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Letter to Editor, Sunday Independent, 26 August 2007
Sir
I write in response to the article 'Top charities defend fat cat CEO salaries' (August 19). I would like to point out the following: The headline suggested that GOAL defends "fat cat" salaries. This is untrue. GOAL neither defends nor pays such salaries and the figure quoted in the article is way above any salary the organisation has ever paid its CEO. Furthermore, for 17 of the 30 years that GOAL has been in existence, its founder, John O'Shea, worked on an entirely voluntary basis and has never had any interest'in personal reward for his work.
Each year, GOAL spends an average of EUR60m on a range of humanitarian projects in 12 of the poorest countries, using a head office staff of only 50 people, many of whom are on secondment from the corporate sector and cost us nothing. In fact, head office administration costs have never risen above 5 'per cent of total expenditure, making GOAL's cost-revenue ratio one of the lowest in the world of humanitarian aid.
You stated that GOAL had a EUR16m surplus in 2005. In 2005, all emergency aid agencies experienced a dramatic rise in . donations, due to the South East Asian tsunami, the famine in Niger and the earthquake in Pakistan, which were responded to with unprecedented levels of generosity by the Irish public. Spending this money requires prudence, some long-term planning and the maintenance of reserves. It would be impossible for charities like GOAL to operate if they started each calendar year with a bank balance of zero. Money must always be available to respond quickly to unexpected disasters, such as the tsunami, which Goal did very successfully.
With regard to the reference to the business of on-street collecting or 'chugging', GOAL has never paid on-street collectors and is on record as being highly critical of this form of fundraising.
GOAL and other charities are not operating in an unregulated market. As a limited company, GOAL is governed by the same strict standards of ethics and corporate governance that apply to any commercial limited company.
GOAL does not engage in "turf wars" with other agencies when it comes to responding to crises in the world's worst disaster regions. As regards agencies "falling over themselves" to get into Darfur, it should be pointed out that GOAL has been active in that region since the Sahel crisis in the mid-Eighties.
GOAL has received praise from many distinguished individuals,.ranging from the president of the United States to Bob Geldof and James Morris, the former head of the World Food Programme.
As an example of our efficiency as an aid agency, our team in Sri Lanka has just wound up our programme there, having spent all of the almost EUR20m raised. In its thanks to GOAL, the Sri Lankan government commented that it would have taken them many years to do what we managed to achieve in 15 months.
The tens of thousands of Irish people who have supported GOAL down through the years can be confident that it remains one of the most effective and reliable channels for aid to the developing world, whether in the refugee camps of Darfur or on the streets of Calcutta.
Jerry Sheehan,
Chairman,
GOAL
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