Coherent Babble

wowwww, that's amazing they are taking home so many donations. This is inherently wrong.

Is it inherently wrong? I assume those companies want to get the best and the brightest CEO's so they may have to compete against other companies with pay structures. Like say Make a wish only offered 100k for their CEO position, maybe the best candidate they got would have been so much less than their current CEO that they'd make over 300k+ less in revenue due to a slightly worse run business, it'd be costing them money. Also, the CEO's are running a business, that's their job, sure it's helping people but I don't see why they should have to work for fractions on the $ for what they could actually get. Like sure if the CEO made 400k less a year that'd be 400k more for the foundation, but why not call for X companies CEO making 2million to donate 400k of his pay check to that same foundation, same result.

And finally maybe these dudes are taking pay cuts? Maybe some of them could be getting a ton elsewhere? Obviously everything I said above is void if the CEO is some clown who got the job because he knows that right people and isn't that competent, like that's totally wrong. But if the CEO's are sick good and pushing the company forward and creating more revenue then they should be compensated accordingly imo.

I don't really have a problem with this at all. These people are presumably very good at their jobs, and I'm sure for a lot of them a big part of the job is to raise a lot more money than they get paid. Also for Dana-Farber at least, they get money from two govt health orgs and are affiliated with Harvard, so
1) He answers to way more people than just private donors
2) He gets paid by many different sources

Not to mention the fact that 800k for the CEO of a company with 800M in annual revenue is chump change. I guarantee you he's taking a pretty big pay cut to work there.

If that 300k was like 25% of their net revenue, then yeah, it's pretty outrageous, but I seriously doubt that their cut is any significant percentage of the money that they take in. I wouldn't count a charity out just because they pay their employees in dollars instead of nickels and dimes.

I think http://aboutus.cancerresearchuk.org/who-we-are/
are pretty solid. Not 100% on them though.

You guys make some very good points. I think instead of looking at CEO salary, I should be focusing on % of overall revenue that gets dispersed to actual causes.

In my defense, I have a very hopeful view of the world where no one makes an excessive amount of money while others suffer.

Who defines excessive?

In my world, me of course :) Seriously though, it's obviously all relative. I just struggle to see how the world can be totally fine with wasting so much money while people LITERALLY starve to death, animals are abused, and people continue to destroy the environment.

Looking at what % of revenue goes to the cause is a better way but still has its problems.

Here is an example why. A lot of people like to exclude salary cause it isn't going to the cause.

But for a place like St. Judes Childrens hospital. The vast majority of their revenue goes to salaries for their scientists. Because they are trying to research and find a cure for childhood cancers, their goal isnt to help kids with cancer its to help get rid of childhood cancer. So the salaries for their scientists are part of their expenses that go to their cause.

Not saying they are a good charity, just using them as an example.

To me, if part of your mission is to find a cure, then conducting research IS part of the cause and I would count any $ going to that endeavor as "going to the cause." When looking at how the $ is spent, if I see that $X is going to scientists, then I'm fine with that. If it's all rolled up into salaries, then that would make it more difficult, but I'll just have to keep that in mind. Thanks for pointing that out :)

Non-profits typically have a breakdown of how funds, especially donated funds, are spent. A scientist's salary will likely be listed under "research," or something similar, whereas the president's salary is administrative.

Obviously every group has expenses and salaries to pay, but if most of the donated funds are going towards executive salaries, I'm probably giving that group the stink eye.