In light of the CEO salary debate, how transparent should fundraisers be with donors about the need for paid employees?

Joe Saxton, co-founder and driver of ideas, nfpsynergy

There is a real debate about what good transparency looks like for a charity. Is it simply declaring the level of CEO and senior staff pay in the annual report, or does it go further than that?

The problem is that charities can be covertly transparent (the information exists but is not easy to find) or overtly transparent (the information is very easy to find). Most charities fall into the former camp – if you don’t believe just try and find a CEO salary on a charity’s website in under ten clicks.

But transparency is not enough. Charities also need to explain why they do what they do. They need to explain why their CEO is worth whatever they are paid, why offices in London are not an extravagance, why directors need assistants, why fundraising costs money and so on and so on.

So transparency is the beginning of a journey rather than the end of one, and transparency needs to be blended with a culture of explanation and a remorseless focus on accounting to stakeholders why a charity does what it does. And given how hostile most members of the public are about CEO salaries, there is a lot of work to be done.

Kate Lee, chief executive, Myton Hospice 

Yes, I think we should be confident to talk about not only the need to pay people, but the need to pay them relatively well. If we keep avoiding the issue we will never improve the understanding of the vital importance of the work we do and why it justifies paying enough to attract the very best we can afford. This is often to support and complement a much greater and vital volunteer workforce.

We need greater public awareness about the importance of attracting the best possible staff into charities that tackle society’s biggest problems. Pay peanuts, get monkeys – and our beneficiaries deserve far better than that, why support us at all if you don’t share that view?

However, we do need to arm fundraisers with information, arguments and skills to deal with these tricky issues. I am not being naïve here, the level of public understanding is, at best, confused. We need not only to talk about paying staff, but also find every opportunity to put pay into context. So, bring on the arguments about CEO’s salaries and let us educate through our defence.

Paul Breckell, chief executive, Action on Hearing Loss

As a charity, it is imperative that we are transparent with our corporate partners, fundraisers and members about how we spend the hard-earned money they entrust to us.

We at Action on Hearing Loss are proud of our excellent reputation for impact reporting, and we take a proactive approach to regularly communicating updates about our services and spend to our internal and external stakeholders. We are constantly seeking ways to stay ahead of the accountability curve – so this year our annual report and accounts outline not only the strategic impact we are making across the UK, but the necessary funds allocated to achieve that.

While almost two-thirds of the people who work with us are volunteers (who we simply couldn’t function as effectively without), paid members of staff provide the consistency and expertise to reach the millions of people across the UK who have hearing loss and tinnitus, many of whom are also living with complex needs and facing day-in, day-out isolation.

Alan Gosschalk, director of fundraising, Scope

In order to address misconceptions within people’s attitudes, charities need to communicate better the difference that their work makes and be more transparent in a whole host of areas. This includes the fact that employees are paid, as the majority of the public think that most fundraisers are unpaid! Such misconceptions really do matter, as trust could be undermined when people find out that the reality is different from their perceptions.

But it’s not just about transparency, it’s also about how you communicate it. The sector is too defensive, so when the media challenged charities last month on CEO salaries, the initial response was a mixture of ‘they’d get more in the private sector’ and ‘media conspiracy / bias’.

When we are challenged, we should immediately talk in terms of lives being changed by our great work on the ground (and it’s the CEO who ultimately makes that happen). This in turn flags up the issue that many charities don’t have the words to explain the difference they make.

This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 33, September 2013