Fundraising directors at Oxfam, the NSPCC, Macmillan and the British Red Cross have been the subjects of personal attacks in the Daily Mail’s latest article on charities and their practices.

An article in this morning’s paper featured photos and profiles on the four fundraising directors - Tim Hunter of Oxfam, Paul Farthing of NSPCC, Simon Phillips of Macmillan and Mark Astarita of the British Red Cross, alongside the headline “£100,000-a-year bosses driving cold-call menace”.

The article forms part of a wider piece calling for charities to “Stop the bullying”, and follows on from the paper’s cover feature yesterday, claiming to expose malpractice at agency GoGen, which had the headline “Shamed: charity cold call sharks”.

A section on Astarita is accompanied by the sub-heading “I’m a professional beggar”, and a photo of Astarita at a “charity industry party”, where he is described as “smirking”, dressed as a post box with a “no junk mail ever” label on it.

The Daily Mail wrote that Astarita has been credited with raising almost £1.5bn during his 20-year career, and that in his 12 years at the British Red Cross he is said to have trebled donations.

The Daily Mail article also refers to Astarita’s “gated £1m Essex mansion with an indoor heated pool” which he shares with his wife, and his basic salary of £111,742.

The article also mentions Astarita’s three-year hold on the top spot in the 50 Most Influential poll, run by Civil Society Media’s Fundraising Magazine, which this month saw Astarita drop to second place below Institute of Fundraising chair Richard Taylor.

A spokeswoman from the Red Cross said that the charity could not comment at this time.

Tim Hunter, Oxfam’s director of fundraising, also features in the article under the sub-heading “The mass mailing expert”. The Daily Mail writes: ”The 48-year-old – who is seen in pictures drinking at a party and larking about at a festival – runs a team which raises about £250million a year in net income from fundraising.” It also includes a photo of Hunter at a festival.

It also refers to Hunter’s £500,000 apartment in North London, and states that “he was credited with boosting the charity’s marketing database to more than a million people”.

Oxfam said it did not want to respond to the Daily Mail article.

Acting director of fundraising at Macmillan Simon Phillips also appears in the article, however he is mistakenly referred to as “James Phillips”. A photo of Phillips, who has only held the role since September when Lynda Thomas became the charity’s chief executive, is also included. The article referenced his “£750,000 home in North London”, and said that he is “lauded for ‘driving growth’ of ten per cent in income for Macmillan every year”.

Macmillan had not commented on the Daily Mail article at the time of publication.

The final fundraiser to be personally attacked in the Daily Mail article is Paul Farthing, director of fundraising at the NSPCC. Under the sub-head “the career fundraiser”, the Daily Mail states that he has a salary of £130,000, “but on the side he finds time to be a director of his partner Pippa Carte’s charity fundraising consultancy business, which is registered to their £800,000 detached house in Surrey.”

An NSPCC spokesman said: “We help hundreds of thousands of children in communities across the UK every year. We employ thousands of people but rightly, pay is lower than in private sector organisations of a similar scale, to reflect our charity status. Our supporters naturally want to know how their money is spent and the salaries of our senior team are published on our website.”

'Where are your morals?'

The rest of the Daily Mail article, under the line “Big four are savaged over phone tactics" asked: Where are your morals?” wrote that the four charities had been revealed as “hounding people on the Government’s official ‘no-call’ list, the Telephone Preferential Service”.

It said that minister for civil society Rob Wilson had criticised fundraising practices were “indefensible and immoral” warning charities that they must “clean up” their practices.

Charity sector workers have taken to Twitter to defend the four fundraising directors and criticise the Daily Mail article.