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I didn't realise that there was so much money flowing through the Trust. In around €50m in 2022 alone.
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Boggles
AndrewJRenko
There is no point in giving money to charities in Ireland, I stopped that years ago, give time, work for your local charities and groups, sit on boards, help out schools etc.
I don’t agree with that. There is of course a point in donating money to charities in Ireland - they use it to provide services to more people than I as an individual on my own could provide. That’s due to a number of factors, including logistics, negotiation with stakeholders and of course managing funding from various sources including the amount of public funding they receive.
The principle of never attribute to malice what is explained by incompetence (or something like that) applies to a lot of these charities which on the face of it are run like a well-oiled machine, but behind the scenes it’s all too often a very different story. The vast majority of people involved in the charities are people who care about the cause, and then there are the tiny minority of people who care more about what’s in it for themselves. That’s missing the point of charity, which is characterised by the idea that it is an altruistic endeavour.
There was some scandal a few years ago when they published their accounts and it turned out they "employed" over 300 people and over 70% of the money raised was going on wages etc, but no one could explain what most of the employees did as opposed to the volunteers. They brazened it out back then but it looks like they have finally run out of road. I'd say the new CEO came in, looked at the books and went WTF!!!!
As a general rule I don't donate to charities that are named after their head. That sort of ego tends to pollute the whole organisation. The Charity industry in Ireland has a huge problem with this sort of thing. I would say we'll see a rebrand and Fr Peter will be shoved into a rural parish down the country.
I have been hugely critical on these pages for many years of the "poverty industry", the charities that are dedicated to perpetuating themselves and their funding and not really wanting to solve problems, because without a homelessness problem, we wouldn't need homeless charities.
So, even when they are getting huge amounts of money from the State, they have to say that the problem is getting bigger so that they can get more money and keep on growing. If homelessness was solved tomorrow, the biggest losers would be charities like PMVT.
I am not one bit surprised about the problems. Issues were clear within PMVT last year when there was a corpse found after a week in one of their apartments. Either they were not doing the inspections they claimed to be doing (and were funded for) or the people they hired to do them were incompetent.
We must end the funding of homelessness charities and bring their functions back under government. Problem is, the local authorities, who you would expect to take over, are probably only slightly less incompetent than the charities.
...tons of will out there, but very little ability!
If the will was there, investment/ pension funds and related developers could be used - under properly framed legislation that would control rents & profits etc.
...but again....
.....
Earlier someone noted that many of the housing charities were set up by volunteers like - people like Fr. McVerry, Sr. Statislaus Kennedy and Sr. Jean Quinn - and I'd add Fr. Patrick Coogan to the list. They may not have drawn a wage, and may well live very simply - but they are all members of religious orders which provide food, housing, clothing, health insurance, etc. Totally unfair to compare them with regular volunteers.
It’s not though. The other poster I was responding to was making the point that nobody would want to be the CEO of the organisation on a voluntary basis. The founders worked on a voluntary basis to establish the organisations in the first place. They didn’t grow to the size they are without being run like a private enterprise, receiving more and more public funding as they expanded to the point they’re at now where the cost of doing business is beginning to hit home. The funding was always contingent upon deliverables, and the organisation, like many of their clients, or service users, are feeling the financial strain of being unable to meet their costs.
I haven’t suggested this particular organisation should be managed and run by volunteer staff, it’s gone too far for that. It’s why I pointed out to the poster I was responding to that it would be unlikely they would find anyone willing to volunteer their time, skills and experience to fill the CEO role, because they’re not interested in filling the role with someone who cares about the cause more than they care about the financial remuneration for themselves. They’re competing for funding and management of housing with other organisations so bringing in people from the private sector with experience in seeking funding and managing funding and managing an organisation of its size are how it grows.
I don’t think there is any aspect of the charity which needs to be investigated at all tbh. It’s quite clear that they’ve been spending money like it was going out of fashion, and now they’re struggling to compete with other organisations who are just managed better, like Tuath Housing, who had a record year in 2022:
https://tuathhousing.ie/news-stories/2022-a-record-breaking-year-for-tuath-housing/
It’s not a mind-numbingly silly notion to look at where they could cut costs, because they need to run a hell of a tighter ship, but they’ve known that for years, and continued to operate as though the funding would never run out and they could be the biggest player in the market. It looks like they may well have to look at scaling back operations as other charities move in on their territory.
Local authority social housing does exactly the same stuff. And they could do a lot more if they got the millions directed to Mcverry trust, cluid, etc
...so what part of society/economoy should be providing this fundamental need?
No need to outlaw them, just cease funding them. If the public want to continue funding them, let them do so voluntarily.
I've donated to Alice Leahy Trust, that seems to genuinely rely mostly/ completely on public contributions
Never to any of the others, with their hands out for more and more taxpayers money every year.
McVerry himself is incapable of keeping his political opinions to himself, he acts like a demagogue much of the time, he is of course a darling of the media so I doubt the trust will be hauled over the coals too much
So many NGO's/Charities do exactly the same thing and would be much more efficient if they were merged.
GOAL/Trocaire/Concern essentially do the same thing, there is zero need for the 3 of them to exist yet they do.Much better use of resources to amalgamate them all and it would improve efficiency and more money would get to the people and places that need it.
Of course you do that it means less managerial/executive roles and therefore it'll never happen.
...shur this is one of the main aims of modern political and economic theory, i.e. to reduce the involvement of government....
Exactly!
I think the last 15/20 years the Government has not been "governing" and everyone has been just let rip. You can just do what you want now.
There's all sorts of mad stuff going on in society now. I actually don't think it's fixable at this stage.
you could easily make the argument that no charities should exist. a well run charity should have as one of its primary goals, the negation of its own need to exist. in ireland, we have plenty of NGOs doing jobs the government should be doing; but it's easier for the government to cut the purse strings for an NGO than it is for it to let go a team of people employed by the HSE, say.
as to the notion of charities being run by volunteers - given that most of these charities require full time staff, in many cases lots of them - where is this army of otherwise unemployed people who would run the charities going to come from? people who say charities should be run by volunteers are essentially saying that the unemployed should run them, the unemployed who in theory are being urged to get 'proper' jobs. or else we are asking pensioners to run them.
Housing charities/agencies shouldn't exist.
We've a heap of housing agencies all trying to do the same thing with public money. They run aground financially and its up to the Taxpayer then to clean up the mess. It's an absolute joke.
Just have one agency, run by the government and outlaw the rest.
Does this exist in anywhere else in the world the way it does in Ireland?
Broadly speaking, the problem with many charities is that it operates as a successful business, and it develops vested interests.
I think many charities start with good intentions, but invariably become about wealth accrual at the very stop -- it corrupts itself. The charity then exists to support the people at the very top rather than the people who they purport to support, which becomes secondary.
The heads of many charities often become politicised, and say things for the sake of their position and not because of what they actually believe. After all, with salaries well into six figures, it's understandable why they will say "the right things" for the sake of maintaining their very comfortable lifestyle.
If anything, charities are probably more susceptible to corruption because people expectedly believe that charities must be a good thing and shouldn't really be criticised; that they can't really be anything wrong going on. It's even easier, then, for inappropriate actions to get brushed under the carpet.
This is an enterprise with a €50 million turnover, much of which is provided by the taxpayer. It's ludicrous to suggest that it should be managed and run by volunteer staff for free. Of course it should be a professional operation; that's a no-brainer.
Having paid, qualified, regularly-employed staff doesn't make it one whit less of a charitable concern. And the notion that there is any meaningful link between the cashflow issues they report experiencing and the 0.2% of turnover that is consumed by the CEO's salary is a mind-numbingly silly one.
There may be aspects of this charity that ought to be investigated, but this is certainly not one of them.
I very much doubt that any not-for-profit housing company is full of volunteers: working with homeless people is complex and needs people with appropriate qualifications and skills. Its most certainly not just about providing houses. The organisations in this field may use volunteers for fundraising and nice-to-have fringe activities (I'm thinking of things like Simon Music Project) - but core work is done by paid staff.
Honestly I have no idea why anyone gives money to these "charities" anymore. They are nothing but a scam. For years we have seen "charity" after charity fall by wayside to be replaced with another. Or front page news stories about what they are getting up to.
Last time I looked at the books on this charity the wages bill was huge yet it is full of volunteers who are unpaid.
We need to find a better method of providing houses than pumping millions into these questionable organisations. It seems to be just used for filling the pockets of some already rich people
De Paul Ireland should open their books as well to show how much state funding they are getting it probably as much if not more than McVerry.
The government is pumping millions a week into homelessness through these charities yet McVerry himself shouts the loudest blaming the government for doing nothing.
These charities want to become landlords not fight homelessness
The g
Govt is happy to absolve its social housing responsibilites to anyone and everyone. This is just another example.
The Govt need to take social housing back in house and stop evading their responsibilities.
Mcverry is a tax payer funded business, not a charity.
Not sure that makes any sense? If a state funded body was turning over a healthy profit, it would be able to reinvest those profits straight back into the body or organisation i.e. no actual need to operate at a loss.
It’s not the same question it always was! You first asked who is going to be a one-dollar CEO for a charity, and then you asked me who, that is actually competent for the role, is likely to offer to be CEO of a relatively large charity for a nominal fee? I know many people who would, but they wouldn’t offer to be CEO of any charity where they didn’t agree with how the organisation was being run.
I’ve not fallen for any buzzword bollocks, and I’m certainly not falling for the idea that a charity wouldn’t be able to source a CEO on an entirely voluntary basis (the reason for the ‘one-dollar’ is due to Federal regulations in the US, that wouldn’t apply here). You need to come up with a more compelling explanation in order to justify the salary offered for a CEO position in a charity organisation when the organisation is in financial difficulty already in spite of the fact that they are not required to make a profit! 😳
A bit of consolation the sector wouldn't go astray. If it's prudent to force mergers of Banks, not just an Irish thing either, why not Homeless Charities? The problem isn't a CEO being appropriately remunerated, it's that there are more than 20 of them when maybe 3 or 4 will do, allowing for different types of homelessness.
It's the same question as it always was, and you can't answer it
Your wall of text does nothing to support the idea that a charity could get a "one dollar salary" CEO, and you've fallen for buzzword bollox.
That’s an entirely different question you’re asking now, and in terms of the particular medium-sized charities in question, I can’t think of anyone who would volunteer themselves for the role of CEO of those organisations, for a couple of reasons - the biggest one being that they aren’t interested in being involved in those charities because they don’t agree with how the charities are run.
It’s being a full-time role certainly does not mean anyone with an existing full-time role is out. That’s a ridiculous impression of the responsibilities of a CEO, a number of whom hold positions in other organisations as well as being in the position of CEO of charity organisations, of comparable size to the medium-sized charities we’re referring to here. My ‘imagined volunteers’ as you put it are not just Board Members, they are Executives, just not executives on €100k salaries.
There’s no reason to suggest that any charity organisation would cease to exist were it to cease offering €100k salaries for executive positions, and rather than suggesting they shouldn’t exist, they were established by volunteers in the first place - people like Fr. McVerry, Sr. Statislaus Kennedy and Sr. Jean Quinn, who built them from nothing, and much as he’s a pain in the proverbial on a personal level, I still have to give credit to Colm O’ Gorman, the founder of One In Four (interesting wrangling over funding went on there with the HSE), who went on to become the Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland.
You say poorly paid CEO positions aren’t part of the problem of charity organisations over-extending themselves to the point where they are having to admit they’re having cash flow problems, I would think that would absolutely be the responsibility of the CEO to manage such a problem within the organisation effectively. Certainly I would question their competence and commitment to the organisation if they’re expecting €100k annual salary and the organisation is being run aground! 😳
Charities have been businesses for a very long time.
Completely agree, if you are the CEO of a body that is wholly or vastly paid for by the state then your job is to always run at a loss so you can argue for more funding. See literally every state funded body for reference.
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