Nonprofit CEO Pay Topping $1 Milion Rises With Scrutiny

Note: With the ongoing investigation by the Federal Authorities into the money management of the Community Health Center in Middletown and it's alleged connection to the campaign of infamous politician Chris Donovan (D). We felt that the article from Bloomberg Reports below would be very helpful in looking at the big picture of salaries for the non-profit CEOs... Yes, it's a lot of money! Yes, they do say give it up for the people! No, they don't (usually) pay taxes on anything! Yes, some of them are allowed to take their spouses (who happens to be a the CEO of another non-profit) and head to India/Tibet for four months to hand with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lamai.  If you and hubby are in India/Tibet, then who, mind you was watching the gates at Community Health Center and Kid City?

Former Legislator/Lawyer Kevin Rennie explains the fiasco and even more connections along the money trail...
 http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-rennie-feds-eye-middletown-health-care-agenc-20130322,0,300802.column

http://middletown-ct.patch.com/articles/fed-investigating-on-how-legislature-earmarked-15m-for-community-health-center

Not so many degress of separation?: Meriden Mayor Michael S. Rohde,a Democrat, has been in office since 2008, and is also the director of community relations for Community Health Center Inc., based in Middletown.  Mayor Rohe and Mayor Dan Drew accused  incumbent state Senator Len Suzio, who represented the 15th district of push poll calling during the last election cycle. Both then told the media during a joint press conference held on the steps of Meriden City hall they had no proof of the push poll calling, but were acting on suspicion. Suzio lost to Democrat Dante Bartolomeo. Bartolomeo's treasurer served at a Meriden polling location on election day.

"Nonprofit CEO Pay Topping $1 Million Rises With Scrutiny"

This article originally was published in the Bloomberg Report here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/nonprofit-ceo-pay-topping-1-million-rises-with-scrutiny.html 

By Jeff Green - Sep 17, 2012 12:01 AM ET 

More than 20 nonprofit groups, from New York Presbyterian Hospital and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, paid top executives more than $1 million a year in 2010 and 2011, the Chronicle of Philanthropy found.
The tally, an increase from 15 such pay packages in the previous study, showed chief executive officers or other leaders at 23 nonprofit charities and foundations had taxable compensation exceeding $1 million, the Chronicle said in a study to be released today.
“By far the most comments we get have to do with CEO salaries and a general outrage and shock at some of the salaries that they see,” said Ken Berger, president of the nonprofit watchdog group Charity Navigator. “There are even donors shocked at the notion of a six-figure salary.”
As protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street have brought more focus on the richest 1 percent of Americans, high pay for nonprofit executives has prompted New York and other states to suggest limits on compensation. Nonprofit watchers such as Berger say it may also prompt additional U.S. oversight or public policy changes for the $2.5 trillion industry.
“To assume that you’re going to become a millionaire or a multimillionaire, running a public charity that’s supposed to provide a public benefit, is just absurd as far as we’re concerned,” Berger said.
Top executives at the largest U.S. charities and foundations received a median pay increase of 3.8 percent to $429,512 in 2011, according to the Chronicle’s survey of 132 of the biggest organizations. For other large nonprofits, the Chronicle said information filed in required tax filings show 2010 pay rose 2.7 percent.

Top Fundraisers

The Chronicle data is drawn from charities ranked highest in the group’s Philanthropy 400, the annual list of nonprofits that raise the most from private sources. The Chronicle collected compensation data on 274 charities and 49 foundations.
Total compensation includes salary, bonuses, deferred compensation, and retirement pay that individuals received in a single year. Other payments can include housing allowances, club dues, and additional perks nonprofits counted as compensation.
The annual survey is a way for executives and their boards to take a measure of pay and for donors to find out what’s happening, as well, said Stacy Palmer, Chronicle editor.
“Most at nonprofits are not millionaires, and it’s been tough times with many people not getting raises,” she said. “But there’s also a lot more focus on results, and that means paying for talent.”

Hospital, Museum

The highest-paid executive in the Chronicle survey, which was obtained by Bloomberg Rankings, was Herbert Pardes, executive vice chairman of the New York Presbyterian Hospital board of trustees, who had 2010 compensation of $4.3 million, including a $1.71 million salary. Houston Museum of Fine Arts Director Peter Marzio, who died in December 2010, was second with $3.94 million, in part because of payouts triggered by his death, the Chronicle said. Pardes didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.
Among traditional charitable groups, American Cancer Society CEO John Seffrin was fifth with a 2010 compensation of $2.08 million, including $1.49 million in deferred compensation and retirement. Boys & Girls Club CEO Roxanne Spillett, who retired last year after 34 years with the group, ranked eighth with 2011 compensation of $1.81 million, the Chronicle survey showed.

Cancer Society

Seffrin’s compensation for 2011 was $764,135, including deferred compensation, and he declined an incentive for fiscal 2009 performance and agreed to a cut to his base salary of 6.4 percent, the American Cancer Society said in an e-mailed statement. In 2010, his total compensation was $2.4 million, which included $1.62 million in deferred benefits that will be paid at retirement, according to the statement.
Spillett’s compensation included $1.18 million that was paid out as part of a previously reported retirement plan and the compensation was reviewed by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC and her pay was “in line with industry standards and appropriate,” spokeswoman Jan Still-Lindeman said in an e-mailed statement. The group doubled in size and tripled in financial scope during Spillett’s 16 years as CEO, Still-Lindeman said.
New York University’s John Sexton had compensation of $1.31 million, ahead of Yale University President Richard Levin’s $1.19 million, according to the Chronicle data. Levin and Sexton didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment.
The top executives for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles Opera, Metropolitan Opera Association, Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago also made the list.

CEO Compensation

By comparison, the median total compensation for Standard & Poor’s 500 CEOs rose about 6.2 percent to $9.6 million in 2011 from about $9 million in 2010, according to Equilar Inc., which gathers data on executive pay at public companies.
More than 1.4 million nonprofit organizations were registered with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in 2009, and the 632,604 public charities -- those known as 501(c)(3) organizations -- reported $1.4 trillion in revenue and $2.53 trillion in assets, according to a 2011 report by the Urban Institute in Washington, which tracks nonprofit activities.
Groups such as Charity Navigator aren’t suggesting specific limits on pay such as a $199,000 limit proposed in the state of New York, Berger said. The nonprofits need to ensure the pay they adopt is easily defensible among other executives, he said.
The norm is low six-figure compensation, a median of $130,000 to $140,000 for midsize to large nonprofits, he said, with pay rising to $500,000 for the biggest groups, Berger said.

Top Charities

The focus of the pay controversy, much like the protests centered on the richest Americans, is on the 1 percent of the largest charities that raise about 86 percent of the funds, Berger said.
“In these very hard times, money is all that more precious and you have to maximize it,” he said.
The furor over pay to CEOs of nonprofits is misplaced and may end up damaging charity fundraising, said Dan Pallotta, author of “Charity Case” and “Uncharitable,” books on the steps the nonprofit world can take to be more effective.
“We have this total double standard that extends beyond compensation issue where we blame capitalism for creating these huge inequities in our society and then refuse to allow the nonprofit sector to use the tools of capitalism to rectify the situation,” he said.

Expert Executives

The expertise of a top-paid executive will increase the amount of money raised at the nonprofit organization and also provide more efficient leadership, Pallotta said.
“It’s always positioned as a zero-sum game, where any money paid to the leader is money wrenched out of the hands of those kids rather than looking at it as money invested in the leader to potentially dramatically enlarge the money available to the kids,” he said.
Each of the highest-paid coaches at nonprofit universities in 2009 was paid more than $2 million, and people accept that, Pallotta said.
“We look at this through the lens of preserving the purity of the nonprofit ethic rather than looking at it through the lens of do we actually want to solve these problems and what would it take,” he said. “You had better invest in leaders who are experienced at playing at those levels.”
He traces some of the resistance to highly paid nonprofit executives to the tensions between religion and capitalism set by the first Puritan settlers in New England. The Puritans were aggressive capitalists who saw charity as penance for making money, he said.
“The nonprofit system is like this church,” Pallotta said. ``It’s this irrational, emotional religion that’s all about scoring holy points so that you’ll be saved from eternal damnation. I have this friend who says, ‘the cheapest way to pay for things is with money.”’

Guest Blog: The Connecticut Flip

The Connecticut Flip 

Summary of a series of articles on Political Events in Connecticut by Tim D. Enchanter

This month I began to feel that our State of Connecticut has the potential to surprise those who tend to write it off as either an easy victory for one political party or a lost cause for the other.  Things are working in a different direction than most are used to with regard to electoral change and party shift.

I must admit that I am often one of those who believe this state is almost impossible to change.  It has been almost completely taken over by a political machine which rules from the top down.  The reason for this belief can best be illustrated by the 2010 Gubernatorial Election.

The Midterm Elections (when Senators and Congressmen run for re-election in the middle of a President’s term) were a referendum on the President’s agenda as people rose up against establishment politicians.  This so-called “Conservative Wave” swept the country, but seemed to crash impotently against political barriers in states run by Democrat political machines.

Please note that the following pieces of information have been accumulated over a 5 year period from news reports, radio reports, phone calls, testimonies, and observed actions.  I have remembered all of this and report the puzzle pieces here so you can put them together yourself.  I leave it to those who are supposed to conduct investigations to actually conduct them and verify their validity.

As a private citizen who is a registered unaffiliated voter, I have the right to voice my concerns according to the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Keep that in mind when you read the following and yell about how I “can’t say that” without documented proof.  I am not filing charges or taking any action other than telling you my thoughts.  Also keep in mind that anyone who actually takes the time to do the research could assemble said proof.  The fact that nobody has filed any charges should speak volumes as to whether or not you are being served by those you have elected.

Prior to Election Day 2010, the Chairman of the CT GOP raised alarms about boxes of ballots being shipped to an abandoned lot in Bridgeport.  The day after Election Day, Democrat operatives came to polling places with bags of ballots that they wanted to be counted, not explaining where they “found” them.

On Election Night, the Bridgeport polling places ran out of ballots, and Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz ordered the polls in Bridgeport to remain open an extra 2 hours, notifying residents by phone to go and vote after normal closing time.  

The Senatorial race was called in favor of Democrat Richard Blumenthal at the normal closing time before any vote counts were posted.  In the race for Governor, Republican Tom Foley was ahead of Democrat Dan Malloy all night according to the running vote tally, yet the CT News anchors were reporting Malloy the winner.  Even one of the anchors could not understand why and was informed there were things she did not know.

The city of New Haven waited until 3pm the following day to start counting votes, yet the results had already been reported.  As everyone was paying attention to what was happening in Bridgeport, nobody seemed to notice or care that 20,000 new votes were cast in New Haven by people who had apparently registered during the month before the election.

Years earlier, the Mayor of New Haven, Democrat John DeStefano, had made New Haven a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, issuing Driver Licenses and Voter IDs to anyone asking for them.  Back in 2007, it was discovered that the New Haven Mayor’s office had ordered the workers at Social Services to generate Social Security numbers for those who did not have them.  The Social Services Office used a random number generator and didn’t bother to check with the Federal Social Security Office to find out if they were giving one person the number of another.

The FBI seized boxes of paperwork related to this.  The FBI has been waiting many years for a US or CT State Attorney General who is actually willing to prosecute these numerous cases of Fraud, Document Falsification, and possible Identity Theft.  Unfortunately, under both Bush and Obama Administrations, no such person could be found as charges of racism drown out calls for laws to actually be enforced.

Meanwhile, the comparatively few illegal immigrants arrested at the border have been found with instructions detailing how to go to Yale New Haven Medical Center for any treatment desired and then file for IDs from the New Haven Social Services Department.  Numerous attempts to get CT News reporters to investigate all these issues have been met with either yawns or accusations of racism.
Continued: