Pay Them

There will be great celebration in the land to mark the publication of the new version of CC11. (No one reading this blog will need telling that this is the Charity Commission for England and Wales’ guidance on trustee expenses and payments, so I won’t mention that). Front pages the world over will be held. But enough! Enough cynicism. This matters. For grant making trusts, it matters in social justice terms. CC11 bangs on about voluntary trusteeship being a ‘defining characteristic’ of the voluntary sector; well maybe, as it now seems to be OK to pay charity bosses whatever the market rate is, though what this market is, given the vast range of fields of activity covered by the sector, is never really explained. But that truism shouldn’t be used to avoid facing up to the real issue; why should the power of spending other people’s money in order to tackle social injustice be overwhelmingly vested with those who have no firsthand experience of that injustice? However busy we get training people to be trustees or grant makers or whatever, we can’t train people to experience social exclusion – surely one of the best qualifications for making grants to tackle it. And – shock horror – poor people may need paying in order to be able to afford to be trustees. Isn’t it just a bit irritating that the whole debate about paying trustees has been conducted in terms of professionals - solicitors, accountants, estate agents (OK I know, but it’s a sunny day and I’m feeling magnanimous) - who want to charge for their time? So: here’s a suggestion – anyone in salaried or fee-paid professional employment should not be permitted to be paid as a trustee (yes, there’ll be problems identifying them, but we can find ways and if it quacks like a duck etc etc); whereas for those who are unemployed or on low wages or who have little control over the use of their own paid time, there is at least a presumption that it’s OK to pay them to share their valuable experience as part of a board of trustees. In this market at least, solicitors and accountants are two a penny; whereas those who understand from experience the problems facing socially excluded people are few and far between on grant making boards. So – let the logic of the market prevail. Pay them.