Save the Fatcats 60

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These are the top salaries at the Save the Children fund.

CEO Justin Forsyth £139,950
COO Anabel Hoult £139,950
COO / CFO & Strategic Initiatives Rachel Parr £131,970
Global Programmes Director Fergus Drake £113,300
Fundraising Director Tanya Steele £112,200
Marketing & Comms Director Sue Allchurch £111,920
Policy & Advocacy Director Brendan Cox £106,029
CFO Peter Banks £102,000
HR Director Paul Cutler £100,980

The UK average salary is 26,500.

StC has just given Tony Blair its “Global Legacy” award. What kind of people like Tony Blair? People who earn over 100,000. I am not sure that if you put money in a tin, or bought from their charity shop, you thought you were paying that many fat salaries. There are also gold plated pensions and other benefits. Justin Forsyth, the CEO, of course worked in Tony Blair’s neo-con policy unit.

As I have written before, very few charities are in any sense independent any more. Save the Children Fund gets 176 million pounds – over half its income – in grants from various governments, including over 80 million from the British government. That compares to 106 million in donations from the public. In 2012 over 70 million pounds was spent by Save the Children UK on its own staff costs. This was reduced on paper to 44 million in 2014 by the expedient of transferring some Headquarters staff from Save the Children UK to Save the Children International. I have an uneasy feeling about some of Save the Children’s accounting presentation. Justin Forsyth’s and Annabel Hoult’s salary of 139,950 sounds a lot better than 140,000 doesn’t it? Rachel Parr’s 131,970 sounds less than 132 grand.

Save the Children’s highly paid and very numerous HQ staff work in a swanky office for which they pay a staggering 6.5 million pounds a year lease. Do they really need their HQ in ultra expensive Central London? I suppose all those high earners have to get home to Islington. Their HQ costs more than all their other premises put together, including all their shops.

I wonder how much all of this is known to the 13,000 good-hearted volunteers who work many hours for nothing to support these people.

I give regularly to charity, by standing order. I am sure so do many who read this blog. If you are giving to Save the Children, I do urge you to re-target your charitable giving.

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60 thoughts on “Save the Fatcats”

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  • 5566hh

    The organisation Giving What We Can has investigated the amount of good done by various charities, and come to conclusions about what it considers to be the most effective targets of charitable giving (anti-malaria bednets, tackling neglected tropical diseases): https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Thank you for headlining the mechanism by which Blair and his friends pick the public pocket under the guise of charitable activities.

    Justin Forsyth worked for Blair’s government for three years.

    Fergus Drake worked for The Church Office of Tony Blair in Rwanda.

    http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/people/executive-directors

    Most of the rest seem to originate in mid-upper management, and if you didn’t pay them £00,000’s I am sure their interest in humanitarian causes would evaporate. You have to pay top dollar to attract people who are very talented at asking for top dollar.

  • Porkfright

    Completely disgusting but in no way surprising. We are clearly controlled by an elite clique who do what they please for the super-rich, while the rest of us can just go and get stuffed as far as they are concerned.

  • BrianFujisan

    Just when one thought you couldn’t make it up, along comes this nauseous story.

    these people are far removed from the public mood. Thanks for that table of earnings Craig.

    Even STC staff are sickened –

    THE INTERNATIONAL charity Save the Children has been engulfed by a furious backlash from staff after it presented Tony Blair with a “global legacy award” in New York last week – despite privately acknowledging that he is a controversial and divisive figure.

    Amid widespread criticism on social media, many of the charity’s staff have complained that the presentation of the award has discredited Save the Children (STC). An internal letter, which gathered almost 200 signatures – including senior regional staff – in the first six hours of dissemination, said the award was not only “morally reprehensible, but also endangers our credibility globally”, and called for it to be withdrawn.

    It said that staff wished to distance themselves from the award and demanded a review of the charity’s decision-making process.

    “We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values. Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision,” it said.

    http://stopwar.org.uk/news/backlash-at-save-the-children-as-its-staff-demand-award-to-child-killer-tony-blair-is-withdrawn

  • Ba'al Zevul

    All is now clear. I’d missed the Guardian’s report today. Which says that Jonathan Powell is on the board of StC.

    Of all the many appearances for money of Powell, this briefly summarises him:

    http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/autumn-term-2013/jonathan-powell/

    Among much else for which God will requite him appropriately – it will be pretty hot – he’s an advisor to The Office of Tony Blair, and to the manifestly neocon organisation ‘United Against Nuclear Iran.’

  • HappyFeet

    My elderly aunt worked in a charity shop. She said someone would ‘come up here’ driving a Rolls Royce and tell the staff that they were not doing enough.
    Rolls Royce, as in generic term for fancy car? No, it was a brand new Rolls Royce I was told.
    These people have no shame and will probably be knighted as well.

    Thanks Craig.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    An ‘independent’ review, warmly endorsed in an introduction by independent Matthew Hancock, the independent Minister for Business, Enterprise and Energy, provides another straw in the wind, blowing strongly in the direction of “the economy’s stuffed, we don’t know what to do about unemployment, you’re on your own, chum, but a misery shared is a misery monetised is what I say”

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/378291/bis-14-1227-unlocking-the-sharing-economy-an-independent-review.pdf

    You may have seen it here first. It’ll be policy if a mainstream party gets in next time.

  • Jay

    Exactly Craig

    Save the children should named-
    Educate the adults. The best way being lead by example and as you have shown fat cat pay really calls that into question.

    The pick and the shovel not the gun and the bomb…

  • MJ

    “I wonder how much all of this is known to the 13,000 good-hearted volunteers who work many hours for nothing to support these people”

    It’s not just STC of course. Many of the corporate charities are just as bad. WWF is a particularly unwholesome organisation. When I get approached by volunteers collecting for these charities I explain to them very clearly why I am not prepared to give them money and suggest they think very carefully about why they are volunteering their labour.

  • Lucy Andrews

    I have a standing order to save the children and I m considering moving that to a different charity. Does anyone know if anything exists that rates charities on the basis of what percentage of donations are used to cover salaries etc?

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Well. don’t go here…

    http://www.ngo-monitor.org

    In which we learn that Save the Children is probably staffed by Stormfront refugees because it not only supports Palestinians but gives help to their children….so StC isn’t all bad, then. But Jstreet and MAP attract the most vitriol, so are probably better bets, in this arena.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    A little out of date, but possibly helpful. For StC, although admin and fundraising expenses are astronomical, even more so is the actual aid claimed. However this says nothing about what aid and who it goes to. My uncharitable guess is that the figure of ~90% is written in block capitals in The Charity Accountant’s Vade Mecum, and the accounts are perhaps arranged to fit. Who knows?

    http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4438

  • Mark Golding

    Thank you for contacting us.

    This award was given to Tony Blair by Save the Children US in recognition of his work on poverty which has had long lasting effects for millions of poor people around the world. He established the Department for International Development (DFiD) and hosted 2 G8 summits. The 1998 Summit in Birmingham expanded debt relief for poor countries, freeing up funding for spending on essential public services like health and education. At Gleneagles in 2005, G8 leaders pledged to Make Poverty History with significant further debt cancellation and pledged $50 billion in extra aid. The UK’s recent achievement of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) to international aid is the culmination of work started under his leadership.

    We acknowledge your concerns regarding this and your feelings have been recorded. Good luck with your application to the Charity Commission.

    Thank you again for writing to us.

    Best wishes

    Supporter Care
    Individual Giving & Legacies
    Save the Children, 1 St John’s Lane, London EC1M 4AR
    Direct line +44 (0)20 7012 6400
    Email [email protected]

    For more information please visit http://www.savethechildren.org.uk

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Thanks for your helpful input, Mark. Anyone buying the line that The 1998 Summit in Birmingham expanded debt relief for poor countries, freeing up funding for spending on essential public services like health and education. At Gleneagles in 2005, G8 leaders pledged to Make Poverty History with significant further debt cancellation and pledged $50 billion in extra aid.

    would do well to take a look at this:

    http://www.globalissues.org/article/541/g8-summit-2005

    And:

    The 0.7% target is tied to a definition of aid set in 1969 that is seen as increasingly outdated because it allows donors to include a wide range of spending activities. A Guardian analysis in February revealed that some UK aid money is actually spent here: in 2012, almost £12m went on projects like global citizenship lessons in Scottish schools; military and security training for African officials, and a “study visit” to the UK for North Korean officials.#

    http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/apr/03/uk-meets-foreign-aid-target

    Whereas the definition of ‘children killed through illegal acts of war’, although ancient, would appear to be as valid today as in Genghiz Khan’s time.

  • Miss Castello

    Lucy Andrews @ 12 25 pm.

    “I have a standing order to save the children and I’m considering moving that to a different charity. Does anyone know if anything exists that rates charities on the basis of what percentage of donations are used to cover salaries etc?”

    Oh Wow! You’re ‘considering”?? What’s to “consider”?? The man’s a greedy, conniving, power driven psychopathic war criminal: and those who run the charity (NOT the volunteers) don’t sound much better! But DO think it over now. One mustn’t be TOO hasty, must one. BAWK.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Sierra Leone had nearly all its debt written off in the aftermath of the 2005 G8. On condition it did what the World Bank said. Does it look today as if its health and education, supposedly freed up by debt relief, have improved?

    “Looking forward, a key challenge is to sustain high economic growth rates in order to further reduce poverty while maintaining macroeconomic stability.”

    Trickledown theory, I suppose. To enable the poor to get enough scraps from the table, the fat cats have to have bigger dinners. And has it worked after nearly a decade? Literacy 36%. Healthcare? Pretty well unavailable outside the cities, and chaotically conceived and administered.

    http://www.aho.afro.who.int/profiles_information/index.php/Sierra_Leone:Analytical_summary_-_Health_financing_system

    ‘Macroeconomics’: lol. Mineral resource exploitation by foreign companies and subsistence agriculture.

    Still, Tony was very quick to crush the damaging allegations that he wasn’t personally responsible for saving the world from poverty: (if you do have something in your stomach say goodbye to it before reading this):

    http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/response-to-the-guardians-article-on-tony-blairs-global-legacy-award/

  • Herbie

    Yeah but. Every time he gets something like this, it’s spoiled by everyone complaining what a warmonger he is.

    He can never quite break into the respected elder statesman class he and Shree’d so dearly love.

    Let’s just be grateful for that.

    NO CHILD BORN TO DIE, apparently.

    “Save the Children staff furious over ‘global legacy’ award for Tony Blair
    Internal letter signed by almost 200 staff members says award is ‘morally reprehensible’ and endangers STC’s credibility globally”

    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/25/save-the-children-furious-charity-global-legacy-tony-blair

  • Ba'al Zevul

    It’s ironic, isn’t it, that these nakedly self-aggrandising attempts to make organisations headed by ex-Tony staff recognise his messianic qualities, have the opposite effect to that intended? But that’s only as far as the peasants are concerned. Like the equally loathsome but far more savvy Mandelson, if you’re rich and want to become richer, Tony is still a useful contact to know and, provided the press are excluded, entertain. It’ll be a while before his slide from jumped-up wannabe-PM to discredited hasbeen is officially acknowledged, I’m afraid, but his is now a holding action, and it will come eventually.

  • Mary

    Laughing out bloody loudly. Is this spiv not totally repellent?

    PMQs today

    Sir Gerald Kaufman: Will the Prime Minister condemn the new Israeli Government Bill which removes what are defined as national rights from all Israeli citizens who are not Jews, makes Hebrew the only national language and has been denounced by the Israeli Attorney General as causing a deterioration in the democratic character of the state? Will he make clear that statutory repressive removal of citizenship rights on the basis of religion will turn Israel into an apartheid state? [shouts of Hear! Hear!]

    David Cameron: What I’d say to the Rt Hon Gentleman is this, that one of the reasons I’m such a strong supporter of Israel is that it is a country that has given rights and democracy to its people, and it’s very important that that continues. When you look across the region, and you look at those indexes of freedom, you see that Israel is one of the few countries that actually ticks the boxes in terms of freedom and it’s very important it continues to do so.

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