http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/columnists/rstinson/stories/MYSA111604.03A.rstinson.5e9359c3.html Poverty warring is rewarding (or rags to riches the easy way) By Roddy Stinson San Antonio Express-News There's no business like advocating-for-the-poor business (same ol' song, three more verses): Last Thursday, Express-News readers were greeted by this headline on Page 5B: "S.A. listed among cities 'meanest' to homeless." An Associated Press story followed: "Three Texas cities have made a national organization's list of the 'meanest' cities in the United States when it comes to attitudes about the homeless. "Austin was rated No. 10, while Dallas was 15th. San Antonio made the list at 17." The AP report provided no explanation of the ratings but did note that the list was compiled by "the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless." Using the free Internet database/search engine provided by www.guidestar.org, I found a copy of the coalition's FY 2003 tax return. Highlights: Between July 1, 2002, and June 30, 2003, NCH's total revenue was $697,258. The homeless-championing group spent $533,909 for salaries and benefits, $29,313 for "travel," $37,864 for "conferences, conventions and meetings" and $58,833 for "telemarketing." Donald H. Whitehead Jr., the NCH's executive director, pulled down $79,125 (11.3 percent of FY 2003 revenue). Information from another Internet site noted that Whitehead, in addition to his advocacy work, "is also an actor and stand-up comedian." Recently, I received an e-mail notice that "the Education Trust will be releasing an embargoed copy of our annual Funding Gap report. This report shows that most states continue to shortchange poor and minority students." Back to www.guidestar.org ... In the fiscal year ending June 6, 2003, the total revenue for the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust was $5.4 million. Total expenses were $4.4 million. Noteworthy expenditures by the agency, which "focuses on helping schools and colleges that serve low-income Latino, African American and Native American youth": Compensation of officers and directors — $275,000 Other salaries, wages and benefits — $1,681,777 Travel — $722,210 Salary information: Katie Haycock, president, $175,750 Russ Edgerton, forum director, $151,856 Russlynn Ali, director, Education Trust West (California office), $115,500 Stephanie Robinson, principal partner, $107,930 Ruth Mitchell, principal partner, $106,628 Paul Ruiz, principal partner, $105,000 Ross Weiner, secretary/treasurer, $100,000 Also suffering for the nation's low-income youth: Twelve unidentified staffers who pulled down "over $50,000." Shortly before the Nov. 3 election, the Children's Defense Fund issued a press release that bashed "the religious right" and announced a "massive nonpartisan interfaith service" at the Washington National Cathedral to draw attention to "justice for children and the poor." I looked up CDF's numbers. Total FY 2003 revenue: $14,103,955. Compensation of officers and directors — $462,247 Other salaries and wages — $7,332,401 Other employee benefits — $1,519,156 Travel — $968,911 Eight executives in the poverty-warring organization pulled down more than $90,000 in wages and benefits, and individual compensation topped out at $134,000 — for "35 hours" a week. Nice work if you can get it ... praying to God, blowing kisses to waifs and pummeling the religious right — all the way to the bank. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To contact Roddy Stinson, call (210) 250-3155 or e-mail rstinson@express-news.net. His column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I believe deeply in helping the poor, but this is why, in reality, the poor get nothing except scraps, if that. Good story, Roddy.
I have little to no knowledge of these organizations and what good they do or don't do, but, assuming that they are not thieves or incompetent or fraudulent, are these numbers really that outrageous as the writer would have us believe? Example First off, NCH appears to be an advocacy/lobbying/coordinating type group, from their website. Of course their money is spent on conferences/conventions/meetings/salaries/phonecalls. They don't build homeless shelters or run soup kitchens, nor do they claim to. Second, 79k, especially in an urban area like DC, isn't unheard of for the Director of an advocacy/lobbying/policy group - and it renders its director squarely middle class, incomewise. I know the writer would prefer that Mother Teresa head every organization like this, but come on, be realistic. The other group profiled appears to also be a lobbying type group. Last time I checked, pulling down a whopping 80 gs a year doesn't qualify as getting rich.
The salaries seem pretty modest for the head honchos of lobbying organizations. I don't really have any problem with those figures. Maybe San Antonio should take a look at themselves and wonder if the criticism is valid instead of lashing out at the accusers. Btw, I wonder where Houston sits on that list.
Why is the money not spent on the poor? Isn't that their purpose? At least the writer cites the source of his information.
It appears that they are lobbying only for their own livelihood. I'll bet I can walk up to any homeless person in San Antonio or Houston and they will have no knowledge that any organized lobby group is trying to help them.
Did you even read my post? I also used this incredible piece of technology called the internet...I can dig up a faq for you...
How do you know this? Do you know one thing about any of their activities? I suspect that neither you nor the writer bothered to even check. I'll bet you can walk up to people with MD and they won't know who Jerry Lewis is either. That doesn't prove anything.
Maybe, but you haven't presented any information that would support this conclusion. Do you have any information on the projects undertaken by these organizations? If they effectively advocate for the poor, get legislation passed, help develop programs etc, then their salaries appear pretty reasonable. If they don't do anything then they are scam artists. But simply listing their salaries, travel expenses, etc is next to useless in trying to make a determination about the groups.
I said it "appears" they are lobbying for their own livelihood because none of the money goes to the poor and these aren't exactly household name lobby groups. As far as Jerry Lewis, I'll bet quite a few people would know his name in association with charitable telethons.
Heck, we should be way down the list for putting a homeless shelter within a block of our main entertainment area, not to mention having a pretty darn good climate.
One other ponderable: wouldn't it make more economic sense to combine all these lobbies to make them larger and therefore more effective, pay one set of administrators and get the bulk of the money to the poor?
But the money isn't intended to go to the poor for direct assistance; That's not what lobbying/advocacy type groups do. That's the crucial point that both you and the writer seem to be missing. He seems to think that its mission is take & redistribute; it's pretty clear that its not. Combine with fact that , he apparently has no conception of what things cost in the real world, especially in blue state urban areas: Unless you can point out that this organization advertises itself as something its not (again, the writer apparently didn't bother to check) then there is no glaring problem that I can see. But if you don't like it, don't donate money to them. I sure didn't. As for this, A massive centralized charity bureaucracy? How very, umm, communist?
United we stand, divided we fall. And, there is strength in numbers. And, we must all hang together, lest we all hang separately. To wit, streamlining effort to make it more effective isn't necessarily communist.
If you are a massive charity, and you hire a top-notch chief financial officer, for instance, and you wish to get one who is able to be employed elsewhere, you have to pay commiserate salaries. Failure to do so creates a situation where you end up with a bunch of morons running the place. Whereas it's nice of you guys to suggest that people running these things should only do it for their own souls, the real world works differently. I would like to see the numbers put into some sort of context, relating the figures to other similar charitable organizations. I agree on first blush that these numbers seem high, but I understand that there are a lot of "investigative reporters" (see Wayne Dolcefino @ Ch. 13) who only care about finding information that seems shocking when it is not taken in context and examined objectively. One can find a somewhat mixed report on the company at www.give.org, with much smaller compensation numbers, but those are a couple of years old. None of the other search engines provide any other info. There was a local charity called Kid-Care that associated with Dolcefino which was almost shut down because of Dolcefino's open-ended accusations. IIRC the charity was guilty of anything more than sloppy bookkeeping, but was pretty much shut down until the founders left. Although there probably were some issues with the way the charity was run, it wasn't the clear fraud and malfeasance insinuated by Dolcefino. In short, I suggest that you at least try to get an objective & balanced view, instead of simply assuming that the situation is quite as bad as the reporter suggests that it may be. BTW, I'd be intrested to know how many of the people who are screaming about this have ever given any money to charities. (I have, but certanly not as much as I should have.) Websites for Charity Watch-Dogs: http://www.charitywatch.org http://www.give.org http://www.charitynavigator.org
I was about to post pretty much word for word what Sam did in his first post. $80K isn't THAT high....and an advocacy or research group should spend most of their resources on staffing, travel and meetings. Then i read the other examples. $175K, $150K. Those numbers are high. It may not be senior lawyer money, or top CEO money...but they are very high. THat's a good living. A very good living. And in the context of advocating for the poor, i thing is inappropriate. The article itself was drivel. What exactly are we supposed to learn from aggregate wage or "travel" or "conference" numbers?? (and i love the use of quotes). But it's fair criticism to point out some of the top salaries.
All you have to do is go to the Education Trust website. http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/ (a step that the writer didn't bother with, obviously) to understand what kind of a group it is. It has nothing to do with advocating for the poor, and it appears to be a large corporate/private trust backed initiative (just looking at its major funders - Gates foundation, Carnegie) consisting of seminars and conferences and that sort of thing; honestly, what else are they going to spend their money on besides staff? Their job iesn't to provide school lunches or anything like that, so it appears that the writers misconceptions tripped him up again. Now, for all I know The Education Trust could be a giant, huge scam; However, I trust that the Gates, MacArthur, Carnegie, etc etc etc. foundations exercise pretty good vetting procedures in this department, given that its their job to do so. (hopefully they did more than the writer) Anyway, what strikes me is the paramount laziness of the writer here, who apparently was able to use the internet enough to figure out people's salaries (anybody want to guess what the wage ceiling is for SA express writers? ), was apparently not able to do basic research that I was able to do in seconds - and then write a hackneyed "tsk tsk tsk" missive that just illustrates his myopia and slack-assness. Hell, people here put more effort in their posts, and we don't even get paid to do it. (at least, not for the actual posting part....)
He's not the first writer to question salaries at some of the more prominent NPO's. Staff does have to be adequately compensated -- even the super qualified ones. But not to excess. The rest of the article is rubbish.
