CAFOD - the truth about where your money goes

I recently came across this article about CAFOD (the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development). It was posted as a reply to an article in the Telegraph.

'CAFOD spends £49m a year, of which £6m on political campaigns in the UK. I would like to see charities required by law to devote their resources to charitable works, not politics. Of the £49m a year it spends, £13m is on salaries and pensions for its UK staff. Those
salaries average more than £35K a year. While not a fortune from a middle-class perspective, this is an average, and one that is well above the average salary in the UK as a whole, raising questions over whether the charity is being run in the interests of its employees.
Donors may not realise that much of the money they donate is going on salaries and pensions, and only once those are covered will anything at all be left over for charitable works. CAFOD spends £1.5m a year on professional consultancy fees. The director of CAFOD pays himself £76,892 a year, plus a further £7,689 in pension contributions for himself. Once again, there are plenty of people on six-figure salaries in the UK who might view that salary as unremarkable, but this is meant to be the “voluntary sector”. In fact, the CAFOD director’s salary is an increase from £71258 in 2008. You might ask why such a large salary increase is justified in the voluntary sector in a year with little inflation. I expect the current disaster in Haiti will
produce further salary increases for the CAFOD director this year. CAFOD admits it spends £6m a year on politics and £6m a year on fundraising, and is happy to quote in its annual accounts a figure showing the balance of £37m is devoted to its “international campaigns”, but simply maths shows that the salaries of many of its UK staff are being rolled into that, and that the real frontline spending figure is much lower. Actually once £7m in “operating costs” and £2m in “support costs” are deducted, only £28m of CAFOD’s annual income of £49m is given in grants under its international programme. Charitable donors may be surprised that this is so low as a proportion of the whole. While £13m of this £28m is devoted to disaster relief grants
and £6.7m to sustainable livelihoods, people may be surprised that some of the grants are for yet more political work in foreign countries. £1.7m of the grants was for “economic advocacy” and £1.4m was for “human rights” and £1.2m was for “conflict resolution”. While
CAFOD does do charitable works, the real frontline work of the organisation in genuine charitable and non-political fields amounts to about half of the organisation’s expenditure…

I regard most of the charitable sector in the UK as a vast scam. It may be legal what they do, but in my eyes these charities are run in the interests of their UK employees, and in fact could be seen, morally, if not legally, as embezzling charitable donations to spend on themselves. There needs to be legal maximum that charity workers can spend on themselves, and that needs to be below the national average wage. Eg: a max of £20K a year with no pension contributions or “expenses”, whether for the directors or anyone else. There needs to be much more pro bono work for charities and much less creaming off donations into personal bank accounts. By reducing salaries to £20K a year and deleting political campaigning in the UK and political work in the third world, CAFOD would save £17m, producing a 70% increase in the funds available for real frontline work on disaster relief and sustainable livelihoods. Now why do I think that’s NOT going to happen…'

None of this surprises me given the institutionalised nature of the large UK charities.

ZAW's Past Activities

To date more than 600 groups have become affiliated to ZAW. ZAW now boasts of membership of 5000 registered individuals.

ZAW is well known and well regarded in Zambia. Unfortuantely, too many NGO's are 'all talk and no action.' It is tragic to hear that well funded executives of NGO's are driving around in 4x4's and living in plush houses whilst their organisations are neglected. These people tragically are the ones who know how to 'play the game' - they are the ones who effectively access funding. I am aware that ZAW has made a tremendous impact in Zambia but when Mrs Lubinda Tafira, the co-ordinator of ZAW, sort support from UK charities, including Oxfam, Christian Aid and CAFOD (three of my favourite charities incidently) she was turned down!!!

Fortuantely, ZAW has had some funding, all be it sporadic, and has been able to work effectively with many Zambia women in rural areas as this story illustrates.

Women are left out

The Chancellor of the Exchequer - Making Poverty History?

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.”
Nelson Mandela’s challenge to us at start of this year’s make poverty history campaign.

On Thursday 17th November seven of my A level students and I joined parishioners from a local parish and CAFOD activists to go to Manchester to listen to the Chancellor Gordon Brown speak on the theme of ‘MAKE POVERTY HISTORY.’

One of my students wrote the following for our school newsletter:

‘MAKE POVERTY HISTORY is a campaign I have followed with interest and I looked forward to hearing the opinions of such a major political figure. As a student of A level Politics and Religious Ethics it was a fantastic opportunity to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer speak about one of the major issues of 2005.

I went to the speech expecting to hear a fair few untruths and reasons why actions could not be taken.

However, when listening to Gordon Brown’s speech, he seemed really passionate about the cause and wanted to see action taken to help the world’s poor as much as his audience did. He was pro-active in seeking change for the developing world and urged the current generation to be the generation to make a difference rather than the generation that had the opportunity but missed it.

Overall it was a very impressive speech which inspired me and encouraged me and hundreds of others to continue the fight to MAKE POVERTY HISTORY.'

Whether or not Mr Brown is true to his word I hope and pray that the interest of my students in MAKING POVERTY HISTORY is sustained. They have so much hope for the future and the future is in their hands! They can be the generation that makes the difference!