Working for charity is about the heart, not the pay
I DON'T agree with Dr Keith Goh's letter on Monday ("If you pay peanuts, you get...."). In any commercial organisation where profit is the prime objective, if you pay peanuts, you get lousy chief executive officers (CEOs). In a charity organisation, the operating principle is not profit-orientated and you need only a CEO with passion to do the job, on a decent salary.
[Define "decent". Is market rate "decent"? What if you don't have CEOs with passion? Would CEOs with professional pride do? "You need only a CEO with passion". So no need competence, ability, imagination, etc? ]
A well-run charity organisation delivers efficiently the donated dollar value to the intended beneficiary. Its reputation and good deeds will attract more donors. The CEO does not need charisma but rather diligence.
[And you want to reward the diligence with... gratitude instead of a reasonable compensation? Which is better a CEO with passion, heart, but limited competence willing to work cheap, or a CEO with competence, diligence, professionalism, and a good work ethic but who could work in any other sector, and make a good living to support his family and so require compensation commensurate with his experience and ability?]
Take, for example, the Thong Chai Charity Night held in March last year to raise funds for the 143-year-old Singapore Thong Chai Medical Institution. It raised $8.6 million, far exceeding the targeted amount of $3.5 million in a single event. The response was overwhelming and testified to the spirit and dedication of the organisation.
[Again, the criteria the unwashed public seems to use for determining charities' "success" seems to be their fund-raising capability. If so, NKF under Durai was the most successful charity ever. A charity's main objective should be to provide the help that it was set up to do first and foremost. Fund-raising is to resource that objective. But because fund-raising is so much easier to measure, so much easier to distill to a single figure, it becomes the sole measure of a charity's "success". ]
The free hospital sees more than 700 patients a day with only 51 employees at a total manpower cost of just below $1.26 million. I salute the leaders of this charity organisation for working in the true spirit of charity.
Giving to charity is a personal sacrifice from the heart for the needy and underprivileged in our community, and serving a charity organisation is to answer the noble calling to serve society.
[And if no one answers the call? In the first generation people work for free or cheap because of passion. But for sustained growth, you need to professionalise by the second or third generation of leaders. Harping on passion without understanding the complexities of running an organisation, let alone a charity is parochial, short-sighted, idealistic, and unrealistic. You want to do that, you need to establish your own religious order, and breed your own monks and nuns who would be willing to work for the sheer passion of it. But competence would be hit or miss. ]
I see no reason why charity organisations should pay big salaries to their CEOs when all volunteers work for free to conserve donated funds for intended beneficiaries. There is no place in charity organisations for high-fliers and ambitious managers. People who choose to work there should have the right mindset.
[And we'll forgive the wrong skillset because you're willing to work cheap. And that is why the social sector is struggling to improve.]
Paul Chan
Feb 19, 2011
Integrity, not money, must be the decisive incentive
I DISAGREE with Dr Keith Goh ("If you pay peanuts, you get..."; Monday) that it is all right to pay hefty salaries to leaders of charities.
If leaders are motivated solely by monetary benefits, they might as well work for a profit-driven organisation instead of for a charity whose sole object is to help the needy.
[Exactly. So most of the competent professionals are shunning the Charity sector, that's why the charities have been trying to attract competent people with more pay. But public reactions like this are going to frighten off potential leaders. If you impose such ridiculous burden on them - to work for free or cheap - they will think about their families, the scrutiny, the public disapproval, and say, "I don't need this" and go work for a bank.
Your unrealistic ideals are in the way of charities trying to improve their governance and capability. Your ideals are keeping them dumb and depriving the disadvantaged of good service.]
Recent cases where leaders of charities were brought to trial for their dishonesty highlight the need to have charity leaders with integrity. Those convicted of wrongdoing were no doubt talented, but were greedy and lacked integrity.
We must learn from these past experiences and not use money as an incentive to attract the wrong talent to run charities.
[So we'll depend on competent people with good hearts willing to work for free or for very little. Unfortunately Mother Teresa is dead, and while I think she has a good heart, and an inspirational leader, I have no idea about her ability as a CEO.
We don't need priests and nuns and monks. We need leaders. Competent leaders who know how to manage charities as viable organisations, not as well-meaning amateurs whose hearts are in the right place but everything else is in the wrong place.]
William Tay
Feb 19, 2011
Personal sacrifice required of charity CEOs
DR KEITH Goh's letter on Monday ("If you pay peanuts, you get...") re-ignites the debate as to whether charity honchos should be paid market rates on a par with chief executive officers (CEOs) of public-listed companies, or whether they should be recruited on the basis of their passion first and foremost.
Dr Goh described the various duties expected of a charity boss, certainly no less onerous than those of a public-listed company's CEO, but he overlooked one big difference.
A charity boss is not only expected to give of his best to the charity he serves, but also to do this at some personal sacrifice. His love for and dedication to the cause of the charity should be his primary motivation, not how much he will get in terms of salary. This is so, notwithstanding that he may have attributes befitting of a more lucrative position as a CEO in a public-listed company.
True, such a person is hard to come by. But so is any good company CEO. Nevertheless, they are there if the search is genuine and relentless.
We should not compromise faithfulness to a cause with opportunism or profit motivation.
Yap Swee Hoo
[All these writers think that Charities are suddenly deciding that what the hey, let's pay big bucks and get some high-flyer CEO just for the heck of it? Let's see, we need someone with integrity, passion, and competence. The Dalai Lama is not available (still fighting for Tibet's independence). The Pope... hmmm not exactly sure that he's cheap. Mother Teresa's dead. Gandhi too. Jesus Christ long dead (or resurrected according to some). Dammit! Messiahs, Saviours and Saints only come once every few hundred years and we have like 300 social service charities needing good leaders.
So sit around and search and search for a saint? Or work with what we've got, and realise that talent needs to be compensated (or they'll work elsewhere).
These writers should ask themselves. If their son or daughter graduated with high honours and distinctions and then decided to follow their passion and work in a charity for a token salary just enough to pay their living expenses would they worry for their child? If they had spent their savings to give their child the education they wanted and now depend on their child to support them in their old age, would their child's choice worry them? Of course it should not! Because since the child is in the charity sector, the parents will have priority admission to old age home, nursing home and other social services!]
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