Cancer Research UK and Age UK have criticised The Sun for producing an “incorrect” and “plain wrong” article on charitable spending, while other charities have also disputed the newspaper's figures.

The article, which appeared in yesterday’s paper, followed on from the fundraising review, led by Sir Stuart Etherington, which was published on Wednesday.

The Sun claimed that of the money raised by Age UK only 47 per cent "goes to charity". It said only 57 per cent of money raised by CRUK "goes to charity" and only 69 per cent of money raised by Oxfam.

Calculations for the article excluded money spent on charity shops, on carrying out contracts, and on building a research centre to fight cancer.

The figures were included in a section on "Do we have a cause for concern?", which included data on how much charities spend "on charitable causes".

"Critics claim charities are increasingly guilty of spending a small-fortune on executive pay, gold-plated pensions, and lavish ad campaigns to capture more donations," the article said.

Charities said the figures were misleading, partial, and lacked context.

CRUK chief financial officer, Ian Kenyon (pictured), released a blog post which said the figures quoted in the piece are wrong.

Kenyon said in his blog, entitled 80p of every £1 you give us is used to beat cancer: why The Sun’s article on our spending is plain wrong, “The Sun’s figures bear no relation to what we actually spend on fundraising”.

He said that the figures “merely compare what we actually spent on our charitable work in 2013/14 (£379m, the vast majority of which is scientific research, but also includes things like producing accurate information for the public) to our total income that year (£665m)”.

Kenyon adds that the article missed the fact that CRUK spent an extra £35m as part of its investment in the new Francis Crick Institute. He said that this counted as an ‘exceptional income’ in its accounts, and that as part of its move to the Francis Crick Institute, it sold a research institute of which the proceeds are to be spent in future years.

An Age UK spokeswoman said that the percentage of income that goes to charity number in The Sun is "incorrect and a misunderstanding of the figures".

She said: "The suggestion that Age UK spends only 47% of its voluntary income on charitable ‎expenditure is incorrect and a misunderstanding of the figures.
 
“Our fundraising generated £46.2m in 2013/14 and we actually spent significantly more - £78.3m - on our charitable work. We were able to spend more on our charitable work (£78.3 million) than we raised through donations (£46.2 million) because of our social enterprise activities which are separate from those of the charity. This sale of goods and services allows us to spend 90% of our charitable income (90p in every pound donated) on charitable work plus the profit from the commercial enterprises.
 
"Therefore it is wrong to suggest that 47% of the Age UK Group's total income being spent on charitable activity is inefficient since the bulk of the costs relate to providing (non charitable) social enterprise products and services.”
 

"Misleading"

Karl Wilding, director of public policy at NCVO, tweeted yesterday that the story was misleading: "Today's Sun newspaper: charities don't spend enough on charitable cause. I spent an hour explaining to them we do."

"Disappointed but not surprised, that The Sun ignored everything I told them last night about how to read charity accounts. Misleading story."

Charities respond

Oxfam said: "Charities with shop networks obviously have higher costs. It costs money to run shops but ours make a £20m-a-year profit which allows us to help many more people than we could otherwise.

"The fact our shops are self-financing means that 84p of every pound raised through traditional fundraising goes on our work helping people survive emergencies and escape poverty."

The British Red Cross said: “Charitable expenditure has increased by 17 per cent since 2014, however it does cost money to run an effective and accountable charity which helps millions of people in the UK and overseas each year”.

The figure quoted for the British Heart Foundation in the piece was 52.1 per cent. However the charity argues that this figure would actually be closer to 78 per cent spent on the fight against heart disease.

Martin Miles, chief financial officer at the British Heart Foundation, said: “From the £135.5 million that we raised in 2013/2014, 78 per cent was available for charitable purposes to be spent on the fight against heart disease.

"When someone makes a donation to the BHF we make sure that this money is put to the best possible use and we take that responsibility incredibly seriously.

“The BHF is the UK’s largest funder of heart research and last year we spent £143.3m to fight heart disease. We funded £112.8m of ground-breaking research and supported a range of other life saving programmes to prevent heart disease, reduce deaths from cardiac arrests and support heart patients.

“We have 700 retail stores across the UK which employ 2,186 people and are by far the largest and most profitable of any charity retailer in the UK. In 2013/2014 our shops generated £28.9 million, a significant sum to fund research."

Barnardo’s was quoted as having 72 per cent of its income going to charity. However, a spokewoman said: A Barnardo’s spokesperson said: “We are a large charity with more than 960 services across the UK supporting more than 240,000 children, young people and families each year. Out of every £1 we spend, 92p goes on our work, 3p on governance and pension costs and 5p on raising the next £1. It is 74p in every £1 If we included trading and property development costs, which are both self-financing.”