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A NUMBER OF Irish charity bosses are still earning well in excess of €100,000 a year, despite a series of controversies over executive pay in recent years, TheJournal.ie can reveal.
Our survey of some of Ireland’s leading charities shows a significant variety in the levels of CEO pay, with some bosses taking no salary or benefits whatsoever and others earning almost €150,000 a year.
An analysis of the figures also reveals a wide range in senior management pay and fundraising efficiency, as well as a tight network of connections among charity executives.
We sent a questionnaire to 40 charities, requesting figures on executive pay and perks, fundraising costs, and spending on PR and administration, among other information.
One charity refused to answer any questions, one failed to answer any questions, two did not respond at all, two filled out the questionnaire but refused to reveal CEO salaries, and two charities provided salary ranges but not a specific number. (*Details can be found at the end of the article).
A spokesperson for Irish Charities for Tax Reform and Fundraising Ireland told us it strongly advises members to hold financial reporting to the highest standards, in order to “promote public confidence”.
However, they added: “Salary levels must be set at a sufficient level to guarantee that the highest standards are applied in governance, financial reporting and service delivery.”
With that in mind, here are the 10 highest and lowest-paid charity CEOs in Ireland, based on responses to our survey.
1. Fionnuala O’Donovan, Enable Ireland
2. Dee Ahearn, Barretstown
3. Mo Flynn, Rehab
4. Kathleen McLoughlin, Irish Wheelchair Association
5. John McCormack, Irish Cancer Society
6. Barry Dempsey, Irish Heart Foundation
7. Senan Mullins, the Care Trust
8. Ashley Balbirnie, Focus Ireland
9. Fergus Finlay, Barnardos
10. Ray Jordan, Gorta-Self Help Africa
The four other charity bosses earning more than €100,000 were:
And here are the lowest-paid charity CEOs in our survey:
1. Adi Roche, Chernobyl Children International
2. Maureen Forrest, Hope Foundation
3. Bríd Leahy, Manager of ASH Ireland (Action on Smoking and Health)
4. Jacinta Hastings, Bodywhys
5. Seán Moynihan, ALONE
6. Pauline McKeown, Coolmine Therapeutic Community
7. Pat Clarke, Down Syndrome Ireland
8. Kerry Anthony, Depaul Ireland
9. Andrew Kelly, ISPCA
10. Patrick Quinn, Head of National Office, Simon
Along with CEO salaries and benefits, pay at senior levels in Irish charities has raised concerns over the past few years.
Firstly, to put things in context, here are the 10 charities with the highest and lowest pay bills. These figures include salaries and pensions for all employees.
In terms of executive pay, St Patrick’s Mental Health Services comes out on top, with its seven-member senior management team earning a total of €1,622,000 in wages and pensions in 2014 – an average of €231,714 each.
In declining to provide salary ranges or specify CEO Paul Gilligan’s pay package, a spokesperson for St Patrick’s told us:
We operate in a highly competitive staffing environment and our salaries are set to enable us attract and retain the highest quality staff.
The information requested is commercially sensitive. In addition the Data Protection Acts…do not allow us to reveal staff member’s salaries under the context in which they have been requested.
Salaries can legally be revealed, however, if an employee gives their consent. TheJournal.ie asked whether Gilligan had refused to give consent for his salary to be disclosed, but we did not receive a response.
St Patrick’s was one of two charities (Bon Secours was the other) which failed to break down the salaries of employees earning more than €70,000, in bands of €10,000, a convention which is regarded as best practice for charities.
So in calculating who paid the most to their highest-salaried staff, we have to exclude St Patrick’s and Bon Secours.
As you can see, the Rehab Group, which has 3,535 employees (the most of any charity in the survey) paid out €6.2 million in salaries alone to those on more than €70,000 a year, in 2014.
However, there were also 70 employees paid above that level (the highest of any charity), so Rehab’s average salary above €70,000 falls below the €90,001 earned by the highest-paid staff at St Michael’s House.
It’s important to note that these are median figures, based on salary ranges provided by charities in response to our survey, or in their most recent annual reports.
So the actual salary costs and averages could be as high or low as €6.6 million or €5.9 million in total in the case of Rehab, and €84,600 or €94,400 on average, in the case of St Michael’s House.
Some charities are bigger than others, and so pay more people above €70,000.
So to make sure we’re being fair, we’ve adjusted for the size of the charities, and calculated salaries above €70,000 as a proportion of all salaries, and all staff, for the five biggest spenders.
As you can see, Enable Ireland devotes the biggest chunk of its overall salary bill to those on more than €70,000 – paying a median figure of €3.4 million (out of €29.8 million) to 41 employees (out of 647).
Out of all 40 charities we surveyed, these are the ones with the highest proportion of employees paid above €70,000.
There were some instances of smaller organisations where only one employee was paid above €70,000, but amid a staff of less than 15, this gave a skewed picture of executive pay in those charities, so we excluded them from the list above.
For charities without Section 38 and Section 39 service agreements with the HSE, or without state grants, fundraising can be essential to their survival.
Amid recession and a series of scandals in recent years, it has been falling, pretty much across the board.
The Wheel, a support organisation representing 1,250 charities, told us that 39% of groups that accept money from the public had seen a drop in donations in the last year, and 18% had made at least some staff redundant.
So charities (particularly smaller ones) are forced to be even more efficient and strategic than usual in soliciting contributions from the Irish public.
Each organisation has unique circumstances, but we can get some sense of how cost-effective a charity is in using its resources to acquire more resources.
We’ve calculated return on investment (money raised – money spent as a factor of money spent), and here are the most effective fundraisers we surveyed, based on 2014 figures, the most recent available.
Another feature of Irish charities to emerge from our analysis was the close network of connections between them.
Based on publicly available work histories and records from the Companies Registration Office, we found that just 10 out of 40 charity CEOs had not previously served on the board of another charity, or held a senior position in one.
And of the 30 CEOs with previous charity experience as directors or CEOs, 10 of them had that experience with at least one of the other groups in our survey.
Out of the 40 charities we surveyed, 17 had a connection with another inside that network, via their CEO.
You can see what that web of executive connections looks like, in the chart above.
*Survey notes:
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