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.
Vast majority of charities are just gritters getting paid off your feels lol
always has been, deny these parasites profits.
That’s the whole point of Charity Navigator though, so you can find the few that are worth giving to.
https://sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/2023-SDZWA-Annual-Report.pdf
Total revenue per year is 420 million.
Concessions and cleaning staff typically make 35k-40k. Zookeepers ~50k.
These 5 employees. Amount to .8% of the yearly operating budget, while the sum of all other employees totals up to 10% of the 400 million dollar operating budget.
I’m not making any judgements, just offering the numbers.
They pay cooks less than $20/hour in a city with an average rent of $3000/month. I’ve got no problem passing judgement.
They pay cooks less than $20/hour
So their cooks get paid less than ‘cooks’ at McDonald’s? Fast food minimum wage is $20/hour throughout California.
Why did you put “cooks” in quotes? Do you think fry cooks aren’t cooks? Churning out food in a hot kitchen is work, regardless of what you think of the end product
While most work is hard, and I dunno how bespoke this gig is, there’s a massive difference between a generic fry “cook” and a restaurant line cook/chef.
Most fry cooks, like a Macdonald’s, are a finely tuned production line where most of the food is pre-prepped and premade (most of the “cooking” is done in a factory). The “cooks” in those roles usually just assemble the pre made components, and in the case of fast food, have finely tunes tools to serve their generic menu.
A restaurant cook/chef requires significantly more attention to detail, skill, flexibility, and knowledge because most of the food is made from scratch, using raw ingredients, which is why there are culinary schools. Real restaurants can’t succeed with a kitchen full of deep fryers and teenagers pushing buttons. Naturally, the expectation is that they should be paid more because it requires more skill, knowledge, effort, and dedication.
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.
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.
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.
Blood banks. “Your blood saves lives”. Is actually “We can sell your blood to hospitals for $200 per pint”. Check the salaries of the non-profit blood bank CEO and board. I would gladly share my blood if I’m paid $100 per pint, or if they gave insurance vouchers for a free pint of blood, to avoid insurance charging $1000-3000 to get a pint back. In fact they could just call it “blood insurance” where your premium is paid in regular blood donations.
So straight people get blood for free since they can donate, but gay people, chronically ill people and drug addicts don’t, because they aren’t allowed to.
Well we don’t want cancer or drugs in blood. But the current screening criteria for blood donations are kinda crazy. Travel to certain countries, tattoos. They should just test for the stuff they’re worried about directly: HIV, Hepatitis, and Malaria. Not that it matters since it’s illegal to buy/sell bodily fluids.
Not to mention those of us that just lived in the wrong country for a while in the 80’s.
I think they fixed the gay bit recently, 2023.
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?
Charities and billionaires are the polar extremes of the same policy failure. In a healthy society neither should exist, and when they do they should be tolerated for a minimal time as possible.
Charities and philanthropy exist to permit governments and corporations to abdicate their social responsibilities.
When the work a charity does is properly valued by a society, it’s economy would never need to carve out a special, nonprofit status for it.
When the work a charity does is properly valued by a society, it’s economy would never need to carve out a special, nonprofit status for it.
Maybe, but in reality this almost never happens. The work of many charities is typically attacked by the state and other fascists. The current attack on non-profits is a great example. It’s disappointing but not surprising to see so many libs supporting this. The liberatory goals of charity are directly opposed to the oppressive goals of the state. For example capitalism relies on the hunger that charity purports to oppose.
Okay, so think about it like this:
Suppose your job is making wooden chairs. It’s takes you the exact same skills to make a wooden chair to sell for profit, as it does to make a wooden chair to donate to a chairless children’s charity, right? So why would you spend all your time and skills doing a job that’s eventually going to bankrupt you? While you might do a few chairs because you feel like it’s morally right, the bulk of your work is going to be selling chairs because that’s how you sustain yourself.
CEOs are in the same situation. A 500-person for-profit company takes the exact same skill set to run as a 500-person non-profit. So the reality is that non-profits need to either be competitive in pay with for-profits, or they have to be attractive in ways other than compensation so they can entice CEOs to work for them.
Now, none of that is to say that the scale of CEO compensation is appropriate, because it’s not. But that’s the calculus a non-profit has to make.
Management and marketing bloat 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.
This is more of a system issue than bad behavior of an individual charity.
Charities can underpay a little bit, because working for a charity has its own appeal. But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else. San Diego is not a cheap city, and has its fair share of CEO positions.
If you really want to stretch your dollar though, local food banks are probably a better bet.
Yeah, it’s a tough call to make. It’s like those car donation things. Like 90% of your car’s value goes to the company managing the sale, but that’s still 10% to the charity that they wouldn’t have anyway. Unless you want to deal with selling your own car, and giving the charity the money, it still does some good.
I suspect a $1M salary isn’t too insane for a CEO if they bring tangible value to the company. Also, with a lack of shareholders to answer to like in a publicly traded company, their motivations probably align with the cause they’re supporting. It’s not like they’re going to sell off a shitload of assets to bump stock price and escape with a golden parachute.
Talent and experience isn’t that rare. Nor does executive compensation correlate with performance.
Whether it does or not is irrelevant; what matters is the perception among executives that it does.
I think we’ve been shown there is a solution to that perception.
But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else.
That’s such bullshit reasoning. They make more than 99.9% of people. I get that not everyone is great, but you are saying 99.9% of people are all talentless hacks that couldn’t do a decent enough job to the extent that the salary savings would be worth it?
Guess my civil engineering degree and 18 years of experience is a worthless pile of shit.
Hypothetically, if you were looking at two civil engineering jobs, and one paid 100k/yr, and another paid 200k/yr, which would you pick?
Would it matter much if any of the construction guys doing the actually construction of your projects made 50k/yr? Are they less talented than you for that?
It’s not so much about “talentless hacks” vs “a decent job” as trying to entice the best person you can afford.
Depends on the job. But I make less than both those numbers. And the construction journeymen make more than me, actually.
Yes, they make less because they are less talented. I completely disagree with your assertion that these executives are more talented. I have yet to meet a business major that wasn’t an absolute moron.
What evidence do you have they are more qualified, besides some paradoxical “they must be because they are in the position” reasoning.?
It’s not an absolute, it’s just an incentive. Talent is also an intangible, it cannot really be measured. Nor does high pay in some way guarantee you will get a talented or qualified person for your position, it just gives you better odds. It’s bait, basically, but you cannot guarantee your bait will work to attract what you want.
I’m not sure of any evidence, I’m not an economist. I’m discussing the theory of how capitalist systems are intended to function. How well they succeed at this is very messy and muddled at best.
Lastly, I actually disagree that our hypothetical construction person makes less because they are less talented. It’s that their skill is in lower demand. They could be extremely talented, but there are simply more of them available, so less needs to be offered to attract them.
Convenient the C-Suite sticks to a theory that massively benefits themselves. Sorry, it’s bullshit.
And there is ample evidence. Look no further than how every other employee is treated. Do you think they could get the best veterinarians by paying say, $300,000/year? Of course. But they don’t because they recognize the diminishing returns of thinking they have to have the best. But somehow the C-suite makes itself immune.
And that goes back to your example. As an engineer, I can tell you that construction trades are in HUGE demand. Same with civil engineers. Yet pay isn’t going up, at least not much.
Executive pay has gone up far faster than pay for regular workers. Sorry, I don’t buy the explanation that somehow they are the only group struggling to to find top candidates.
The CEO does not set his own compensation. He is hired by the owners of whatever company to operate it for them. They ultimately determine the compensation.
I agree there’s no struggle to find top candidates, that’s for sure. That’s partly because the compensation tends to be very good. The trades, which do not compensate as well as a chief executive, are struggling more. If plumbers frequently pulled CEO pay, we would not have a shortage.
Other CEOs that sit on governing boards set the compensation. It’s the same thing.
Sorry, I’ll never buy that it’s fair compensation, especially for a nonprofit charity.
I’m not living in america. In my country this really isn’t a thing. Most charities have a sort of “everyone gets the same salary” policy which is usually around the median salary in the country.
This charity was just running a cool project I wanted to donate too. I dont care what the american system is like, no one deserves 1 million a year while there are people starving.
How does not giving that ‘cool project’ money do any good?
Well I’m going to give to another charity obviously.
Because I don’t want half my donation to go towards massive salaries.
That’s a reasonable concern. For context, from their 2023 financial report, they spend $391 million on everything they do; even if you add all those salaries you posted together, that’s still about 99 cents out of every dollar going where you want it to go.
I don’t disagree that it’s an obscene salary, but for the most part that’s how the big charities work in the US. You have to either go with small, local charities or shrug and accept that around 1% of your donation will go to someone getting overpaid. It sucks!
Cool. My second option was an australian charity that is running a similar project and their highest salary seems to be 80k USD. So I’ll go with that one.
Top exec salary feels like a weird thing to focus on. Would it be better to donate to a charity with 50 overpaid middle managers rather than one with an obscenely overpaid c-suite? What if they are all reasonably compensated but spend most of the donations on lavish parties for fundraising?
According to charitynavigator 89.9% of their expenses go to their programs, and the rest is used for fundraising, salaries and other admin costs. This feels more reflective of the organization as a whole
I cannot speak for this charity, but it is highly unlikely that individual donations like yours fund those salaries. Often those positions exist to lobby governments and secure large charitable donations. People like that are hire primarily for their contacts. You could hire a qualified “CEO” to run your org for ~$250k, but they likely won’t have Larry Ellison on speed dial or be the god parent of the kid of a senator, etc, etc.
You want to have friends in high places and friends with loads of money if you are fighting for wildlife preservation because otherwise nobody will even acknowledge your existence.
A 501c3 has restrictions on lobbying.
They also have limitations on income beyond donations.
This isn’t a Mozilla situation where there are separate corp and org entities. His salary is most definitely funded by donations in some way.
Note: I do agree with your rationale overall. Money is where money is, unfortunately.
Great, sounds like they didn’t need that donation money since the C-suite will get them all the rich kickbacks they need. So what’s the problem?
givewell.org ranks charities by their ‘efficiency’ in multiple categories and offers funds for bundled donation according to their constantly updated ranking. Its really cool for finding reputable charities if you are worried about your money going where it is needed.
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 $254,927 at this one
That’s the Janitor. He drives Bentleys off the pier into the Pacific Ocean every second saturday.
His name is Keith
It’s not exactly the charities fault.
The real issue is that for profit companies can pay their CEOs this much, which means charities have to compete if they want a good CEO too.
In reality we should be cracking down on companies hoarding wealth towards to their CEOs at exorbitant rates, that way charities won’t have to pay a wage like this just to function and even hire a CEO.
They don’t have to do this. They’re choosing to. It’s not like these guys can just walk into the unemployment office and say “I’d like one CEO job please”. There’s more people interested in executive positions than there are positions available. Why is it only acceptable to use that knowledge to negotiate lower wages for lower ranking positions?
Fundamentally good CEOs expect a wage based on the market.
There’s tonnes of high paying positions so, no, non profits truly will struggle to find an actually good CEO if they dont offer a competitive wage.
It’s not their fault, it’s the lack of regulation on all the for-profits and the fact they can funnel so much money up to CEOs unchecked.
If for-profits had regulatory checks that made them do that less, then non-profits wouldn’t have to compete with nearly as insanely high wages.
IE if there was a law that CEOs couldn’t be paid more than 10x their lowest paid worker, this problem would be a lot less insane.
While not ideal, I would like to note that the charity has a revenue of 392 M$. Spending 1-2% on salaries of top exec is not that bad if it prevents them from misusing the funds. A lot of the time, the alternative to high salaries for people in power is those people giving in to corruption since the risk/benefit encourages it. Just look at politics for an example.
That being said, wtf is chief philanthropy officer?!
Spending 1-2% on salaries
These greedy cunts are probably 1% of the workforce though. How much is actually spent on salaries?
Stop defending them
Stop defending them
Idk anything about them, so it is not my intention to defend anyone. I am just pointing out that having bad execs (whether incompetent, careless or outright embezzlers) is far worse than paying 1-2%. As far as I know, no one has came up with a better reusable way to get good execs than paying them a lot. I have no idea if these execs in particular are good.
How much would you prefer they made? Do you think the world would be a better place if they shut down their charity businesses?
What you are describing is blackmail.
“Pay us exorbitant salaries or we’ll be forced to embezzle the funds”
I am not an exec, so no it is not. It is just statement of fact.
What is “it” in your comment?
What I am describing is not blackmail. It is the same as saying that leaving unguarded food next to starving people encourages theft of said food. That is not blackmail. I am saying anything beyond that. I am not commenting on morality of the situation or what the right thing to do is. Just pointing out a fact.
It amazes me that somehow all that makes sense in your brain. Interesting.
Sorry, do I need to handhold you through it? Are you unable to figure out what the definition of blackmail is? “If you don’t bring an umbrella, you will get wet since it is supposed to rain.” is not blackmail. Unless you are 10, I am very concerned that you can’t comprehend this.
I am very concerned that you can’t comprehend this.
What’s not comprehensible here is your argument. I’d suggest you consider how you might learn to be a better communicator.
Good bye.
Last time I checked prison was the real alternative.
Would be nice if that worked. If you embezzle the money smartly, e.g. giving lucrative contracts to friends consultancy firm, there is pretty much no way to prove it.
For the little people.
It’s also human nature for the kind of sociopath executive positions attract.
So we should just accept that and pay them off rather than putting in mechanisms to prevent that and hiring people who are motivated by something other than the payout?
It might seem like we have no choice but we do, collectively, hold the power of the purse here. And I think this post is a great example of that.
You are not necessarily paying of the same people. Even most honest/righteous people like to be paid well. So the charity willing to pay them get those and the charities that don’t pay well risk getting the kind of people who don’t mind embezzling.
Chief Philanthropy Officer probably heads their fundraising team. Aka sales
That makes sense, thanks for the info.
That’s exactly what they do. They also usually act as a liason between their mega donors to ensure the money is spent in the way it’s ear marked for. Mega donors usually donate conditionally, basically a type of private grant.
Thanks for the extra info.
No affiliation, and I’ve never donated to them, but their financials are far from the worst:
There are many charities that don’t spend the majority of donations on the actual program. Like, wtf…
How do they get a salary if they are non-profit? Does the donation money just go to them?
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.
The org is non-profit, the people working for it very much would like their profit. Yes it’s from donations.
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…
