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.
This is more of a system issue than bad behavior of an individual charity.
Charities can underpay a little bit, because working for a charity has its own appeal. But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else. San Diego is not a cheap city, and has its fair share of CEO positions.
If you really want to stretch your dollar though, local food banks are probably a better bet.
Talent and experience isn’t that rare. Nor does executive compensation correlate with performance.
Whether it does or not is irrelevant; what matters is the perception among executives that it does.
I think we’ve been shown there is a solution to that perception.
I know a few things which ought to matter a whole lot more to executives.
But Elon said CEOs are the most important people because they create the value.
The pay correlates directly to how hard you are to replace.
Again, no. In most businesses the hard to replace workers are not promoted because they can’t be replaced. The ones that can be replaced are the ones who are promoted to management.
I’m not living in america. In my country this really isn’t a thing. Most charities have a sort of “everyone gets the same salary” policy which is usually around the median salary in the country.
This charity was just running a cool project I wanted to donate too. I dont care what the american system is like, no one deserves 1 million a year while there are people starving.
Best not give them your money then based on your principles.
Right?
People complain but then they rarely put there money where there mouth is.
But they are literally doing that by not donating after finding out…
Why not donate to a local charity that might not receive as much, rather than a US based one?
How does not giving that ‘cool project’ money do any good?
Well I’m going to give to another charity obviously.
Because I don’t want half my donation to go towards massive salaries.
That’s a reasonable concern. For context, from their 2023 financial report, they spend $391 million on everything they do; even if you add all those salaries you posted together, that’s still about 99 cents out of every dollar going where you want it to go.
I don’t disagree that it’s an obscene salary, but for the most part that’s how the big charities work in the US. You have to either go with small, local charities or shrug and accept that around 1% of your donation will go to someone getting overpaid. It sucks!
Cool. My second option was an australian charity that is running a similar project and their highest salary seems to be 80k USD. So I’ll go with that one.
Top exec salary feels like a weird thing to focus on. Would it be better to donate to a charity with 50 overpaid middle managers rather than one with an obscenely overpaid c-suite? What if they are all reasonably compensated but spend most of the donations on lavish parties for fundraising?
According to charitynavigator 89.9% of their expenses go to their programs, and the rest is used for fundraising, salaries and other admin costs. This feels more reflective of the organization as a whole
I cannot speak for this charity, but it is highly unlikely that individual donations like yours fund those salaries. Often those positions exist to lobby governments and secure large charitable donations. People like that are hire primarily for their contacts. You could hire a qualified “CEO” to run your org for ~$250k, but they likely won’t have Larry Ellison on speed dial or be the god parent of the kid of a senator, etc, etc.
You want to have friends in high places and friends with loads of money if you are fighting for wildlife preservation because otherwise nobody will even acknowledge your existence.
Great, sounds like they didn’t need that donation money since the C-suite will get them all the rich kickbacks they need. So what’s the problem?
A 501c3 has restrictions on lobbying.
They also have limitations on income beyond donations.
This isn’t a Mozilla situation where there are separate corp and org entities. His salary is most definitely funded by donations in some way.
Note: I do agree with your rationale overall. Money is where money is, unfortunately.
I always hear this argument, and it seems like straight up CEO propaganda. I remember how failing businesses HAVE TO hire multi million dollar CEOs and fire employees becuase how else will they get good leadership!
Motherfucker, your previous CEO also had the same salary and sent you into bankruptcy.
No, a company definitely doesn’t have to pay their CEOs generously, and not all do. The median pay for a CEO is actually about 250k/yr.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm
Though if we just look at CEOs from S&P 500 companies, that jumps up to 16 million. There’s going to be a lot of factors involved, from the size of the company to the cost of living in the area. A CEO in San Francisco is probably going to make a lot more than one in Milwaukee.
It’s less propaganda and more just understanding how the capitalist system is intended to function. It applies to other jobs as well, a software engineer can make quite a wide range of pay, depending on who they work for. Then they can also get increased pay for advancing up the ranks of their organization, as promotions often involve raises.
There is a market reason for doing that. If not there competition would’ve hired the budget CEO.
Just wait until you learn how much the US president makes. We should really be outsourcing government officials.
The the amount of work and responsibilities the presidency is actually waaay underpaid. CEOs on the other hand get paid like they run the world, while in reality they are just sucking dick.
In fact CEOs run the world. Think of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla… You name it.
Thre must be an equivelent to “ate the onion” for “ate the Arrow-Debreu (1954)”
Yeah, it’s a tough call to make. It’s like those car donation things. Like 90% of your car’s value goes to the company managing the sale, but that’s still 10% to the charity that they wouldn’t have anyway. Unless you want to deal with selling your own car, and giving the charity the money, it still does some good.
I suspect a $1M salary isn’t too insane for a CEO if they bring tangible value to the company. Also, with a lack of shareholders to answer to like in a publicly traded company, their motivations probably align with the cause they’re supporting. It’s not like they’re going to sell off a shitload of assets to bump stock price and escape with a golden parachute.
givewell.org ranks charities by their ‘efficiency’ in multiple categories and offers funds for bundled donation according to their constantly updated ranking. Its really cool for finding reputable charities if you are worried about your money going where it is needed.
That’s such bullshit reasoning. They make more than 99.9% of people. I get that not everyone is great, but you are saying 99.9% of people are all talentless hacks that couldn’t do a decent enough job to the extent that the salary savings would be worth it?
Guess my civil engineering degree and 18 years of experience is a worthless pile of shit.
Hypothetically, if you were looking at two civil engineering jobs, and one paid 100k/yr, and another paid 200k/yr, which would you pick?
Would it matter much if any of the construction guys doing the actually construction of your projects made 50k/yr? Are they less talented than you for that?
It’s not so much about “talentless hacks” vs “a decent job” as trying to entice the best person you can afford.
Depends on the job. But I make less than both those numbers. And the construction journeymen make more than me, actually.
Yes, they make less because they are less talented. I completely disagree with your assertion that these executives are more talented. I have yet to meet a business major that wasn’t an absolute moron.
What evidence do you have they are more qualified, besides some paradoxical “they must be because they are in the position” reasoning.?
It’s not an absolute, it’s just an incentive. Talent is also an intangible, it cannot really be measured. Nor does high pay in some way guarantee you will get a talented or qualified person for your position, it just gives you better odds. It’s bait, basically, but you cannot guarantee your bait will work to attract what you want.
I’m not sure of any evidence, I’m not an economist. I’m discussing the theory of how capitalist systems are intended to function. How well they succeed at this is very messy and muddled at best.
Lastly, I actually disagree that our hypothetical construction person makes less because they are less talented. It’s that their skill is in lower demand. They could be extremely talented, but there are simply more of them available, so less needs to be offered to attract them.
Convenient the C-Suite sticks to a theory that massively benefits themselves. Sorry, it’s bullshit.
And there is ample evidence. Look no further than how every other employee is treated. Do you think they could get the best veterinarians by paying say, $300,000/year? Of course. But they don’t because they recognize the diminishing returns of thinking they have to have the best. But somehow the C-suite makes itself immune.
And that goes back to your example. As an engineer, I can tell you that construction trades are in HUGE demand. Same with civil engineers. Yet pay isn’t going up, at least not much.
Executive pay has gone up far faster than pay for regular workers. Sorry, I don’t buy the explanation that somehow they are the only group struggling to to find top candidates.
The CEO does not set his own compensation. He is hired by the owners of whatever company to operate it for them. They ultimately determine the compensation.
I agree there’s no struggle to find top candidates, that’s for sure. That’s partly because the compensation tends to be very good. The trades, which do not compensate as well as a chief executive, are struggling more. If plumbers frequently pulled CEO pay, we would not have a shortage.
Other CEOs that sit on governing boards set the compensation. It’s the same thing.
Sorry, I’ll never buy that it’s fair compensation, especially for a nonprofit charity.
I never said it was fair, don’t get me wrong. How it got this way vs whether that’s a good idea or not are two totally separate topics.
I’m not sure that most boards of directors are full of CEOs either. It is full of rich people though.