Spain’s Red Cross spends 92% of its annual budget on wages (€475mn)!

Early on in my career, I was making small talk with a notary. He told me his daughter had just graduated in Law and already had three job offers. The first one was at a prestigious law firm where they offered her a respectable €2,000/month. The second job was at a leading bank where they offered her a superb €3,000/month. And finally, she was offered by an NGO a whopping €5,000/month.

Unsurprisingly, she chose the NGO as her first job. To put this into perspective, the best student in my class, studying a joint degree in Law and Economics in Madrid, got offered that same wage working for a top US consulting firm.

In other words, the NGO was grossly overpaying a newly graduated student aged 22.

Moving on, on the 29^th of October 2024 Valencia was struck by tragedy. Devastating flash floods led to the deaths of hundreds of people, including half a dozen children. This tragedy brought out the best in people but also the worst.

Spanish people, of all walks in life, are very generous by nature. Understandably people sought to contribute to the thousands of afflicted by gifting food, warm clothing and water. Spain’s Red Cross is the country's number one NGO by a long shot, with over half a billion euros in public budget granted by the government. It remains, in most cases, as the first choice to contribute. Alas, giftors were shocked to find out the Red Cross flat out refused any food, clothes or water and would only accept money (?). This odd behaviour prompted an investigation by some inquisitive journalists.

As a result, the newspaper Gaceta.es published on the 7^th of November 2024 a scathing exposé which revealed that Spain’s Red Cross allocated over 92% of its 2023 public budget to pay staff wages, including an uber generous €4mn wage packet to its top brass! To put this into perspective, that’s more than what CEOs of medium banks get paid in Spain!

In plain English, 9 out of 10 euros given to the Spanish Red Cross by the Spanish government ended up in the pockets of its staff and (very) well-paid executives during 2023. With less than 0.80 cents actually reaching those in need. In 2023, 475 million euros (out of a €514mn public budget), or 92% of its public budget, went straight to pay their 'workforce'.

Now I don't know about you, but those numbers don't look right to me. Maybe I'm just naive, but I'd reasonably expect over 90% of all donations made to the Red Cross to go towards their self-declared charitable goals (with a reasonable 10% spent in admin costs and overheads) not the other way around. Never in my wildest dreams would I expect them to pocket almost all the money generously gifted to them. Nor would I expect the top dogs of a charity to take home a paycheck of €4 million every year. That's just ludicrous.

My advise, knowing firsthand how some NGOs work in Spain, is that before you gift ANY money to an NGO is that you first do your research and check thoroughly their annual spending activity. Demand to see a full breakdown of their company accounts (which should be audited by an independent company). If they start with the Data Protection Act BS just move on to the next.

As my gran used to say: "It doesn’t matter what people say, what matters is what they do."

Call me old-fashioned, but back in my day, people that did volunteering expected nothing in return except the occasional warm smile from those bereft. Nowadays you have cynical people driving around town in posh German cars with kids enrolled in fancy British private schools working for NGOs for a sizeable monthly paycheck!

Something has to give.