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Salaries of Charity CEOs

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kimmchii:
OMG i didnt know these CEOs get such a good pay, more than USD400K!!!

Here are the most accurate figures for the above-listed executives I could find in reliable sources:

# Marsha J. Evans, President and CEO of the American Red Cross, was paid $468,599 in salary and benefits in fiscal 2003. (Source: BBB Wise Giving Alliance)

# Brian Gallagher, President and CEO of United Way, was paid $432,709 in salary and benefits in fiscal 2003. (Source: Charity Navigator)

mouser:
its crazy isn't it!??!

wtf is going on - shouldn't there be a limit to this?
this world is crazy.

Carol Haynes:
The thing that makes me laugh is they will be appealing for funds ...

brotherS:
There are some more quotes to be made:

But it's fair to ask: Is one charity automatically more worthy than another just because its leader is paid a lower salary? Not necessarily, says Charity Navigator, a Web site that evaluates and compares the financial health of charitable organizations.
--- End quote ---


Marsha Evans' salary, generous as it seems, amounts to only .15% of American Red Cross' annual expenses. By contrast, Brian Gallagher's salary is .97% of United Way's total expenses, and W. Todd Bassett's compensation amounts to .29% of the Salvation Army's annual expense budget. All these figures are well below the annual average calculated for the thousands of organizations in Charity Navigator's database, 3.4%.
--- End quote ---

I admit that $40,000,000 salaries for some CEOs are out of touch with reality, but let them have $400,000 if they do a good job! They are managing many, many people, and the bigger the organization the more fires they have to put out every single day.

Just don't look at the amount of $ they get but also at what they lose: many CEOs are so busy that their kids are running to mom when they return home at daylight, screaming "there's a strange man in our house!" - because they are working 80+ hours a week.

Also, you need to consider if they'd limit their salary to say $100,000 the best CEOs will probably go to some regular company instead of chosing the charity. This could lead to bad decisions, which in the end could result in attracting less donations, so the charity might lose way more than it saved in the CEO salary.

So, regarding all that, I say: let them have their $200,000, $300,000 or even $400,000 if they do a truely good job successfully managing some big charity!

mouser:
i don't know..
i mean in business terms of course it makes perfect sense.

charities have become businesses when it comes to raising money - they hire sales people and ad firms, they hire sales people and pay them huge commissions, they throw lavish parties and hire lobbyists, etc.  they are become big businesses.  and as such they compete for ceos with influence, connections, and experience running big businesses. 

i see scam exposes regularly about charities which spend 95% of all they raise on employee perks, only spending 5% on the actual charity.  so make sure if you support a charity that most of the money goes to charity spending.  there are some watchdog sites that track this.

on one hand i understand the reasoning here - if the job of a charity is to do good, and doing good is entirely dependent on raising and spending money, then like any other business it pays to compete in terms of salary to hire the most powerfull ceo.

still part of me cant help but think - maybe it would be better not to have the highest power $500,000 a year salaray ceo, and sales people paid with giant commissions, and instead hire people who really believe in the cause.  and if that means not being as big or raising as much money, maybe that would still be a better situation..

again this gets back to one of the ideas of this website here:
what is the goal?
is the goal to make the most money possible as fast as possible? or is it something more.
i worry that charities are morphing into a state where the goal is to make as much money as possible, as fast as possible.  yes they want to help people with that money, but im not sure whats more important to them, helping people, or insuring they build a luxurious giant business.

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