Some former and serving volunteers at the charity Cats Protection are complaining about management decisions that are undermining the whole purpose of the charity, so states the Daily Mail. Can we believe this?
We are told that these so called whistleblowers are complaining that management have changed the charity’s policies and cutback on some essential services despite the charity’s income remaining healthy and stable at £62m, which makes the cutbacks difficult to understand unless the changes are about making the charity more efficient.
Spending on frontline services such as the quality of vaccinations and the inspection of potential cat adopter’s homes are being reduced or cut back.
The volunteers who have spoken out say that the charity is putting profit before cat welfare. If this is true, it sounds similar to the complaints about the RSPCA. Are charities becoming too profit conscious in a more competitive world?
The fantastic volunteers who are the backbone of Cats Protection request funds for services such as neutering and vaccinations. The volunteers who ran the Cardiff branch appears to have been over-efficient and too keen. They requested £12,000 to fund neutering services. The Cats Protection neutering service is a fundamental part of the charity. It is vital to slow the creation of unwanted cats. Apparently, the Cardiff branch was told they were doing too much neutering and were closed down as a consequence. It was a devastating shock to the volunteers there as you can imagine. The brach had been open for 23 years.
‘They said we shouldn’t have been neutering so many cats and that we were helping too many people, which was now unaffordable. So they were closing us down…
Some of the 8,500 staff have been made redundant and 7 branches closed. The general theme of the complaints from within the charity is that the funding is in place and the finances are healthy so why is management cutting back on what are considered to be essential services?
I have a huge admiration for Cats Protection. The story of Chester’s rescue and recovery highlights the excellent work they do for cats. As a result I find these complaints slightly difficult to accept. However, the volunteers are decent people so what they say should be taken seriously and acted upon.
The story appears to only come from the Daily Mail. All other sites that I have visited that report this story are just parasitic sites that receive news feeds and then link back to the source, in this case the Daily Mail.
My conclusion at this stage is that the Daily Mail have hyped this up. Cats Protection management may have been heavy handed but I sense that what they are doing is to try and spend the money more efficiently. We don’t have the full story. I could be wrong. Does anyone have some insider information?
Associated: Quiz on Cats Protection.
http://www.cats.org.uk/news/setting-the-record-straight
Thanks Ruth, this is an important link because it shows how newspapers can be so cynical and hype things up to the point where it is just not true.
This does not surprise me at all.
Don’t believe everything you read from Cats Protection. I know for a fact that cats are often treated as of secondary importance to money at the National Centre. Not only are elderly and/or ill cats often killed because they are deemed virtually impossible to home, they are also often killed because keeping them alive is deemed too expensive. In addition I remember fully-developed kittens have been aborted to save money. The heirarchy need to realise that the National Centre, like all CP branches, can exist without any Head Office staff, but they can’t exist without the cats.
I can’t really comment – I was just a foot soldier and didn’t have visibility of what goes on at HQ.
In general – for all charities – I’m not in favour of fat cat Chief Execs. That’s why I support local charities and some independent shelters (e.g. Avon Cat Rescue).
We, the regulars of PoC, hate fat cats who run charities 😉 Actually, come to think about it, we hate all fat cats unless they are real cats.
Yes we like the feline type to have a bit of meat on their bones
It’s also possible that HQ have stopped paying an allowance to shelter wardens at branches and require the branches to fund wardens directly. Paid wardens would be “staff” on a payroll. This put me in a bind when I covered for a weekend warden’s holiday – I couldn’t accept payment (could affect my taxes), but HQ rules said they had to pay me (solution: I never cashed their cheques). If that rule has changed, then it will look as though they’ve axed staff.
Sarah, do you think that top management give enough encouragement and recognition to the volunteers? Are they a bit remote?