Anyway, one of the feature articles in this edition has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever read. The whole thing is one big long lament about the puny salaries of local homeless non-profit's CEOs. In the article they provided a list of local NPs, their budgets and their CEOs' salaries. It is ridiculous. Some of the CEOs have salaries that take up more than 30% of the total budget! On average their salary takes up nearly 5%. This is outrageous. All I ever hear about are the "exorbitant" salaries paid to the heads of big corporations. I never hear about how non-profit CEOs are fleecing the public. Let's just look at some numbers here.
Just look at that. It boggles the mind! Non-profit CEOs get paid, on average, more than 100 times the amount that CEOs of big companies (I used the top 28 from the Fortune 500) relative to the organizations' budgets. How is that fair? Okay, we're just looking at averages, that's true. Let's look at the medians then. For nonprofits, the median salary as a percentage of organizational budget is 7.5%, that's MORE than the average. For major corp. the median is 0.0162%, LESS than the average. Now are you happy? We looked at median, and it just got worse! Okay, I will grant you that there is one non-profit that pays the CEO $0.00. There is also one that pays the CEO $39,000 on a budget of $121,000; that's more than 30%. Sickening. The most that ANY CEO of a major corporation gets paid, as a percent of revenue, is 0.18% (Valero Energy). And that takes into account all the long term benefits. If we just looked at salary it would be much much lower.
Just for the heck of it, Let's throw out most of the Fortune 28's revenue. Let's only look at salaries vs. profit. Check out the chart.
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. As a percent of profits, the CEOs of nonprofits get paid INFINITY PERCENT! That is so incomprehensible, that, well, I can't comprehend it. INFINITY PERCENT! Even the major corporations only pay, on average, about 0.7%.
So all of you out there complaining that Oil Co. CEOs get paid to much and what not. Change your target. It is the non-profit CEOs that are getting paid at levels that are completely out of whack.
Stupid non-profits.
5 comments:
I'm not sure if your post was a joke or not, but if you're serious, I think you might have used your statistics to the point that you missed the real picture. Granted the CEO's are making a larger percentage... but if they can't make a living wage, who would be there to help the homeless? You mention that one CEO made 39K and that was more than 30% of their budget. But 39K isn't that much money to live on and raise a family. I think having that guy doing the work is WORTH 30% of the budget. What good is budget if there is no one there to create programs and do the work?
Yeah. that's pretty much the point I was going to make. You're unlikely to find types with CEO skills working purely for the love of the job. You've gotta give 'em something, and it's darned tough to make it in this area on just a little. Hence the need for the charity in the first place, presumably.
Uhhh ... Schuyler ... let's pull back and look at the forest, not the trees. My father, the statistician, says, "You can make statistics say anything." as you have just very ably proven. Sooo ... a percentage of what? and what kind structure is underneath the CEO's that is also bloated? Did you compare those? I'd be willing to bet that if you compared a full heirarchy, Corporations to Non-profs, the comparison would shift dramatically.
Secondly, would you be willing to donate your money to an organization that is being run by a person who is willing to work for nothing? That person is more than likely just shy of a full load of marbles. CEO's of non-prof's have a huge responsiblity level in terms of the finances that they are dealing with. I'd want someone who can balance that with being able to live on a tight (but not unreasonable) budget themselves.
I remember the pastor of the church we went to had this mathematical figure that I think he pulled out of his butt - something about how non-profits operated like a business making 60 times the same annual gross (thus his salary should be 250K in a city with an average annual salary of 22k and also a staff with salaries more in line with the city average). He said that because the 'product' was intangible (lives changed) you had to look at more than just inflow/outflow of money to set salary. I'm actually making an intelligent guess about his salary - it's top secret there. But 5 years on staff and my sister in law dating a board member helped me get a clue.
I remember when I got hired there for $6 an hour as a secretary at age 19 - one day he called me into his office to help him bid on a $10K watch. I think I wanted to vomit but even then I didn't have the chutzpah to really say why it bothered me. Part of what bothered me was that I was really struggling to pay my rent and have $ to eat at that time and he was buying watches almost equal to my annual salary (I was part time and in school).
I do think cost of living in the region needs to be looked at and people need to realize that working for a non-profit as a career isn't the same as volunteering. I don't think they should be the same as corporate CEO's but to find people with the mental capacity to run a mammoth organization you have to have salaries atleast in the ballpark of competitive jobs. I think Benny Hinn is wrong for making his millions off the back of his organization but at the same time, in this area - it takes a lot to survive. 39K doesn't go far here.
Schuyler, you haven't even scraped the surface. Let's say that CEO has three social workers working for her, at $25,000/yr each. They make up more than 60% of the annual budget! That leaves, like, 10% of the budget, which probably goes to printer toner or something. Blood suckers. If I give my money to good causes, I want the recipients to be actually poor. Everyone who works for a non-profit should live below the poverty line. That's the only way I can ever feel good about where my money's going.
When I worked at a non-profit, I got paid $9.00 an hour and only clocked about half my hours. The roof leaked onto my desk for nine months (I had a permanent bin there to catch the water) and if I needed office supplies, I had to find someone to donate them. If we've made any progress at all in the past 7 years, by now non-profit workers should have to walk barefoot over broken glass and dirty needles to get to work.
(Seriously, though: low overhead/program staff costs is one of the hallmarks of an efficiently run non-profit and grant-givers always look for it).
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