For comparison, the CEO of the American Red Cross has an annual salary of $500k.
I don't think this is a relevant metric at all for judging a non-profit's goals or performance. There is a certain point where the organization has become so big or important that any person whom the stakeholders can trust to run it will command a high salary.
Gail McGovern, the CEO of the American Red Cross, makes $995,000. Charity Navigator gives the Red Cross 3 of 4 stars.
By contrast, Ophelia Dahl of the 4-star rated Partners in Health makes $86,000.
PIH is a smaller organization than the Red Cross, but there are people who could argue that PIH is also more impactful. It's also the case that part of the reason the Red Cross is so much larger is that it's a key mission of the Red Cross to be larger. It's not unlikely that charities with highly-compensated CEOs share that trait. You pay a CEO a lot of money because their market value is high. What makes a manager-type CEO's market value high? Sales and financing skill.
It's absolutely reasonable to point out and question the salary of a nonprofit's CEO.
It's reasonable and it tells you something about the organization's values, but it only goes so far. Overhead costs are a poor way to judge a charity's effectiveness. More:
It does not ring true to me that looking at overhead costs are the "worst" way to pick a charity. Is there more to the picture? Sure. Is the Red Cross as impactful as PIH dollar for dollar? I doubt it. And if you look at the numbers and engage critical thinking, instead of just setting an arbitrary "overhead" threshold, you can spot things like growth for growth's sake, or fundraising for fundraising's sake.
"The shelter depends entirely on the generosity of others to sustain our efforts. There are no paid personnel and all monies/donations are used to care for our cats. KRA is a non-profit 501 (C3) corporation and donations are tax-deductible."
My point's just: there are CEOs of highly effective well regarded charities who are not taking 7 figure salaries. It is not true that charities basically have to shell out 7 figures because that's what people who can manage charities cost.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
I'm sure there are many instances where the chief executive of a charity does not take a salary or personally contributes more to the charity than their salary.
So as a stakeholder in a non-profit, I'd want the non-profit to be as efficient with money as possible... yet I'd want a a CEO that burns through way more money than he needs? Please explain.
I'm not the grandparent poster, but I think he's saying that executives skilled enough to run the Red Cross are motivated primarily by their salaries, and so those salaries have to be competitive with what the same highly-skilled exec could make in the private sector.
I might argue that the situation is in part a matter of "like attracts like". I've you're going to get executive types to contribute and to encourage/force their workforces to contribute, you have to present them with an "executive" type interface. (If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... and plays golf like a duck...)
My thoughts next turn to "hypocrisy". These are supposedly charity endeavors. But much of their activity -- fundraising activity, at least -- is just more status seeking and building and fraternizing.
There, for me, lies the heart of the matter. When in the minds and/or actions of the top level participants, charity work is anything but.
(I'm "on the outside" looking in, and perhaps I'm too cynical. I want to believe that people have more depth than this, and some individual acquaintances who travel in those circles sure seem to. But it makes me wonder.)
No wonder they are not more effective.
I'm not entirely comfortable with my comment, but I'll make it for the sake of the point about "like attracts like".
It's not strictly synonymous with "expensive" either. If it correlates, it probably correlates in the direction of "cheap", if only marginally. And any way you slice it, "expensive" is synonymous with "expensive".
Let's come up for air here and ask the simple question: do we believe we have better domain policy because we pay some guy at ICANN a 7-figure annual comp package?
Due to its ARPANET origins, the Internet namespace was technically property of the United States. Obviously that situation had to change, or the other nearly 200 nations on the planet would have difficulty accepting the Internet as the true global network.
The ICANN is necessarily a compromise between the interests of powerful nations. It's not reasonable to assume that it could be run completely differently from all the other global intergovernmental organizations. Most politicians don't consider Internet policy to be all that special compared to trade, foreign aid, patents and everything else that needs to be similarly balanced and negotiated. Hence, the head of the ICANN is someone who's acceptable to governments foremost.
I don't think this is a relevant metric at all for judging a non-profit's goals or performance. There is a certain point where the organization has become so big or important that any person whom the stakeholders can trust to run it will command a high salary.