You piqued my curiosity
So I checked their annual accounts.

www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends01/0000288701_ac_20110331_e_c.pdf

Finance, Human resources, IT and systems: £2.47m
Chief executive and internal audit: £0.23m
Premises and facilities: £0.858m

which gives total declared back-office costs of £3.55m. Section 6 shows that the chief executive received a total of £110,188 (salary and taxable benefits) and that only 8 out of 606 employees earned more than £60k in 2011.

Of course the accounts can, as I initially posted, hide all sorts of creative cash flows. That's why I place considerable weight on the assurance of a friend who worked for them in the field for many years that they really are a lean, well-focussed and efficient operation.
(ubergeekian, Tue 28 Feb 2012, 9:48, 1 reply)

Indeed
And just below that on the same page is the salary information.

I have no problem with WaterAid or with RNLI, but if you look at the numbers they are all pretty much in line but RNLI are about 4 times as big.

The only thing that RNLI has that WaterAid doesn't is the investments which is just used as an income source. Nothing sinister and nothing unfair.
( Ghoti Fingers, Tue 28 Feb 2012, 18:27, closed)