This is one of the commonest questions in the charity world. And I don't know the answer.
Although it’s easy to mock charities like the Royal Opera House, which last year paid its top-earner over £500k, there is another side to the story: charities need to attract talent. That needs to be paid for. And however altruistic charity workers are, they’re not saints.
Yet at the same time, the fact that the CEO of Cancer Research UK earns over £200k a year rankles with me. Yes, I know he’s an extremely qualified man with the potential to earn many times that in the private sector. And I know that he manages a charity which spent over half a billion pounds last year. And I know that it’s better to have a well-run charity with a highly paid Chief Executive than a poorly run one with a pauper in charge.
But I still don't like it. £200,000 is simply a lot of money, and the fact that CR-UK’s boss takes home that amount makes me wonder why he thinks he needs it. Because, of course, he doesn’t ‘need’ anything like that amount. Why doesn’t he give some of his salary up, and spent the money on medical research?
On the other hand, however, I can hear CR-UK’s defenders decrying that argument as nonsense. Surely, they’d counter, I wouldn’t put a cap on charity bosses’ earnings? And who would decide when a salary was ‘too much’?
These are good questions. I don't think charity wages could, or even should, be regulated. Likewise, I have no idea when a wage would count as ‘too much’.
So should I just stop worrying and assess what good work the charity does, and judge it by that criterion alone? Do I even have a right to be morally outraged at such large pay-packets? Even I get paid more than the vast majority of people in the world, after all.
I’m in a moral quandary. Can anyone help me get out of it?
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