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.
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.
For a second I thought this was a hit list.
any list is a hit list if you’re angry enough
Well, if you stab some potatoes, circumcise a cauliflower, and proceed to nunchuck a bag of flour … Then it might just have been a grocery list and now you’re not allowed in the store anymore
There is no rule that a grocery list can not be a hit list too.
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
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?
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.
Honestly this might sound weird but why can’t you just go around selling Organs? Wouldn’t that drive companies to make artificial Organs?
This also could backfire like crazy so maybe it isn’t the greatest idea.
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.
Give it to the San Diego food bank instead. It’s a good charity from what I’ve seen, and I’ve volunteered there at least half a dozen times.
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…
There are some non profits that are money funneling machines. Enter College board and CompTia.
Charities are good business. That’s why there are a lot of them.
This is why I always tell donation canvasers to shove it and make their rich ceo pay for it in full. Nothing worse then a billionaire CEO for loblaws underpaying someone to ask for handouts.
I basically refuse to assist any and all charities at this point because of exactly what you have shown in your images. It’s disgusting.
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.
Here’s the thing: I don’t know about this charity in particular. But in general, a big charity is just as complicated a business as a big for profit company.
The task of managing it isn’t any easier. So the people who have experience in managing big businesses can get that kind of money elsewhere, too.
In our system, the charity is pretty much forced to pay competitive CEO salaries if they want experienced people at the helm.
If they paid much less, they wouldn’t get anyone to do the job who’s actually competent.Damn I’m in the wrong nonprofit lol. Building, activity and pay & benefits for 7 employees come in under $400k total budget/expenses and we have distributed millions and millions of pounds of food in the last few years.
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.
You think a zoo CEO being paid $1.2 million per year is normal? Really???
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.
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
A fully flashed out public service sector could encourage this. If health care and housing and utilities and education were human rights rather than luxuries, you’d have more people who didn’t consider a six figure salary at a for-profit venture a prerequisite for survival.
It’s not like a private company where the owner/CEO can just grab the money
When the board is stacked with friends and family and the job itself is just cronyism, they absolutely can.
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.
The advanced state of finance capitalism and the deplorable state of mass transit and paid leave make financial gifts far more practical than donated labor.
Wow, that’s crazy. I just checked out my local zoo and there are only 2 executives with a pay package of $200k. The rest are unpaid trustees.
