• 8 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Sorry mate you’re kind of embarrassing yourself a little bit here.

    Of course the CEO equivalent exists in government. It’s just a management position. Equivalent services will need equivalent management.

    Do you realize how little a CEO does?

    I’ve sat on hiring committees for CEO’s. Refining their job descriptions and interviewing candidates. I know exactly what CEO’s of non-profits and charities do. I suspect that you do not.

    Do you realize how little the actual money donated to an organization trickles down to the cause?

    Perhaps you didn’t read my comment. I’ve been a treasurer for a number of medium size charities. I know exactly how much money is needed to support the charities objectives.

    In recent years grant funding for charities has been extraordinarily difficult to obtain. Often it’s not indexed. Where grant funding is not indexed for a number of years, it becomes impossible to maintain the same services because wages and other costs are always getting more expensive. I’ve had to have that very difficult conversation with social workers - that their hours need to be reduced and as a result their client numbers will be cut. It’s a ridiculous absurdity to suggest that volunteers like myself would be taking those measures without first seeking to maximise the efficiency of the entire organisation.

    Do you realize that there are multiple charities for the same thing, which just means more and more waste?

    For example?

    In fact in pretty much every instance of a modern government taking over a service, it becomes cheaper and more efficient. That’s why many governments run utilities, and healthcare.

    You’re talking about public vs private institutions. That just doesn’t make any sense applied to charities because they’re already public institutions.

    Look I’m not saying your service is useless, but I am saying it would be more efficient elsewhere.

    Sorry mate, this is just an absurd thought bubble borne of naivety. Get involved in a charity and you’ll understand why it exists. Until then maybe just start with the assumption that the people who are involved have a better understanding of it’s context and it’s objectives and how best to serve those objectives than you do. It’s incredible arrogant to suppose that entire organisations ought not to exist because the people involved just haven’t realised how inefficient they are. Seriously, pull your head out of your ass.



  • I’ve been involved as a treasurer for a number of “medium” charities in Australia. Most recently one providing free legal services to the disadvantaged, and another running a refuge for homeless youth.

    As an aside, bear in mind that I as a treasurer as well as the entire board are volunteers - well qualified and experienced professionals donating their time to ensure that the organisation is run efficiently and is maximising the benefit to the community.

    Your comments really grind my gears. They’re born of shallow social media type thinking. These falsehoods are commonly used as a “reason” why one ought not to donate to charities.

    Certainly there are overpaid CEOs, but these are a minority. Recently the charity running the refuge got a new CEO. He had been a police superintendent. He took a pay cut of about two thirds in order to be our CEO. He said that he had spent most of his career locking people up, and wanted to spend the last part of his career changing kids trajectories before they got involved with the law.

    Imagine saying that this organisation would be more efficient of it were subsumed by the government, so the CEO-equivalent could be paid 3x as much.