Successful charities should pay well enough to attract excellent executives | Voluntary Sector Network | Guardian Professional

Successful charities should pay well enough to attract excellent executives | Voluntary Sector Network | Guardian Professional: Reading some of the comments and opinions about charity pay, it is evident that many people still think charities should largely be run by volunteers, a view reinforced in a recent New Philanthropy Capital publication Mind the Gap: What the public thinks about charities. It shows that 16% of the public believe charity chief executives should not be paid at all. The reality is that most charities are wholly run by volunteers. According to the NCVO report fewer than one in 10 charities employ any staff at all, and only 1% of charity staff are paid more than �60,000.

In fact, according to NCVO's report, the charity discount – the pay reduction somebody accepts if they want to work in the charity sector rather than the private sector – is up to 45%, when taking into account bonuses and other incentives. If