Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
khanacademy.org
khanacademy.org
The most recent data is from 2018, when they had an income of about 43M of which about 3.4M goes to the top 10 paid employees and the top two get 0.7M and 0.8M. The total salary budget is 35M, 25M of which are for "program services" (I guess creating content, developing the platform, etc.). This looks more reasonable compared to an organisation like Mozilla. Other things that jump out are half a million in legal fees and 1.8M for fundraising. In total, 43M out of 49M expenses in 2018 went to "program services", and they were running at a slight deficit. Looks pretty OK to me.
Assuming "information technology" means hosting, that's about 5M. Doing that times 2.5 would indeed create quite a problem, and that's assuming they don't need more people working on it to keep up with the new crowd.
Most of it would be outgoing bandwidth I’d think... maybe storage as well?
Compute is actually a big part of our costs, because we do a lot of processing for things like tracking learner progress and connecting students with their classroom assignments. This kind of thing grows linearly with usage.
We're working to move to Go, which will make a big difference in this part of our bill. http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm
PyPy might give you a 2-4x speedup, and if it wasn't for App Engine Standard, might be as easy as dropping it in instead of CPython, while Go is a total rewrite. Seems strange you wouldn't at least do a deeper dive on PyPy...
Performance is one of several important reasons for the move to Go, and not the top reason.
I'm a deal past these periods in my life, and I did quite well via just arbitrary memorization, at the cost of never really developing an intuitive understanding, and therefore a true appreciation, for subjects like math. I've only recently started going through KA's courses, starting all the way back in Algebra.
You can find Khan Academy's past Form 990 online and I've been archiving them.
Sal Khan made:
2008: ? ($0 revenue)
2009: ?
2010: $70,833
2011: $348,879
2012: $348,529
2013: $348,292
2014: $548,116
2015: $800,000
2016: $815,000
2017: $785,000
2018: $824,000
You can see that, just like a startup, the sacrifice in the beginning as a founder is real. Before 2010 his salary from KA was probably 0 or significantly less. $70K in 2010 was less than my new grad salary. The jump in 2011 to $350K is around how much a senior makes in HCOL areas now. There has been basically no adjustment in his earning for 4 years from 2015 to 2018.
From the 990 forms, you can also get a sense of how much other people in the organization are being paid. I think all of them can command higher compensation elsewhere, but choose to work at KA because leveling the playing field for education is such a great mission.
Sal Khan's compensation as a CEO is only ~3.x times of many senior positions in the organization. Not outrageous at all.
In 2008's Form 990, Sal Khan wrote that KA is being used by 10,000 students daily. I don't know how many accounts, but growing from that to 71 million in 2018 is incredible. The impact to the world is undeniable.
I can't imagine, though, that servers should account for any sizable amount of overall expense. Is this really an issue for them? The linked page didn't seem to talk about it.
I've never read one before, but it looks like their IT spend was $5m of $49m total expenses on page 10.
I think it's very plausible that a sudden unanticipated increase in IT costs could cause a cash crunch.
A unique string to find this line item in the linked filing is "Information technology"
This was their second-largest functional expense area for 2018, behind "Other salaries and wages".
Although I'm not an accountant it also seemed noteworthy to me that their "Revenue less expenses" was negative for 2018 (not overwhelmingly in relation to their assets, but still by a sizable amount).
I'm not really qualified to comment on what that means, but naively it does seem to imply to me that they can continue to benefit from donations and external funding.
I'm a bit biased, because I focus on CPU efficiency for a major CDN, but I'd be super curious what exactly is at 250%? Network bandwidth? CPU? IOPS? Are there big hammers that they can use to get things back under control without adding servers, like reducing bitrate, or turning off "fancy" features?
Features which use a lot of CPU are tracking learner progress, managing classrooms, and the like. These features are really important right now as teachers have moved classes online.
We are in the process of moving this code to Go, which should still be very productive for us but also reduce how much CPU is required.
Any other suggestions?
MAPS https://maps.org/
Only if they could figure out a way to host their learning platform, content and scoring on it.
Most people will just click and download will be pretty quick (most vids are quite small).
Look to how Effective Altruism has setup its various entities around the world.
I’d hope people don’t want people in porn to get screwed over figuratively too.
It's separate from donations and gifts.
[1] https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors...
[2] https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1...
1. Someone probably had to convince him it was okay to take that salary.
2. The level of his salary is probably just above what it took to hire their top talent, as a technology focused non-profit.Also, there's an abundance of free educational resources on the web, it's not clear that a marginal dollar is best spent on Khan Academy at this point.
Do you work for a charity/donate all of your time by the way?
When I was a student I gave on the order of $100 per year.
Anyway I feel sorry for you because you attack people instead of ideas, that must be really draining.
I'm Scottish, living out on the west coast. We've had no cases of coronavirus here yet. Therefore things are not as bad here as they are elsewhere.
So, you should just read all my comments in your finest Scottish accent. I'm sure it will be terrible but at least it might give you a laugh.
https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115...
But that link shows that they did listen, they understood, they debated, and they decided that they don't want that functionality. They think it's counter-productive for how they're trying to educate their students.
Right or wrong, you can't say they don't care. Merely that they don't agree with you.
I'll donate a little extra for you.
In gaming we call this "git gud". You obviously need more practice because you haven't moved on from a specific failure. Learn from it then beat it next time. Owning failure is part of how you accelerate learning.
This is an odd reason to not donate. Not that I'm donating either... but I've already donated to plenty other organisations this year.
I think Khan Academy is fantastic, and was going to donate until I saw this figure (verified). I think that it's entirely inappropriate to extract that much from the donations.
So will the figure be less of it's he is doing the same work for a company?
It might be better to donate to a local school, food bank, or neighbors who are having a hard time instead.
It isn't like Khan is some religious cult and those unemployed people think they're now going to "hell" if they don't donate. Unemployed individuals will make a decision to donate or not.
There are also millions who are not unemployed and are WFH making good money, FAANG.
If you run something for the common good, you extract whatever you need to live and to run the thing — not $800k.
At least, that's what I would do if I ran a non-profit, I would take only the money I need to live/perform my duties in the upkeep of the service.
Which would not be anywhere near $800k.
Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror.
Why do some people go nuts if they see non-profits demanding high pay? Khan Academy has done something unique, helpful and truly excellent, but how dare Salman Khan wanting a cut similar to for-profits. (If it is similar, properly still less).
If you take donations, it sounds like you should be a charity, but there are lots of examples of organizations that rely on donations, but are not charities. Basically anybody living off Patreon, for example.
Having said that, I don't think it is wrong for a donator to decide that they don't want to donate because one person is taking the lion's share of the wealth. In fact, there are for profit organisations that I will avoid simply because they don't seem to provide a service other than to line some fat cat executives' pockets. People are free to choose how they want to spend their money.
Abstract :
Entrepreneurs who start new firms may choose not-for-profit status as a means of committing to soft incentives. Such incentives protect donors, volunteers, consumers and employees from ex post expropriation of profits by the entrepreneur.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/shleifer/publications/not-profit...
Every comment like yours attacks the strawman that the CEO and employees should not get paid. Nobody is saying that. But I'm absolutely not going to donate anything while the CEO takes out over 800000 dollars in pay, and it looks distasteful to me to go around begging for donations.
There is nothing distasteful about non-profit CEOs wanting high pay. We're speaking about the founder of something that has and is helping millions of people around the world with arguably one of the most difficult and important educational needs. Khan Academy wouldn't be here without Khan himself and the world would be lesser for it. I see absolutely no reason why the CEO of such an organizations shouldn't paid in the same manner as for-profits.
I'm snarky, because the implied notion of "people doing good instead of chasing profits don't deserve the same pay/good life" is nothing short of crazy to me.
This feels like somebody setting up a GoFundMe to pay off their credit card debt. They paid their CEO an absurd salary, and now they need more money. That sounds like a you-problem.
What you should be thinking about is the value he provides, not the absolute amount he is paid. The net positive effect of him running it and getting paid $800k is much higher than someone else who can't run things as well getting paid $100k. The goal is to maximize the output of the non-profit, not to keep salaries low. What you should care about is ROI on your dollars donated.
Compensation should be set at a level where people don't need to worry about money, with a reasonable but basic standard of living. In the Bay, unfortunately, that's around $200k. On the other hand, compensation should not be set at a level where people are there for the money. You want people to be there because they are passionate and care.
$200 will bring people just as competent as $800k, but (1) your burn rate is lower (2) people are there for the mission (3) you can ask for donations in good faith.
Depending on part of the country, you can step that down significantly, in turn.
If you do want to invest extra money on people, a better place to spend that is stability and benefits (in the way universities do). I'd gladly take a job for $200k with a lifetime guarantee of doing meaningful work over one at $800k without that guarantee.
I actually think a lot of the bad decisions by Khan Academy are related to misaligned incentive structures. Khan tries to keep a pretty deep moat protecting business models. The platform isn't open source. Partnerships are hard to come by. Research partnerships are exceptionally difficult (Khan data is a proprietary resources). There's a cult personality. Etc.
This is not realistic based on my experience with what motivates people.
> I'd gladly take a job for $200k with a lifetime guarantee of doing meaningful work over one at $800k without that guarantee.
Nature doesn’t offer guarantees on a lifetime timescale.
> I think it's a false statement to say someone less expensive will run things less well. I've been at a number of not-for-profits, and that does not match my experience at all.
This is a favorite of people trying to disprove something. Just because it doesn't apply all of the time doesn't mean it's incorrect. It applies most of the time. And your experience is anecdotal and thus low value. In the majority of cases, people who get paid more are more skilled at getting the desired results. This is how capitalism works.
> Compensation should be set at a level where people don't need to worry about money, with a reasonable but basic standard of living. In the Bay, unfortunately, that's around $200k. On the other hand, compensation should not be set at a level where people are there for the money. You want people to be there because they are passionate and care.
This is fairyland non-sense. Let's stick to reality and not your idealizations. Notice how many times you use "should". According to who? Why?
> $200 will bring people just as competent as $800k, but (1) your burn rate is lower (2) people are there for the mission (3) you can ask for donations in good faith.
Unsubstantiated nonsense. Again, let's stick to reality.
> If you do want to invest extra money on people, a better place to spend that is stability and benefits (in the way universities do). I'd gladly take a job for $200k with a lifetime guarantee of doing meaningful work over one at $800k without that guarantee.
Again, nonsense. What is this based on? No one cares about your personal preferences. It's irrelevant. As I said, your logic is weak. You can't hear something and say "that's not true for me"! And think that disproves anything. You're over-indexing on your own beliefs and it's clouding your thinking.
> I actually think a lot of the bad decisions by Khan Academy are related to misaligned incentive structures. Khan tries to keep a pretty deep moat protecting business models. The platform isn't open source. Partnerships are hard to come by. Research partnerships are exceptionally difficult (Khan data is a proprietary resources). There's a cult personality. Etc.
Again, nonsense. Please provide some facts, from the real world, that substantiate these claims. You're living in a dream where all that matters is what you personally think and how you want things to be and are completely disconnected from reality and facts. You're just finding made up points to confirm the bias you already have. E.g. "There's a cult personality". What does that even mean? It's a made-up statement because you feel the longer your list of things is the more evidence you have.
Someone set-up a GoFundMe for their credit card bill, which they ran up buying supplies to make masks for doctors in need. You are saying that, because they treated themselves to Olive Garden once for dinner, instead of only ever eating the cheapest thing off the McDonald's menu, that they need to repent. Meanwhile, actual fat cat CEOs are eating at $250/person steakhouses while raping the Earth.
800k is a lot of money, but it's really not for that sort of position. CEOs regularly make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The ones that famously don't, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, are able to do so because they are already obscenely wealthy.
Have you heard of the phrase "throwing the baby out with the bathwater?" Because that's what you're proposing here.
Where do you think the money comes from to run the organization? They don't monetize their users. Asking for donations is a significant part of Sal Khan's job.
Khan Academy is soliciting donations, an avenue of human interaction which asks us to suspend this local rationality and instead transact on hope and trust. That's the difference to me between a business transaction and a donation.
> [...] transact on hope and trust.
These two things are not as dissimilar as you seem to think.
There is nothing irrational about donating to a non-profit, and nothing irrational about paying high salaries to irreplaceable employees or executives.
Hence, you're not being asked to "transact on hope and trust".
The main difference between donating to KA and a typical business transaction, is that the value of the goods/services provided does not necessarily go to the person providing the payment.
There is an understandable worry about over-payment of executives, but I don't think that the "threat model" is significantly different between for-profits and non-profits. You could argue that in the case of for-profits, competition will weed out companies that over-pay their executives, but internal, corporate politics is likely to trump the market mechanism — at least that's what seems to be happening. As a result, I don't think that it makes sense to excessively harp on executive pay at non-profits you donate to, or at least not more so than you care about the pay of the CEO at a company whose products you buy.
I don't feel like I should have to explain this, but the difference between a non-profit and a profit driven corporation is that:
1) The NPO is likely doing some kind of activity for the greater good, which means that the more money you take out for administration and profit, the less good you can do.
2) The Corporation is likely doing some kind of profit-driven activity for the primary benefit of increasing the value of the company. Corporations generate profit by their very nature since their purpose is not primarily to solve (profit-wise) unattractive problems or to perform charitable work: the purpose is primarily to generate profit.
Anyone that understands the difference between these two should be able to draw the conclusion that:
1) If an NPO is burdened by excessive expenses, such as administrative cost, it will have less money to spend against the objective of "greater good".
2) If a Corporation is burdened by excessive expenses, such as bonuses, salaries or is otherwise mismanaged financially, this only affects the corporations capability of making a profit.
It should be plain to see that the complaint against NPO salaries is not equivalent to a complaint of a for-profit corporate counterpart.
Since I was immediately downvoted I'd also like to add that this logic also applies to questioning public expenses. Taxes are allegedly levied to supply common services and serve the "common good", would you also argue that politicians should be salaried on par with profit driven corporations, in the name of ensuring competence of public officials, even if that means less common good can be taken out from your taxes?
I guess you can see personnel as an investment towards the cause too
Right now, if I'd want to work for a NPO, it would only come with a severe pay cut. So I stay with FPOs, although I believe that many NPOs are way more important in what they are doing.
You know, that Stallman lived for years out of donations? And no one was opposite of that. It also worked for WikiMedia etc. It's great business model but people need to stop looking on non-profits like that next corporation. They require far more work and I think leaders of such projects should be compensated well. :)
I've heard that the Singaporean government has a similar philosophy. Their prime minister is one of the (if not, the) highest paid PM in the world at circa SGD $2m/year.
What if you want to buy more business/investments or fund startups?
I support Math for America that provides stipends to smart teachers. It has the same premise: good teachers are rare and it’s good for everyone if they stay in education instead of being lured to Google or Goldman Sachs.
Is this a common Goldman pipeline? Do they have recruiters hanging around teachers' lounges? The teachers I know who have gotten fed up with all of it have become insurance agents, agricultural extension people, etc. b^)
> After your stint at Teach for America, a two-year post-undergraduate teaching program, you decided to leave the academic world behind and work in New York City. Where are you most likely to be employed? Goldman Sachs.
This is irrelevant since the effects of a degree in education on measures of student learning is not reliably distinguishable from zero. Training in pedagogy either doesn’t matter at all or matters very, very little.
> This despite the nearly universal (although not necessarily justified) opinion among teachers and administrators that first-year teachers are pretty much useless.
That’s a bit harsh but the only reliable correlate of teacher quality I’m aware of is years of experience up to six years. First years probably aren’t “pretty much useless” but you’d prefer more seasoned instructors.
From the other perspective: they provide, apparently, an invaluable service. While the entire world struggles with keeping the education going, people apparently need Khan Academy 2.5 times as much as they did before. And you think the CEO now deserves less pay than he gets, at the time when we need him more than we ever did before?
I encourage others not to donate too.
His opportunity cost is also very high. Salman Khan could get a job tomorrow making millions in annual comp.
For the sake, of argument, let's take it as a given that 1) he could easily earn the same amount or more somewhere else, and 2) if offered $1 less than $800k, he would walk. The question then becomes whether the organization could replace his value for the same or less money. i.e. could they hire someone else for $800k, much less a more "appropriate" salary, who would run things as effectively?
Maybe; I don't know enough to say. I might consider doing some research and putting more thought into the question before donating, but it doesn't seem out of the question for me that keeping on both the founder and someone with his level of experience would be worth that much or more.
For reference, there are many developers making more than that in SV, and they don’t run their organizations.
I still think "donating" is appropriate regardless of what they pay their executives. Just don't treat it as an altruistic charity.
Think of the donation as a pay-what-you-can/want for the service. If you have the means, pay $10 per month and treat it like a subscription while you're using the service.
Mind you, even $1mil a year is miniscule compare to what he managed to achieve with the company. So thats already a lot donation that you cant see
Should a ceo reduce his income because his company is succeeding? The unfortunate element here is that their fundraising does not scale (or scale well enough) as a function of additional reach.