HappyPoet wrote:
ScutFarkus wrote:
Also, please provide evidence of (major) MS advocacy association executives enriching themselves at the expense of pwMS. This is a frequent accusation, but to my knowledge it is baseless. As someone who makes yearly contributions to NMSS and sometimes other MS organizations, I'd like to know if you have evidence that demonstrates an actual problem.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.c ... rgid=11332
http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990_pdf ... 06_990.pdf
Anything less than four stars shows me that the association's executives are enriching themselves at the expense of pwMS: Executive compensation should be more closely tied to outcomes/goals, such as 1) Increase in revenue (more grant writing, better grant writing, increase in donations) and 2) Decrease in overall expenses to include executive compensation (look at 'total' compensation including legal, accounting, and PR fees billed to association) and pension contributions, health insurance, and other benefits.
Also, dig deeper into IRS Form 990 to find actual dollars paid in executive compensation which details this enrichment. This association has had years to improve; possible solutions are more board oversight and/or new officers hired. My SS check is $752/month and Medicare could be better, so yeah... they're enriching themselves.
Thanks for the links, but I gotta say, even as an engineer I find it really tough to decipher the rating scheme used by charitynavigator, and it seems a little wonky at best. For example, if I'm reading it right (which isn't clear given the awkwardly-worded jargon-filled explanations), their "Program Expenses Growth" rating downgrades a charity if the total amount they spend on services decreases or grows too slowly, even if this is a result of their overall budget decreasing or growing slowly. I don't get that. In general, I don't see why "growth" metrics are very relevant to a charity's assessment. Growth is nice, but a right-sized charity shouldn't be penalized, nor should one that is, for example, reducing its focus.
I read somewhere CharityNavigator intends to start evaluating charity effectiveness and outcomes, which seems like it would be a good step in the right direction, since obviously a charity could collect lots of money and have low overhead, but spend the money on proven-to-be-worthless programs (e.g. abstinence education).
As for your "enriching themselves" conclusion, you might read this paper from the same website:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/__asset ... _Final.pdf
It says:
We know that many donors continue to be concerned by what they believe to be excessive charity CEO pay. Many donors assume that charity leaders work for free or minimal pay and are shocked to see that they earn six figure salaries. But these well-meaning donors sometimes fail to consider that these CEOs are running multi-million dollar operations that endeavor to change the world. Leading one of these charities requires an individual that possesses an understanding of the issues that are unique to the charity’s mission as well as a high level of fundraising and management expertise. Attracting and retaining that type of talent requires a competitive level of compensation as dictated by the marketplace. While there are nonprofit salaries that we would all agree are out-of-line, it is important for donors to understand that since the typical charity CEO earns roughly $130,000, a six-figure salary is not necessarily a sign of excessive pay for a mid to large sized charity (defined as charities of $1 million or more in revenue).
It then goes on to explain that large charities in certain geographic regions and certain charity areas have median salaries even larger. Bottom line, it's really not appropriate or relevant to compare the CEO's salary to Social Security checks.
Anyway, I think this is enough of a tangent from the original subject of this thread. I do appreciate the link, and will dig deeper into those reports in the future. But for now I don't see anything about NMSS that suggests they're misusing my donations.
/Scut