13:57 PM, 4th February 2019, About 6 years ago 43
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Shelter’s accounts for the year to March 2018 show total income of £67.4m, and total expenditure of £66.4m. Compared to the previous year, income was up 11% and expenditure was up 6%: click here.
It got donations and legacies of £36.9 million, but spent £11.7 million on obtaining them.
It got £17.3 million for housing advice and support services from government departments and local authorities, and £2.8 million from the Big Lottery, making a total of £20.1 million.
This is analysed in a table on page 65 (digital page 33) of the annual accounts, under a humorous heading Housing Services:
More detail is given on pages 80/81 (digital page 41). Shelter got amounts totalling £1m from councils in each of the following cities: London, Sheffield and Birmingham.
However, Shelter spent £40.0 million providing ”housing” services. You have to work this figure out for yourself – the cost is split into 6 categories, but there is no sub-total. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to know.
Shelter shops sold goods for a total of £9.0 million, but the staff working in them cost £3.6 million, and “other shop costs” were £4.8 million. The net contribution was 532k, or 5.95% of sales – less than six pence in the pound from selling things that were given to them for nothing.
It got £1.2 million for training and publications which cost £0.9million. It also got £270k, from investments mainly, with a bit from office rental.
It spent £5.3 million on research, policy and campaigning.
To summarise where the money went:
Cost of collecting donations & legacies £11.7m
Cost of Shelter shops and their staff £8.4m
Training and publications £0.9m
Total £21.0m
“Housing” services £40.0m
Research, policy and campaigning £5.3m
Total overall expenditure £66.3m
NB The £21m cost of the first three items was spent on obtaining the £67.4m receipts. That is 31%.
Broadly speaking, the net donations and legacies of £25.2 million were spent as follows:
Half of the cost of so-called housing services £20m
Campaigning to drive private landlords out of the market and increase homelessness £5m
Housing anybody at all £0
Remuneration for the seven directors was £606,407, making an average of £86,630. In July 2017, the month before Neate and Beales joined Shelter, the Director of Finance resigned. His replacement resigned in February; her interim replacement resigned in April. In May a permanent Director of Finance was appointed, for the time being.
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Sign Up14:30 PM, 27th February 2019, About 6 years ago
Replying to Richard Mann.
What a well constructed article. Absolutely on the mark and so sad.
This horrible organisation that slates the PRS fails to provide beds for the many like that old gentleman. What a travesty.
This is exactly why the Alliance is exposing Shelter. Those who attack us for this approach are wrong. We now have national newspapers rightly raising questions about charities. It is our moral duty to point out everything that is wrong with the housing charity that houses nobody. Do not give to shelter.
Appalled Landlord
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Sign Up17:44 PM, 27th February 2019, About 6 years ago
Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 05/02/2019 - 10:29
Hi Ian
For some reason I did not see your comment when you posted it. It was only because of the notification of today’s comment that I realised I had missed yours, and the subsequent lively debate.
Normally I am impressed by your comments, but I must take issue with this one, which is not as learned as usual. In fact you seem to have dashed it off, perhaps in solidarity with the many solicitors employed by Shelter.
My article was not an attack on Shelter, it was an analysis of where its money comes from and what it is spent on. The articles in which I attack the lies and bullying of its senior managers are elsewhere on this website.
I think nutjob is a poor choice of word. Do you apply it to anyone if he stands up to an organisation that has good PR?
You first describe Shelter as a housing charity. On what basis?
You later describe their job as giving advice. I wonder what proportion of donors and bequeathers, faced with photos of sad-faced people in Shelter’s propaganda, realise that their money is going to collectors, solicitors, advisers and call centres rather than on accommodation for people with no home, like it used to in the first few years. And I wonder how many realise that their money is going on left-wing political lobbying.
If all Shelter does is give advice they are the same as the Citizens Advice bureaus. People don’t donate much to CA, probably because they know what CA does. In 2016/17 the CA got donations of £1.2m, just over 1% of its total income of £99.1m. In the previous year donations totalled a mere £367,000.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/Global/CitizensAdvice/citizens%20advice%20annual%20report.pdf page 48 (digital page 53).
You imply that anyone that Shelter advises is the victim of a rogue landlord. To use your own terminology, wise up!
I have never called for Shelter to be closed down. I just want the senior managers to stop lying, stop bullying and stop lobbying for policies that “have the opposite effect” as you put it.
My post has had exactly the effect I intended: to show the source and application of Shelter’s funds, to reveal to a wider audience what Shelter does - and what it doesn’t do, contrary to the impression given by its propaganda. If people want to donate or leave money to a helpline, that is fine, as long as they know that’s all it is.
I never expected Shelter to respond, and I don’t see how an analysis of Shelter’s cashflow could be spun into an attempt to stop them helping the homeless. Rather, it is an attempt to show that donations and legacies are being used on subsidising government services and on campaigning against landlords and letting agents, which may not be exactly what the providers of the money intended. And that about a third of the donations and legacies are consumed in collecting them, and that sales in Shelter shops contribute very little.
Chris @ Possession Friend
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Sign Up0:04 AM, 11th November 2019, About 5 years ago
Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 05/02/2019 - 10:29
Ian, your post assumes that Shelter ONLY support Tenants of ' Rogue Landlords ' when in fact, they do not 'discriminate'
Shelter will support ANY Tenant, including those who haven't paid Rent.
If more people realize the activities that Shelter spend money on, without Any effect whatsoever on the Homeless, AND, speak up - perhaps Shelter won't be held in such 'esteem'
I support the Freedom of ANYONE who wishes to highlight the truth about a 'so-called charity' to Speak-up. ( and Shelter are big enough and ugly enough to defend themselves if they think they're being unfairly maligned )