Posts Tagged non-profits
JumpStart Jumping with Big Salaries
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, People on February 5th, 2010
February 5, 2010… We haven’t heard the next barrage of fireworks from the tiff among the Cleveland Foundation, the Gund Foundation and the Fund for Our Economic Future… but I’m wondering how much big salaries have to do with the Cleveland Foundation’s desire for more control.
The Cleveland Foundation has sliced its hefty contribution to the Fund and says it will give individually to some of the same entities funded through the Fund for Our Economic Future.
Apparently, a major issue is where resources should be most concentrated. Cleveland Foundation suggests Cleveland and Cuyahoga County is its major concern. The Fund apparently wants to focus more outside those confines to a larger northeast Ohio area.
The issue has became fodder for The Plain Dealer recently and today’s paper has three letters to the editor on the matter.
The issue seems to be one of control. The Cleveland Foundation has given some one-third of the Fund’s budget annually but it has only one vote of 70 since each contributor giving $100,000 a year gets an equal vote. The foundation has cut its usually $3 to $4 million grant to a $100,000, the entry fee for a vote.
I looked at one of the funding recipients for money going to the Fund – JumpStart, Inc., a venture capital entity – and the salaries, at least to me, are rather shocking.
The top 10 employees of Jumpstart received in salaries and benefits in the 2007-08 report, latest available, to the Internal Revenue Service $1,871,354.
The top salary went to Ray Leach, President and CEO, at $369,311 with contributions to his benefits of $34,260, or a total of $403,571.
Other top salaries went this way:
- Rebecca Braun, Chief operating officer, $178,981 with $42,359 in benefits.
- Lynn-Ann Gries, Chief investment officer, $161,482 and $42,359 in benefits.
- Dawn Redus, Chief Economic Inclusion officer, $153,397 with $37,560 in benefits.
- Richard Jankura, Chief financial officer, $143,121.
- Jerold Frantz, manager, $143,273 and $35,772 in benefits.
- Kevin Mendelsohn, Entrepreneur in residence, $120,524 with $19,297 in benefits.
- Kerri Breen, Vice president, finance, $105,837 with $19,297 in benefits.
- Tiffan Clark, Vice President, marketing, $89,126 with $21,556 in benefits.
- Remsen Harris, investment associate, $88,205 and $34,821 in benefits.
Pension benefits seem to have become an issue for The Plain Dealer as they take after public employees. I’d suggest that they look at this benefit packages for nonprofit executives. They make the benefits to public employees seem rather skimpy. Especially when one sees the salaries bestowed upon executives of nonprofits. But fair isn’t one of the attributes of our news media.
You can read about JumpStart here…
http://www.jumpstartinc.org/ForDonors/
And here’s a link to the kind of positive promotion JumpStart gets from the news media…
http://blog.jumpstartinc.org/index.php/archives/117
Here’s a link to Ed Morrison’s take that offers some good information at Brewed Fresh Daily…
http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2010/whats-next-for-the-future-fund-and-the-cleveland-foundation
Unfortunately, private and even nonprofit organizations are not as open to public scrutiny as public agencies. They don’t have to be so they aren’t too forthcoming. That’s why there should be more attention by the news media to philanthropic organizations than there typically is.
Cleveland Taxes… Fair and Unfair, Dumb and Dumber
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Politicians on November 17th, 2009
November 17, 2009… I guess I’m just stupid. I don’t get it. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants to tax garbage to raise $13 million a year. Then he wants to tax non-profits to raise $5 million a year.
But residents already pay taxes to have their garbage picked up. Non-profits don’t any pay taxes. Seems to be a contradiction right there. Don’t you go after those that don’t pay taxes rather than those that do?
But there’s more.
Most Cleveland residents are not doing that well. Many of them you would call low income. Non-profits may be having some money problems but there’s plenty of money there.
Example: The Cleveland Clinic, likely the biggest of non-profits, had $3.4 BILLION in revenues in 2007, latest IRS report available.
Example: University Hospitals had net assets of nearly a billion, $994 million, in 2001, latest I could find.
Example: Cleveland Museum of Art has net assets of $873 million.
Example: Cleveland Foundation – assets of $1.49 billion.
Example: Gund Foundation – Assets of more than a half of billion dollars.
So from these behemoths you’d get $5 million a year but from working and unemployed stiffs you’d get $13 million? And you know the $9.25 garbage monthly fee will soon be $12, then $15 and then more.
So from the big money institutions you want $5 million but from people, who already pay plenty in income and property taxes, you want $13 million a year.
Doesn’t sound right. Not to me. Not to anyone with any sense.
What sounds even more ridiculous is this. The city would tax the Cleveland Museum of Art and the County gives the Cleveland Museum of Art $1.5 million in 2008 from the Arts & Culture fund from the cigarette tax.
Do we tax Playhouse Square, a non-profit that also gets subsidies from the County and got more than $1.5 million in 2008 from the County’s Culture & Arts fund, via a tax on cigarettes from the County?
Do you tax the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a non-profit? The Rock Hall got $880,000 from the Arts & Culture 2008 fund.
Do you give with one hand and take back with the other?
And then there’s this. Do you tax the tax exempt property users? They don’t pay taxes.
Would there be the tax on Progressive Field, on Q Arena, Browns Stadium? If not, why not? Shouldn’t they chip in?
It seems as though the plans for clipping people for chump change that hurts little guys but doesn’t much damage the big ones hasn’t been thought out and doesn’t make sense.
Go back to the drawing board, Mr. Mayor.