Go back three decades (or so).  Question to WWF champ Bob Backlund:  What could possibly persuade a man to earn a living by getting his brains beaten out while wearing a Speedo?  Answer:  I make more money than the President of the United States.

Bob has me beat.  The salary of charity execs has been tearing up the media this week.  Here’s Ian Birrell, in an excoriating piece, sending some special love to Save the Children’s CEO: “The fat cat charity chiefs include [Justin] Forsyth, whose £163,000 salary means he earns £20,500-a-year more than David Cameron.”  For the record, this year I will earn less than half that.

The Telegraph broke the story. Numerous takes popped up.  For a balanced argument, try Oxfam’s Duncan Green here.  Here’s another spin.  And another.  Far more revelatory than the stories themselves, take a look at the reams of commentary (the Telegraph piece alone has over 600).  This topic touches a live wire.  The public vents shock and anger at us charity bosses.  I want the public to like me.  And I don’t want to work for peanuts.  So what’s up?

Maybe we should blame ourselves. As far as I can tell, perhaps too many people have been listening to what we charities say.  Unfortunately, what we say doesn’t chime with fat salaries.  Perhaps we’ve told you that every £££/$$$ you send will be used to [fill in blank] and save fly-covered orphan Maria, end the persecution of polar bears, or fix a world of broken smiles.  Never mind that it’s often a whopping fudge, it sets high expectations.  Or perhaps you’ve internalized the subtext of our messages: that we merchants of charity are not like bankers or businessmen; that we are – look at all our sacrifices and good deeds – agents of pure virtue.

Apparently, neither virtue nor efficient use of donations mix well with being paid six digits.  Reading the commentary, lots of you devote time to charity work, and you do it for £184,000 less than the British Red Cross’s CEO’s annual pay.  So you know all about charities, don’t you?  That is one obvious rub.  Public anger betrays a major misunderstanding about the nature, especially, of overseas aid work.  A remarkably idiotic comment from “Normalwoman” sums it up: “it doesn’t take a genius to give money to the poor”.

Actually, Ma’am, we aid NGOs could use a boatload or two more of geniuses. I mean, if I can make it to the job of CEO/director then it is clear the talent pool is thin.  Four decades of development aid to “bongo-bongo land” can hardly be deemed a success.  And in many cases humanitarians haven’t managed better, in spite of our lower ambitions.  Aid is complex, even if our fundraising narratives scrupulously avoid any mention of struggle, ineffectiveness or failure. Now, under attack, the aid agency litany has about-faced: this is a tough job, a really tough job.  So we need talented people, and they don’t work for free.  It’s not just complexity, it’s responsibility:  you can’t ask Saturday volunteers to take life or death decisions (e.g., sending staff into Somalia and Afghanistan), or close programs that are vital to entire communities.

No matter how many ways it is said, though, these defenses sound, well, defensive.  In that vein, Forsythe inked the high-water mark, managing to suggest his salary was somehow related to “the biggest ever fall in child deaths from preventable illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhoea”.  Oh my.  Defending high salaries by reference to our good work is one step closer to claiming an entitlement. And yet so much of the public backlash aims to trash aid altogether, not high exec salaries.

Besides, who am I to judge? At this stage in my life, I’m not sure if I would not have taken this job for a salary of, say, £40,000 per year. And let’s be clear, that is still a lot of money and there are many people who would be thrilled with such an offer.  You can deliver a lot of vaccines with that kind of money.

Here is the key.  The defensiveness – and I feel it myself – in our voice originates in the same place as the public’s anger.  We both believe that NGO employees, especially leaders, should be agents of virtue.  We should be thankful for the fact that the public still sees a strong moral quality to aid work.  They do not want it to be a business. They do not want their NGO bosses to covet generous salaries.  They do not want a banker’s mentality at the helm of an aid organization.

[Diversion alert! It is perfectly logical to answer that we need capable leaders to perform a tough job, isn’t it?  Worryingly, this response falters under close scrutiny [thanks J for this kernel].  What is the evidence that these high CEO salaries actually enabled organizations to hire talent otherwise unavailable?  In particular, any evidence that it enabled them to hire talent better able to lead an organization to the promised land of effective aid?  Or is it more true that boards look for leaders who are an asset to the balance sheet of the organization, meaning people with the skills, experience and personal qualities to woo major donors and ensure substantial government funding?]

So where will all this end?  Being called a fat cat doesn’t feel good.  The story and keen public reaction seem like another shovel of dirt on the grave of our fundraising ambitions.  I see two lessons.  We aid agencies must counter not with a defense of salaries but by showing what we do.  Public sentiment must more closely align with the reality of aid work, including the warts.

I fear, however, that the real lesson in this story has little to do with our Western publics.  More broadly, this is a story about what people expect from aid workers, and what they find unfair/dishonest.  And like it or not, the societies in which we work also have expectations and a sharp sense of fairness.  If Western publics do not expect their donations to go towards the salary of a CEO, then the people in the countries where we work do not expect those same donations to end up in our large offices, top-flight hardware, homes, restaurant tabs, Landcruisers, televisions, yoghurt, R&R trips etc.

We’ve shut our ears to the critique that we asked people to donate to save, say, the Sudanese, and then we spend it on ourselves right in front of those very Sudanese.  What happens when that gets vented?  In other words, what is the cost of so visibly sabotaging our own position in the battle for moral respect?