Monday 20 April 2009

Crunching #1

I'm compiling me a spreadsheet.

It fills my time when I've done all the job applications.

This is a wonderous spreadsheet

I'm going all the charities listed on FakeCharities, going through their accounts on the Charity Commission website and noting down things like annual income, how much comes from which government departments, staffing costs and how much they pay to their highest paid member of staff.

Its slow going, and I'm not sure what fancy graphs I'll be able to generate, but every so often I find something interesting. I'm not in the business of judging whether the charities are indeed fake or evil, or what have you, I'm just looking for numbers to present so you can make your own judgements.

There's a charity listed called the Equality Challenge Unit, fakecharities.org has this info:-

Stated Aims

EQUALITY CHALLENGE UNIT SUPPORTS THE HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR TO REALISE THE POTENTIAL OF ALL STAFF AND STUDENTS WHATEVER THEIR RACE, GENDER, DISABILITY, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, RELIGION AND BELIEF, OR AGE, TO THE BENEFIT OF THOSE INDIVIDUALS, HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIETY.

Context

Equality Challenge Unit covers every aspect of identity politics from the disabled to transexuals. Their website is largely incomprehensible:

ECU works in close partnership with higher education institutions and sector organisations

Our strategy for 2007-10 has four broad objectives:

  • to develop an authoritative system for identifying and measuring equality and diversity in the higher education sector
  • to support higher education institutions in implementing effective equality practices and to disseminate the many examples of excellent practice in individual institutions for the benefit of the whole sector
  • to develop programmes that support sustained institutional change in relation to equality and diversity
  • to be an effective advocate for the development of equality and diversity practice within the sector.
    Annual income is £1,366,645, of which about 90% comes from the government.

    Page 21 of their accounts says they have 12.4 members of staff, the highest paid of whom receives between £110,000 and £120,000 (not excluding pension costs).

    That's 8% of the charity's income goes into the pocket of one person.

    Almost five times median wage.

    Seems like a nice little earner, that's taxpayer's money, mind.

    3 comments:

    1. I can give you the database export, if you like...

      DK

      ReplyDelete
    2. I don't really understand what's so incomprehensible about that website's spiel. Most organisations give lip service to notions of equality but do very little beyond having a policy. An organisation that sets out to identify best practice and to root out bad practice seems fair enough.

      It doesn't seem likely that a private organisation would do this, where's the profit in such a task?

      Of course you could argue that some level of government bureaucracy could be managing this instead.

      Or you could argue that we don't need it, that inequalities are just something people should have to put up with, grow a spine and so on.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Sure a private organisation would do this sort of thing, if they were paid to. Likewise a govermenty QUANGO thing.

      But the fact is that this is a charity, who's chief monkey get's £110,000+, or 8% of their income.

      Hell, why isn't this just part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission?

      This sort of thing shouldn't be a charity. If you think it should be, why don't you donate some of your own money to it, rather than taking my money by force and using that. Cos I certainly wouldn't chose to give my money to such a charity, and you said yourself that private organisations wouldn't.

      Private organsations give a great deal of money to charities. This, however, isn't a charity.

      ReplyDelete