Gorging on my mind

While I've been away, there have been a spate of articles on high-flying nonprofit CEO's whose salaries are seriously out of control. Obviously, this is bad for the sector in a bunch of ways. It makes the public, donors, regulators, the press, and elected officials buy into the perception that nonprofits are trying to scam everyone.

While I certainly do NOT subscribe to the current mania about low admin costs (I'll post on that tomorrow), and while I also understand the the vast majority of nonprofit execs are vastly underpaid, I really hate to see examples like those that have run recently: A $4M agency with an exec benefiting (from low salary, but huge corporate co-mingling) to the tune of $900k per year; an exec of a $5M agency getting salary, benefits and bonus of over $500,000 (talk about getting your admin costs up!).

This, of course, is nothing new, and has zip to do with Enron, etc. In any group of people there are a small number of scoundrels, and most laws and regulations punish the 97% of us who are honest for the 3% of us who aren't.

But, it does make me very, very sad, and often really angry. I hope you feel the same way.