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Comment by alnayyir | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for your work, I despise the Red Cross.

Could you please elaborate? I'm sure a lot of hackers who give to the RedCross would be interested to understand your reasons so that they can make better decisions about donating to relief funds in the future.

Red Cross CEO earns $565,000 in salary.

What's interesting is that this is higher than the CEO cap the Obama administration placed on for-profit companies which received bailout money.

The Red Cross received $100 million in bailout money.

http://blog.charitynavigator.org/2009/02/non-profit-ceo-pay-...

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...

CEO pay means nothing. What matters is how much good they do per dollar. I'm sure the amount of money they receive each year is available somewhere, and they'll be happy to tell you what they've accomplished with it. Compare that to other organizations instead of assuming they're ineffective because they think it's worthwhile to pay their CEO well.

The magnitude of CEO pay in the private sector is similarly a non-issue, but please keep my opinion on that to yourselves, lest the pitchforks be redirected toward me.

You're right that CEO pay doesn't mean that much in the scheme of things especially if they increase the effectiveness of the organization, but it's an issue that concerns people who make a lot less and are deciding where they should donate their hard earned dollars.

http://www.slate.com/id/2220596

Non-profits also use their allure of helping others to recruit and often pay rank and file employees less than market rate wages (see some comments in the slate article).

For example, doctors who work for these organizations could likewise be making $100's of K per year. Some doctors also work much harder than their market counterpart, performing more surgeries under difficult conditions.

I suspet the CEO is getting a lower percentae of market rate than the average doctor working for the red cross.

Upthread, it's reported the Red Cross has $3.5 billion in assets and $1.8 billion in liabilities. Managing an institution of that size, you don't want to skimp on executive talent, or you can lose a lot more than $565K in the blink of an eye. And, the current CEO probably made a lot more when she was in the private sector (at Fidelity Investments and AT&T).

Too big to exist in the realm of charity.

No thanks, I won't feed that inefficient monster.

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