place by regulators, these organisations are required to show in bands of £10,000 the number of staff paid in excess of £60,000.

It is up to individual charities whether they choose to name those employees.

A spokesman said: “We are committed to increasing transparency in Scottish charities and are making moves to make things more open.”

The average wage across the UK is £26,500.

Last month, the Office for National Statistics said average earnings, excluding bonuses, grew at an annual rate of 1.6% in the three months to January this year.

But experts fear it results from plunging inflation rather than strong pay increases.