A quarter of the Netherlands’ main charities have expensive city centre offices including Amsterdam canal mansions, the AD reports on Thursday.

The paper says environmental group Greenpeace is the biggest payer. The AD claims it forked out almost €500,000 for a ‘hip’ office on the IJ waterfront in Amsterdam plus a further €200,000 to rebuild it.

The Aids Fund, Plan Nederland (children) and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds all spend hundreds of thousands of euros a year on offices, the AD says.

The Aids Fund, for example, spent €230,000 on renting two offices on the Keizersgracht and Herengracht.  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are also housed in the canal area. City centre office rents average €200 a square metre per year, the paper says.

Philanthropy professor Theo Schuyt told the AD such amounts are ‘inappropriate’. Charities which rely on donations should ask themselves if they really need to be in such expensive locations, he said.

A spokesman for the Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds said having a ‘representative office’ is essential to enable the organisation to raise funding.

However, War Child, which fights for the rights of children in war zones, rents an office in Amsterdam’s Zuidoost district and pays the equivalent of €93 a square metre, the paper points out.