We Don’t Have the Money
I was never a big fan of the circus, and it had nothing to do with the clowns. It was the tightrope walkers that caused me angst. While, everyone was looking up, and I’d be looking at my shoes.
Today, many of my peers are sharing my angst over tightrope walkers, but they are the ones on the rope. The economy of the last three years has thrown into vivid relief the paucity of most nonprofit salaries. Not that it was hard to see this before. Read more
March 16th, 2012 0 Comment Life at the Bottom
Does the nonprofit sector have a mind of its own; or a backbone? Consider the 9/22/11 issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. This issue was consumed with exposing—and it did feel like a tabloid expose–the data on high salaries for nonprofit leaders.
In so doing, it helped do the homework for those attorneys general around the country who want to “do something about exorbitant salaries” for nonprofit executive directors. In so doing, it pandered to the concerns of these attorneys general, the media and the donors Read more
Second-Class Citizen
We recently got a request from a smart executive director who wanted to enroll in our Certificate in Nonprofit Management. She thought it would be a good thing for her, as she could learn new things, get a refresher on old things and expand her network. But, she didn’t know how to justify this to the Board. Her request: did we have any data that showed the benefit of pursuing this professional development opportunity?
What? Isn’t what she enumerated justification enough? If need be, however, there Read more
Creative Genius from Hardship?
As the media begins to warm up to the end-of-the-year giving frenzy when we see the annual stories on what should a donor look for in judging a nonprofit, we can expect to see coverage of salaries of nonprofit leaders, questioning if certain executive directors make way too much. (Well, maybe, if nonprofit leaders full of themselves hadn’t decided they needed to be called CEO instead of Executive Director they would have flown more below the radar. What’s in a name, anyway?) I’ve stopped counting Read more
Separate the Wheat from the Chaff
So, the question gets asked of some presidential economic advisor in some NPR interview (and, I’m sure, is repeated in many other interview settings), is $1 trillion going to take care of getting rid of all of the “toxic assets” banks are currently holding? The response, in summary: well, minimally, it should go a long a way.
We are talking about sums of money that the vast, vast majority of nonprofits, let alone their clients, can’t even fathom. It is a sum of money that Read more
April 9th, 2009 2 Comments Why Can’t They Be More Like Us?
Earlier this week local public radio’s Radio Times featured a columnist from the Philadelphia Business Journal and an editor and senior writer for Business Week. The topic was the value, potency, impact, etc., of President Obama’s mandate of a cap on the compensation of senior executives at companies receiving federal bail out money.
It took the first comment of one of the guests to have me fuming. He was discussing how executive compensation consultants are already advising people on how to get Read more
February 13th, 2009 0 Comment 