I have worked in the private sector, and the public sector and was tired of the exploitation, and I thought working in non-profit (charity) would be different (I figured I'd be exploited, but at least I'd do some good in the process), but in many ways it is worse; most charities in the UK appear to have been taken over by predatory elites who pay themselves ridiculously high salaries, pensions and performance bonuses with lower scrutiny than in shareholder companies.
My charity CEO earns £450k plus huge pension and bonuses. His massively bloated exec team (larger than many much bigger private for profit corporations I've worked for), are on £150k+ as well as bonuses, company cars and huge pensions . They justify low pay, understaffing and high workloads for rank and file employees via the “we are a charity” spiel but they don't apply this rule to themselves.
Like execs in private sector organizations, they do barely any work that has any value – mostly photo opportunities and sleazy deals to help out their mates, as well as the occasional diktat for employees to fill out yet more pointless forms and spreadsheets that serve no actual purpose, this is all at the expense of the core purpose of the charity which seems to come quite low in priorities Vs ensuring management get hefty payouts, and can justify their pay and existence to a very shadowy 'trustee board', as well as sorting out their mates via dodgy (corrupt) business deals.
Half of the charity trustees come from a multinational private sector corp who the CEO used to be an exec for, as are many of the other charity execs.
Speaking to peers in other non-profit organisations this experience seems to be common.
There really is no ethical workplace in the UK I feel ..