I was planning to donate the couple bucks I had left over from the year to the charity called “San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance”, I was doing a background check on CharityNavigator and they gave the charity full ratings so it seemed good.
Then I stumbled upon the salary section. What the fuck? I earn <20k a year and was planning to contribute to someone’s million dollar salary? WHAT.
Wow, no wonder they don’t make a profit 🙃
This is why I always tell donation canvasers to shove it and make their rich ceo pay for it in full. Nothing worse then a billionaire CEO for loblaws underpaying someone to ask for handouts.
I basically refuse to assist any and all charities at this point because of exactly what you have shown in your images. It’s disgusting.
Why do honest effective charities have to suffer because of some others who exploit the system?
You could just pick some that arent greedy like this.
They are saying they are all greedy.
Which is simply wrong.
Its pretty sad to turn your back on the whole system because there are a few exploiting it.
This is basically far right politics. ‘Hey theres one foreigner raping an american woman, all foreigners are evil’
Its not a few. America is full of scams and exploits at literally every turn. Its in advertisements, news stories, popular TV and movies.
The point I’m making is that people think at least charities will be the exception to that rule, but they aren’t. You’d be better off donating to a non-american organization IMO.
To me this is par for the course. Corpos steal from you before you get it (wage theft), and “charity” manipulates you into the same, but you’re a “willing” participant in the process of having your money taken.
Pretty much everyone who is classifiably “rich” has gotten there by taking a small amount from a large number of people, usually on an ongoing timeline. The formula hasn’t changed. If you don’t have a hundred people giving you a small amount consistently, you’re probably not going to become rich.
My wife works for a non-profit where the Executive Director (CEO if you will) cannot make more than 5x what the lowest paid person makes. Wish more non-profits would adopt something similar
Well we don’t know if the lowest paid employee makes $254,927 at this one
That’s the Janitor. He drives Bentleys off the pier into the Pacific Ocean every second saturday.
His name is Keith
How do they get a salary if they are non-profit? Does the donation money just go to them?
The org is non-profit, the people working for it very much would like their profit. Yes it’s from donations.
Does your bank accept payments of $0? Or the grocery stores? Even if your organization doesn’t generate profits, people still need an income to survive…
I meant a big salary like that. If you read my other comments. This was a genuine question. OP had good point.
Non-profits pay fixed salaries. Instead of having an owner who “profits” all the extra money left over.
Fixed to THAT much is a crime! Lol.
That’s what I was thinking.
I know america has this elitist managment culture of that values people who “earn their worth” and are “entrepreneurial” or whatever, but that doesn’t ever justify a million dollar salary to me.
It doesn’t seem like charity if some of your donation goes to the CEO. I understand they gotta make a living but to still call it a charity and run by millionaires that got rich BECAUSE of that charity is ridiculous.
It’s a percentage (less than 7% of donations for all salaries). They are a very large non-profit…
It’s not exactly the charities fault.
The real issue is that for profit companies can pay their CEOs this much, which means charities have to compete if they want a good CEO too.
In reality we should be cracking down on companies hoarding wealth towards to their CEOs at exorbitant rates, that way charities won’t have to pay a wage like this just to function and even hire a CEO.
They don’t have to do this. They’re choosing to. It’s not like these guys can just walk into the unemployment office and say “I’d like one CEO job please”. There’s more people interested in executive positions than there are positions available. Why is it only acceptable to use that knowledge to negotiate lower wages for lower ranking positions?
Fundamentally good CEOs expect a wage based on the market.
There’s tonnes of high paying positions so, no, non profits truly will struggle to find an actually good CEO if they dont offer a competitive wage.
It’s not their fault, it’s the lack of regulation on all the for-profits and the fact they can funnel so much money up to CEOs unchecked.
If for-profits had regulatory checks that made them do that less, then non-profits wouldn’t have to compete with nearly as insanely high wages.
IE if there was a law that CEOs couldn’t be paid more than 10x their lowest paid worker, this problem would be a lot less insane.
I think they want someone with some experience. There aren’t that many of those.
That’s why I’m very picky about donating. When I was at my very first job, pushing 1200 packages an hour at UPS for hourly wages, I donated to the United Way via payroll deduction. I was listening to the news in my car when I heard the CEO of United Way took his family on a $2M vacation. I had that payroll deduction removed on the very next shift.
Charities are good business. That’s why there are a lot of them.
Is there a site which documents all charities and flags misuse of funds and such?
How do we know donations will go where expected?
Charity navigator is generally a good source.
If they rate highly there I’ll just search up the organization’s controversies and make sure nothing is currently going wrong.
At the end of the day there’s no guarantee regardless so just donate and feel good about it knowing you did your research.
givewell.org does kind of the opposite. It ranks charities by their ‘efficiency’ and offers multiple funds for bundled donation according to their constantly updated ranking.
It would be nice if organisations were run by people who were so dedicated to the job that they’d do it for free or at least on a survival wage, but it is difficult to find someone with both the right qualifications and the willingness to do it cheaply.
The figures aren’t outrageous for those positions and as a non-profit they do have a board who made the decision to pay those amounts.
It’s not like a private company where the owner/CEO can just grab the money. The board members voted to hire someone and offered those amounts.
If you want to change this kind of thing, you need to attend the annual meeting in which the board is elected. I’ve been elected to a few board positions in non-profit organisations and let me tell you: It’s really easy to get on a board. Most places have difficulties filling the positions or you can easily outcompete other candidates simply by wanting to be there. It’s boring as fuck, but important stuff sometimes happens and it’s a good experience to have.
So if you want to actually contribute to that non-profit, you might want to save your few dollars and instead give them some of your time to help them in the right direction. Assuming you’re dedicated to the cause in the first place that is. If you have something to say, you will be heard, because quite frankly, half the board members only come for the free food.
You think a zoo CEO being paid $1.2 million per year is normal? Really???
As someone who has worked at a non profit and works at a low profit company now, the idea that because it’s work we’re passionate about that we should do it for pennies is so toxic, and how teachers, nurses, childcare workers, etc are abused by society. We’re actively out here trying to fix the problems caused by capitalism and the top 10% who are fucking over the world, and we deserve to be fairly compensated, not do it for free because we’re so passionate. I’m not saying OP’s example is right either, but charity workers shouldn’t need to rely on charity to survive, or be so wealthy they didn’t need to get paid.
This completely misrepresents the issue. It is not about working for free. A salary of a million bucks is just insane, regardless of context, be it for a non-profit, a private company or a presidential office. There’s no point of donating money to a cause if it only ends up in the pockets of a CEO who already has way too much of it.
The comment I was responding to said it would be nice if the people running the organizations would do it for free or survival wages. I agree the salaries in OP’s example are extreme, but what I see more often in my industry is burnt out people doing work for survival wages because they’re passionate, while everyone else makes a ton of money.
Those figures definitely ARE outrageous for those positions, or ANY positions.
Management and marketing bloat and is extremely common for nonprofits, unfortunately. Especially large ones.
Ones that don’t do that exist too, but it’s a thing you have to be wary of.
It’s a classic moral hazard of private non-profits. You generate income from press and marketing, so you have an incentive to invest more in those parts of your business. The Zoo Wildlife Alliance doesn’t get any money from the wildlife.
But now you’ve got a marketing team that wants to grow, in order to generate more revenue. So they need more revenue themselves. But it’s “justified” because they can claim credit for every dollar brought in. The bigger the marketing staff gets, the more sway they have within the organization as a whole. So it prioritizes growth for the sake of growth, rather than asking where the money is going.
And all along, the fundraising leadership is justifying higher and higher compensation as a percentage of groups revenue.
Eventually, you’re just a millionaire pan handler, asking money so you can ask for money. That’s a totally organic consequence of unregulated industry.
Yup.
And honestly direct regulation is hard here. Those are the two expenses that grow out of control, because it’s really hard to measure how much marketing or managing you need exactly. No empirical proof of overspending means no legal case against the directors.
Ideally, they’d have to provide something like the MER (management expense ratio) you see on investment funds. Charity kind of is like an investment on the behalf of the greater good, if you think about it.
Wow, that’s crazy. I just checked out my local zoo and there are only 2 executives with a pay package of $200k. The rest are unpaid trustees.
Here’s the thing: I don’t know about this charity in particular. But in general, a big charity is just as complicated a business as a big for profit company.
The task of managing it isn’t any easier. So the people who have experience in managing big businesses can get that kind of money elsewhere, too.
In our system, the charity is pretty much forced to pay competitive CEO salaries if they want experienced people at the helm.
If they paid much less, they wouldn’t get anyone to do the job who’s actually competent.This is a good reminder that you can look up Form 990 for any nonprofit (they are required to submit one), which includes any staff that make over $100k.
Also, it looks like the “salaries” you found are total compensation, which also includes medical and retirement benefits. The CEO’s salary is around $600k, but also got a $300k+ bonus.
Was put to me at a young age that non-profit only means they spend any revenue they get before it gets to the bottom line to show up as a gain or loss. Always good to sort out the shady from the legit.
that’s not just non profits. ever wonder how so many nominally “unprofitable” companies seem to stick around forever?
