Charity donations often swallowed by staff costs

FURTHER to the letter from Mike Ryan (“Charities have to be more transparent from now on”, March 12), charities are regulated by the Charity Commission and are required to submit an annual report and financial statements with information about their trustees and other administrative information. Reports are available online for anyone to access.

Those who wish to donate to a charity should specify what their donation is for and the charity must use that money for the purpose specified.

Non-specified donations are spent at the discretion of the trustees and may involve funding activities that the donors might not know about or approve of.

I recently accessed the annual report of a well known food bank charity and was appalled to see that some 40 per cent of donations went on staffing costs, despite most of its staff being volunteers.

Christine Thomson, Ryton, Tyne and Wear