I don't know why I bother but here goes again...
It seems like in every thread related to conservation this comes up. Some speculative theory that conversation ".orgs" are making tons of money by suing governmental agencies. Apologies for my directness but for small 501 (c)3's it's largely bullshit.
On behalf of the biggest private foundation in the world, It was my day job to look at and evaluate non-profits as potential grant recipients for 9 years (still there but now in a more inward looking role). I have looked at the financials of literally a thousand or so. Sure, there are sometimes problems, especially when there is bad leadership but it's by far the exception rather than the rule. A FAR bigger problem is that the people working for these organizations get paid TOO LITTLE to attract talent and the orgs are so starved for administrative and overhead funds that they either run on a shoestring and can't invest in luxuries like accounting controls or just wither and die. See The Non-profit Starvation Cycle as an example.
For the example at hand, it took me all of two minutes to sign up for a free account at Guidestar, look up WFC and download their latest IRS form 990 from 2016 (2017s are just starting to get uploaded) and see that their director is the highest paid employee at $60K per year. So if he's getting rich, it's not off a WFC salary.
I'm not a WFC fan. I don't agree with their litigious approach to conservation. But anyone who is willing to work that hard for that little money in an area with this cost of living to make something about the world better, doesn't deserve these sorts of comments. We should all feel free to disagree and debate the issues but to imply something shady and make what are essentially character attacks doesn't help anything.
It seems like in every thread related to conservation this comes up. Some speculative theory that conversation ".orgs" are making tons of money by suing governmental agencies. Apologies for my directness but for small 501 (c)3's it's largely bullshit.
On behalf of the biggest private foundation in the world, It was my day job to look at and evaluate non-profits as potential grant recipients for 9 years (still there but now in a more inward looking role). I have looked at the financials of literally a thousand or so. Sure, there are sometimes problems, especially when there is bad leadership but it's by far the exception rather than the rule. A FAR bigger problem is that the people working for these organizations get paid TOO LITTLE to attract talent and the orgs are so starved for administrative and overhead funds that they either run on a shoestring and can't invest in luxuries like accounting controls or just wither and die. See The Non-profit Starvation Cycle as an example.
For the example at hand, it took me all of two minutes to sign up for a free account at Guidestar, look up WFC and download their latest IRS form 990 from 2016 (2017s are just starting to get uploaded) and see that their director is the highest paid employee at $60K per year. So if he's getting rich, it's not off a WFC salary.
I'm not a WFC fan. I don't agree with their litigious approach to conservation. But anyone who is willing to work that hard for that little money in an area with this cost of living to make something about the world better, doesn't deserve these sorts of comments. We should all feel free to disagree and debate the issues but to imply something shady and make what are essentially character attacks doesn't help anything.
