From: M Petrelis Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:23:25 EST Subject: NAPWA's and SFAF's Pat Christen's almost $200,000 pay [dear friends, this story from today's b.a.r. does not mention that the e.d. of the s.f.a.f. is also on the board of the national association for people with aids, napwa. i bring it up because i doubt a sizable numbers of pwa's endorse this e.d.'s brazen greediness. the b.a.r.'s snail mail address is 395 - 9th street, sf, ca, 94103. -mp] Figure skating at SFAF CoP figures don't support executive salary by Mike Salinas, Bay Area Reporter February 26, 1998 As reported in last week's Bay Area Reporter, board members at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation circulated a memo on executive salaries last month, presumably to set the stage for an increase in SFAF Executive Director Pat Christen's salary. The memo, written by an employment counselor at Korn/Ferry International, made it appear that Christen's salary was in line with – or less than – those at other national nonprofit groups. However, additional scrutiny shows that memo author Eunice Azzani was extremely selective in using statistics to form her underlying thesis. In the memo, circulated among Board President Paul Wisotzky and board members Kathleen J. Burke and Lonnie Payne, Azzani quoted and cited a September 1997 article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy as the basis for her statement that "average medium salary of non-profit executives nationwide was $193,206." But the statement that follows – that Bay Area non-profit executives at agencies with "budgets of greater than $15 million [are paid in the] salary range [of] $150-250K" – radically departs from the findings reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. That publication, in assessing the average median salary of non-profit executives, focused exclusively on organizations that are twice as large to 44,344 percent larger than the foundation. "Incomes of groups surveyed ranged from $38.9 million to $2.8 billion," the article stated. "The survey also included data from the country's largest foundations, with assets ranging from $1.3 billion to $8 billion." The San Francisco AIDS Foundation has an annual budget of around $18 million, according to its Director of Communications, Derek Gordon. One % vs. .02% Azzani cited no source to verify her claim about the "salary range [of] $150-250K" in her memo, and placed it beneath the Chronicle of Philanthropy findings, making it seem as though it was extrapolated from the same article. That is not the case. In fact, the article's figures show that Christen's salary, instead of being under par for a person in her position, comprises a significantly higher percentage of the annual budget than is normal for the nonprofit organizations it lists. Among "health charities" catalogued in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, for example, directors usually received between one-forth of one percent of the organization's annual income (paid to the Chief Executive Officer of the American Cancer Society) to less than one-tenth of one percent (to the president of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation). Christen takes home approximately one percent of SFAF's annual budget, a compensation more than 12 times the going rate at the Cancer Society, and 3.6 times that at Cystic Fibrosis. Among "human services groups" like Goodwill Industries and Lions Clubs International, the directors generally made even less. The Lions Clubs' executive administrator earned six-tenths of a percent of the annual $36.629 million budget; the president of Goodwill took in less than one-fiftieth of one percent. For comparison, if Goodwill followed the same ratio of income to executive director salary as SFAF, it would have had to raise its executive administrator's annual salary by nearly $108,000,000. Azzani told the B.A.R. that her figure for the Bay Area subgroup compensation was derived from a formula she created, using Korn/Ferry's "own database" of "nonprofits, for-profits, and businesses." She said it would be "too complicated, too difficult" to explain her work over the phone, and set up a meeting with the B.A.R. to go over the figures in person. The day of the appointment she had her assistant cancel it. ACT UP/San Francisco's Michael Bellefountaine complains that "San Francisco AIDS Foundation volunteers are encouraged to generously give their time because AIDS is an crisis and SFAF is a non-profit charity. SFAF employees are forced to work in a bureaucratic, corporate environment and criticized for trying to organize a labor union because SFAF is a nonprofit charity. Federal emergency AIDS relief funding is expected to keep rolling into SFAF coffers because it's a nonprofit charity. Corporate and private donors are told to dig deep and give often to the organization because it's a nonprofit charity. And clients with AIDS are told not to complain about the lack of services from SFAF, but rather to consider themselves lucky for what they get from the city's largest AIDS non-profit charity. "Yet Azzani asserts that when considering executive salaries SFAF should be treated as a business, not another non-profit charity," Bellefountaine added. "Talk about a double standard!" After reading last week's B.A.R. article about the salary memo, former Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Democratic Club President Jeff Sheehy said he thinks Christen's compensation is already too high. "What's been lost is that these [positions in AIDS nonprofit groups] are supposed to be temporary," he said. "They are not supposed to be permanent careers. It's not supposed to be an industry." ‘Mega-agency' model Ironically, just as SFAF board members were circulating the memo, the Chronicle of Philanthropy was going to press with a newer report about the foundation, including some of the concerns shared by Sheehy and others. Author Susan Gray's January 22 article outlined community efforts to expand San Francisco's sunshine ordinance so it would cover nonprofits like SFAF. Gray pointed out that the push for more openness was prompted, in part, because "AIDS leaders asked the foundation why money from various fundraising events had not gone to expand services, [and] they say, the foundation refused to explain how the contributions had been used. When they asked to sit in on board meetings, they say, the foundation again refused. "Finally, the activists got a copy of the informational tax return, or Form 990, that the SFAF filed with the Internal Revenue Service. From it, they learned that four of the foundation's top executives earned six-figure salaries. Pat Christen, the executive director, made more than $162,000 in 1995. "The salaries infuriated activists. ‘We can't get housing subsidies, there's not enough money for AIDS drugs, yet there's plenty of money for high salaries in the $100,000 range?' says Michael Petrelis, an ACT UP volunteer who says he was refused services by the foundation." Sheehy said the misplaced financial priorities are symptoms of a larger problem at SFAF. "I think the whole ‘mega-agency' model is the problem," he told the B.A.R. "It's too big, too bureaucratic, and too unable to respond to the changes in the epidemic." Referring to Christen as "someone who's stuck in 1990," he asked, "What are her skills as executive director that she should earn nearly $200,000? She doesn't do fundraising, and the rest is just administration. She's already shown she cannot interact with people with HIV, so what is she doing getting any money to run an AIDS organization?" Bellefountaine was just as blunt in his assessment. "One must wonder," he asked, "if SFAF is a business, who gets to be the shareholders? To whom exactly is Pat Christen and the board of directors responsible? It is clear that Azzani, Burke, and Wisotzky want to run SFAF as a private family business that is accountable to no one."