Want to know what the Salvation Army really does with your money?

(Friday/weekend blog)

In this blog I’m going to do something that might upset a few readers. I’m going to look at what the Salvation Army really does with the hundreds of millions of pounds of your money it gets every year:

The Salvation Army is probably one of Britain’s most trusted organisations. It’s a bit of a national icon like the Queen. It’s an organisation towards which most people feel admiration, affection and pride.

Inside the Salvation Army

In my blog and in my book THE GREAT CHARITY SCANDAL I have criticised many charities for being just huge, greedy, wasteful, self-serving, bureaucratic corporate organisations with too many employees, too many over-paid and over-pensioned bosses and too little money spent on real charitable activities. But I have always felt that the Salvation Army was in some way different and better than most other charities and therefore ‘off limits’ for any investigation or criticism. I had the impression that the Salvation Army was a bit old-fashioned but still a worthy cause mainly staffed by selfless volunteers doing valuable work to help the homeless and the needy.

At least, that was what I thought until yesterday. Yesterday I got the usual Salvation Army Christmas appeal letter and I’m sure you’ve all seen the TV ads with the Salvation Army helping homeless people:

Out of curiosity I Googled the Salvation Army to look at their annual reports. I didn’t like what I saw.

The Charity Commission, the body which is supposed to regulate the �77bn a year 168,000+ charities in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own charity regulators and another 30,000 to 40,000 charities) used to claim that under their wonderfully effective management of charities around �8 of every �10 donated (80%) was spent on “charitable activities”.

Let’s look at the latest figures from the Salvation Army. In the latest full financial year, the Salvation Army raised �238m and spent �233m. Of the �233m spent, just �149m went on what the Salvation Army called�“charitable activities”. So, just �6.40 of every �10 donated (64%) to the Salvation Army was spent on what the Salvation Army classed a “charitable activities”. If the Salvation Army had managed to reach �8 out of every �10 raised being spent on “charitable activities”, that would have released another �37m for “charitable activities” – �37m a year is quite a lot of money.

Are they really “charitable activities”?

At the risk of boring readers senseless, let’s take a couple of minutes to delve a bit deeper into what the Salvation Army did with the �149m spent on supposedly “charitable activities”.

Church and Evangelism Programmes – The Salvation Army spent over �49m on what they call “Church and Evangelism Programmes”. The Salvation Army report explains -�This represents Christian worship and the teaching and promotion of the Christian message at our corps, regionally and nationally. Expenditure has increased primarily due to staff pension costs and planned maintenance costs on properties.

A cynic might question whether Christian worship and teaching the Christian message, increased staff pension costs and planned building maintenance really were “charitable activities” of the sort that donors expect their money to be used on or whether these were just running expenses that should never have been classed as “charitable activities” in the first place.

Training Programmes – �6.5m was spent on Salvation Army staff training. I quote the Salvation Army report -�This represents the costs of William Booth College which trains people to become Salvation Army officers and runs education and learning programmes for employees and officers.

Of course, staff training is necessary. But is it really a “charitable activity”? Or is it just a normal running cost for any large organisation?

If we take a slightly harsher approach to the Salvation Army’s �149m spent on supposedly “charitable activities” and take out the �49m used for�Church and Evangelism Programmes, staff pension costs and planned building maintenance and the �6.5m spent on staff training at the William Booth College from spending on�“charitable activities” and include them under organisational running costs, then we end up with the Salvation Army spending �233m in the latest financial year of which only �93.5m� – �4 of every �10 spent (just 40%) – used for what most people (and especially most donors?) would consider to be genuine “charitable activities”. And that isn’t a great use of our money!!!!

I have a feeling that the Salvation Army does what many charities do – put lipstick on a pig to make themselves look better by classifying loads of costs as “charitable activities” when these costs are actually just organisational running expenses which have nothing at all to do with what most of us would describe as “charitable activities”.

Volunteers? No pay, no way!

The other image I had of the Salvation Army was that it was mainly staffed by well-meaning, possibly rather middle-aged, middle-class volunteers. This may be true. I don’t know how many volunteers work with the Salvation Army each year. But I do know that there are a possibly surprisingly large number of quite reasonably paid employees.

In 2019, the Salvation Army employed 3,031 people. As some were part-time, this equated to 2,634 what are called “full-time equivalents”. These 2,634 full-time equivalents were paid �71.3m – that’s an average salary of �27,000. The 2,770 full-time equivalents employed in 2018 were paid salaries of �65.1m – an average salary of �23,500. I wonder why the average Salvation Army employee salary shot up by 15% from �23,500 to �27,000 between 2018 and 2019? And I wonder whether most people, who donate money to the Salvation Army, are aware that they are paying �73.1m a year for the not ungenerous salaries of 3,031 full-time and part-time employees?

Now let’s quickly look at the Salvation Army big bosses. The Charity Commission requires all charities to list the number of employees being paid �60,000 or more a year specifying how many employees there are in each �10,000 band above �60,000 a year. In 2018, the Salvation Army had 36 employees being paid above �60,000. In 2019 this rose by 22% to 44 employees being paid over �60,000 a year in 2019. In 2018, the Salvation Army didn’t have any employees being paid over �150,000 a year. In 2019 one lucky individual reached this exalted status.

Conclusion?

I’m sure the Salvation Army does lots of valuable work helping those in need. But I’m far from convinced that enough of its �233m a year spending goes to what most of us would consider as genuine “charitable activities”.

Moreover, I’m more than slightly perturbed by the number of paid employees in what I had imagined was mainly a voluntary organisation and how fast these employees’ salaries seem to have risen between 2018 and 2019.

Personally. I was disappointed by what I found. I had always thought of the Salvation Army being somehow less greedy, less bureaucratic and more altruistic than many other charities. But it seems I was wrong.