Children Charities: Salaries of the Executives

You have often seen the advertisements on television, with photos of childen in dire poverty, requesting you to sponsor a child. The truth is that there are many children around the world that need urgent help and there are many excellent organizations that provide much needed assistance.

But do you realize that the executives of these organizations earn, in many cases 5 or 10 times more than what you earn?

It seems contradictory that charity advertisements pleed for funds while charity executives enjoy large paychecks.

The president of the organization that I had been contributing to wrote a letter to sponsors announcing a 22% increase in monthly contributions saying "We have struggeled to keep up with rapidly rising costs without reducing the services and benefits we provide to the children under our care. Cutting back is something we just dont want to do." Cutting back his salary or his staff's salary is something else he didnt want to do. This letter was from an executive whose pay package is approximately $400,000 per year.

I wrote to the Child Sponsorship Organization that I was donating to and asked how they justified the high salaries. I received a detailed response, which included this:

"We feel that looking just at the salary of one individual or a handful of individuals is to miss the big picture and to get a mistaken impression. We could pay less and require less of our employees in terms of skills, experience and performance, but we feel the resulting inefficiencies would end up costing us more in the aggregate and benefiting the children less."

Two follow-up emails went unanswered.

I contacted several journalists to try to interest them in writing an expose, but I was told that there was little interest in the story. I was told that it was a well known fact that many charity CEOs are making huge bucks at the expense of the children. It simply was not news.

While I believe that many of these organizations fullfill a vital need and deserve your support, I STRONGLY suggest that you research the organization that you contribute to to make sure that its objectives match your requirements. I also ask your help to get journalists to start writing about this topic. To that end, please see the petition at the bottom of this page.