The RNLI, do you donate?

Trundlebug said:
Interesting how many people seem to think the RNLI are wasteful and profligate.

Yet a key figure quoted above which seems to have been ignored is that out of every £1 donated, £0.83p is spent directly on operational services, not overheads. You'd think reading some of the comments above that it was the other way round.
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There are ways to polish the data. For example, I know of one very large aid charity which boasts that it spends a similar proportion of income to the above on projects. What it doesn't say is that the projects are then back-charged huge amounts to pay for admin services supplied by the headquarters. Want to buy a £5 spare part in the field? That's fine, go right ahead. By the way, your budget has just been charged £30 for this authorisation. As a separate issue, many of their field staff stay in expensive hotels. But hey, it's all being spent on projects.

In 2014, the RNLI had an income of £182m, of which they spend £149.6m (82%) on running costs. Curiously, although they do say that 18% of their expenditure was on fundraising (which takes expenditure on operational services down to 67%, they list nothing whatsoever for admin and management. Ho-hum. I wonder why.
 
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Erbas said:
(We'd all like to see the RNLI cut it's salary bill, I'm sure, but the reality is that in order to attract experienced competent staff at all levels in an organisation, whether a charity or not, you have to offer a halfway competitive salary package ...
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Are lifeboat crews incompetent?
 
Erbas said:
Of course not and I did not say they were. I could have worded it better though.
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It was perhaps a little unfair of me to put it that way. However, I think it's interesting that "pay peanuts, get monkeys" is very often used about RNLI management but not about the people who risk their lives for us.
 
The RNLI have announced an opt-in choice; they will only contact people who have given their prior permission. And this from Jan 1 2017. Obviously they would need more staff to implement it for 2016.
 
N'
Erbas said:
Granted that's considerably less than his counterpart in the UK but it's a significantly smaller organisation with significantly less income - which could be argued to be a good thing of course but that's actually beside the point, the boss of a big operation is generally paid more than the boss of a smaller operation in the normal course of things
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You say it is significantly smaller; I would say that they are in the same ballpark.

Lifeboat stations

Rnli : 237
Snsm : 221 (plus seasonal stations)

Shouts

Rnli : 8462
Snsm : 4925

Rescued

Rnli : 8727
Snsm : 7155

Volunteer crews

Rnli : 4600. (Plus shore crew 3000)
Snsm : 4400 ( plus lifeguards 1300 plus trainers 2000 plus volunteer managers 2000)

Paid staff

Rnli : 1763 (fte 1363)
Snsm : 72 (fte 67)

Paid staff cost

Rnli : £62.8m
Snsm : £3.8m

Total operating costs :

Rnli : £174.9m
Snsm : £ 17.7m

Total Reserves :

Rnli : £ 694.9m
Snsm : £32.7m

Figures taken from the respective websites and annual accounts for 2014. French numbers translated at todays rate.
 
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In organisational terms, with 25 times as many staff, 10 times the turnover etc etc the RNLI, for good or ill, is way bigger. Whatever the arguments about the pros and cons of that, the CEO of a much larger organsation is usually paid rather more than the CEO of a smaller one
 
Erbas said:
In organisational terms, with 25 times as many staff, 10 times the turnover etc etc the RNLI, for good or ill, is way bigger. Whatever the arguments about the pros and cons of that, the CEO of a much larger organsation is usually paid rather more than the CEO of a smaller one
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Some years ago I worked for a small charity whose CEO was of the firm belief that size counted. He therefore tried to appoint as many employees as possible, then look for something for them to do. To my surprise the organisation still exists, but it is still small.

Sybarite's figures are interesting. Absent further evidence, I would say that the RNLI's employment of 25 times as many people as the SNSM is a problem, not an explanation.
 
JumbleDuck said:
Som
Sybarite's figures are interesting. Absent further evidence, I would say that the RNLI's employment of 25 times as many people as the SNSM is a problem, not an explanation.
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Boat builders, designers, engineers, fund raisers, retail staff, membership administrators etc etc

The two organisations are superficially similar but run along very different lines.

Whether that is good bad we've done to death in the past
 
Erbas said:
In organisational terms, with 25 times as many staff, 10 times the turnover etc etc the RNLI, for good or ill, is way bigger. Whatever the arguments about the pros and cons of that, the CEO of a much larger organsation is usually paid rather more than the CEO of a smaller one
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Are you forgetting the 2000 volunteer administrators in the Snsm? I maintain that the organisations are of roughly similar size, the difference being that the RNLI pay for what is volunteered in France. It is still a complex organisation to manage but a lot of the admin is decentralised to the stations.
 
Erbas said:
Apologies, I had forgotten the conversation

So the three highest paid staff presumably includes the actual equivalent of the RNLI Chief Exec? And he must be on somewhat more than a third of that amount so at a guess he's probably earning the equivalent of around £75,000 to £80,000 p.a.
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Guess again - he's on 143k p/a (2014)

http://rnli.org/faqs/faqs/Pages/CE-salary.aspx
 
saltylegs said:
I do
And am a past crew member.
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I don't
And am a past crew member.

And also a past Firefighter and believe the fire service manages its finances far more efficiently than the RNLI, not a characteristic for which public services are renowned.
 
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