Last August, I posted on this blog an article about the level of democracy in Greenpeace. Specifically, that article, entitled “Greenpeace Voting Incestuous,” pointed out that for Greenpeace, Inc., the primary protest and campaigning organization of Greenpeace USA, a group called “the voting members” selects the members of the Greenpeace, Inc. Board of Directors, and the Board of Directors of Greenpeace, Inc. selects the voting members. Very cozy.
I didn’t put the word “incestuous” into that article’s title for no reason. The degree of democracy operating within Greenpeace, Inc. is fairly low. And in today’s article, I also didn’t put “incestuous” into the title for no reason either.
Today we’re going to take a look at the level of democracy at play in another Greenpeace USA organization. In this post we’ll look at the voting procedures of Greenpeace Fund, Inc. What’s the difference between Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc.
Basically, Greenpeace USA is made up of two separate corporations. One is Greenpeace, Inc. which is a 501(c)(4) organization. The other Greenpeace corporation, which is not as well known, is Greenpeace Fund, Inc. That’s the one we’re discussing today. This corporation is a 501(c)(3) organization. What’s the difference between the two?
Greenpeace, Inc. is the well-known corporate protest organization that one usually thinks of when the word “Greenpeace” is uttered. Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is essentially a foundation which funds much of Greenpeace, Inc.’s operation.
For more information about the technical differences between a (3) and a (4), please let Wikipedia explain, although to enjoy the balance of today’s post you don’t need to know much more about those differences.
Greenpeace USA makes their bylaws, for both corporations, available on their Web site. Kudos to them for the transparency on this information. Not every protest organization I study is as open. But it’s not necessarily their transparency that I am criticizing today. It’s their lack of democracy, and therefore their lack of accountability, that I criticize today.
In the Greenpeace Fund, Inc. bylaws its says:
“Section 2.1 – No Voting Members
This corporation shall not have any members within the meaning of Section 5056 of the California Corporations Code.” (Note: Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is incorporated in California even though the main office is in Washington, D.C.)
Section 5056 says with regard to a definition of members that:
” ‘Member’ means any person who, pursuant to a specific provision of a corporation’s articles or bylaws, has the right to vote for the election of a director or directors . . .”
Translation? Simple. This means that there are no voting members in Greenpeace Fund, Inc.
No voting members? How un-democratic. But if there are no voting members, then how are decisions made in the governance of this organization? Again, simple. They’re made by the Board of Directors. Entirely.
So, then how does Greenpeace Fund, Inc. get a diversity of opinion injected into their decision-making process? Again, the simplest answer is the most obvious.
They don’t.
Their decision-making process is incestuous. Why do I say that?
Because in those same
Continue reading How Much More Incestuous Can Greenpeace Get?
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Per their own documents, Greenpeace compensated its former executive director for zero hours worked and after he left the organization. Soon you’ll read the support. But before we get to the details, let’s have a little background information.
During recent reviews of Greenpeace US’s Form 990s, the publicly-available tax return that non-profit corporations are required to file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, I discovered many curious things about Greenpeace executive compensation and wrote about those discoveries in the following articles:
Greenpeace CEO Makes “More” Than Exxon CEO?
Greenpeace Executive Salary Increase Soars Past Inflation
Greenpeace Executive Salary in the Top 5%
Another Greenpeace Executive Salary Near the Top
Today’s post turns up something even more curious than what was discussed in the previous articles. As I stated above, today’s post demonstrates that Greenpeace paid its former executive director even after he left their employ.
Greenpeace US operates under two corporations, Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc. I obtained each organization’s publicly-available Form 990s via Guidestar.org, an organization that catalogues Form 990s of non-profits and makes them available for public viewing. The Greenpeace Form 990s for 2007, 2008, and 2009 reported the following compensation figures for Greenpeace US’s now-former Executive Director (CEO), John W. Passacantando.
Fiscal 2007 Total Compensation – $177,171
Fiscal 2008 Total Compensation – $207,248
Fiscal 2009 Total Compensation – $134,134
(Note: To see the 2009 Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc. Form 990s, click here and here. Turn to PDF page 7 on each document.)
Please note, according to the Greenpeace US Web site, Mr. Passacantando left his position as Executive Director of Greenpeace US at the end of 2008. He was replaced by Mr. Philip Radford, the current Executive Director. But yet Mr. Passacantando, according to the Form 990s, was paid during 2009. According to these Form 990s, this compensation of $134,134 was paid to John Passacantando, the “Former Executive Director,” for “0.0 average hours per week” for the calendar and fiscal year 2009.
Now, perhaps the $134,134 payment was some sort of severance payment worked out between Greenpeace and Mr. Passacantando, and it was made payable in a later fiscal year. Certainly such a bonus arrangement would be tax efficient. (And just as certainly against the principles of the Occupy movement, which Greenpeace supports. Yes, I’ve never said that hypocrisy and Greenpeace are strangers.)
But the point to today’s post is that the discovery of this payment adds to my question about the appropriateness of the Greenpeace executive compensation program. This question has also been raised in my previous articles on this subject, a list of which you see above.
To some extent, the answer to that question is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that a payment of $134,134 for a year in which the average hours of work were listed as zero is far too large
Continue reading Greenpeace Executive Paid for Zero Hours Worked
In a previous post, I wrote about how Mr. Daniel Mc Gregor, the past COO and now Director of Development for Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc., for 2008 through 2010 received salary increases that were many times over the rate of inflation. These raises occurred while many people were forced into the unemployment lines or accepted annual compensation increases equal to the rate of inflation.
As in the previous post, where I put Greenpeace executive salary information into economic context, I’ll do the same in today’s post. Today I will locate Mr. Mc Gregor ‘s compensation on the percentage scale of American income earners. You’ve heard of the 1% vs. the 99%? The percentage scale of American income earners is where the 1% and the 99% are defined. Is Mr. Mc Gregor’s salary in the 1% or in the 99%? Let’s find out.
In my previous post, entitled “Greenpeace Executive Salary Increase Soars Past Inflation,” I wrote that after reviewing Greenpeace’s Form 990, the publicly-available tax return that non-profit organizations are required to file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, I found Mr. Mc Gregor’s 2010 total compensation was $155,675. For 2010 Greenpeace awarded him with a 21.5% compensation increase over 2009. This was when the U.S. Consumer Price Index for 2010 increased by only 1.6%. If you’d like to see those documents, please click here and here. (See PDF page 7 in both documents. Be sure to review both documents because Greenpeace is essentially organized into two different corporations.)
Now, here’s the 2010 percentage scale of American income earners. This information comes from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, via FinancialSamarai.com.
Top 1%: $380,354
Top 5%: $159,619
Top 10%: $113,799
Top 25%: $67,280
Top 50%: >$33,048
Based on the above table, we can see that the $155,675 compensation falls somewhere between the Top 5% and the Top 10%. But where exactly? Using a simple mathematical interpolation formula and the information shown in the table above, compensation of $155,675 per year falls into the top 5.45% of income earners for 2010. 5.45% rounds off to 5%.
In an October 2011 Greenpeace blog post, Mr. Philip Radford, the current Executive Director (CEO) of Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc., pronounced his organizations’ support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which means by extension that they stand in opposition to the “1%.” Yet, a senior executive in his own organization makes enough to qualify for the 5%. True. It’s not the 1%, but it’s darn close. Too darn close to engage genuinely in class warfare with the 1%.
Hypocritical? Perhaps, but hypocrisy is not a condition unfamiliar to Greenpeace.
After reading Mr. Radford’s Occupy Wall Street comment, and with the Greenpeace salary analysis fresh in my mind, I started to wonder how Mr. Radford’s compensation ranks on the scale of American income earners. In my next post we’ll take a look at that.
As you may have noticed, recently I’ve been writing a lot about accountability, or rather the lack thereof, in various global activist groups such as Greenepeace, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Action Network. For a list of those articles, just click here.
Why this call for accountability? Why now?
Well, it’s not just a tit-for-tat given that the above mentioned activist groups often call upon corporations for accountability information. (See the articles in the above mentioned list for references to this.) Certainly corporations, multi-nationals in particular, given their wide influence upon society need to be accountable to those they affect. But isn’t it just as certain, especially given that activist influence on corporations has increased over the past couple of decades, that those same activists need to be more accountable than they have in the past to the public whose interests they profess to serve?
The research shown in my recent articles demonstrates that, for the groups studied, their concerns about releasing accountability information are lacking. The research also shows, in the few cases where the information was indeed available, that the control of the organization is very tight and highly parochial. Take for example my post entitled “Greenpeace Voting Incestuous.” In this example, Greenpeace did release very pertinent governance information, but this information shows that the governance of this highly influential organization is concentrated among very few individuals. Yet, Greenpeace claims support from over 12 million people. The governance information I found indicates that those 12 million people don’t get a say in how the organization is run. Why not? Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue if Exxon-Mobil suddenly announced that its shareholders would no longer vote?
For activists to be less accountable than the companies they target is simply hypocritical.
This call for activist accountability is being made now because the influence of organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Action Network has reached a critical mass. And if we allow business as usual to continue (pun intended) their narrowly defined influence over the goods and services we all consume may take us in a direction that we don’t want to go.
The more I review them, the more Greenpeace’s transparency reports continue to disappoint as well as amuse.
In Greenpeace International’s 2010 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) submission (section 2.2), the NGO states that they “promote open, informed debate about society’s environmental choices.” Such words conjure up images of the Lincoln – Douglas debates and suggest the gentility of intellectual exchange. Yet, that’s not exactly the image I would say most people have of Greenpeace.
Greenpeace is, as they say in the Intro to that same GRI submission, a “global advocacy organization.” Advocacy organizations don’t debate. They advocate; they promote; they shame; they demonstrate, with or without legitimate foundation under their arguments or with or without truth behind their cause.
In the 2009 – 2010 Greenpeace US Annual Report (page 3), Greenpeace describes its “victory” over Nestlé in a dispute regarding palm oil sourcing as one where the company was “shamed by millions of consumers who unleashed their outrage on the company through Facebook and Twitter.” I observed that social media campaign while it happened. Read about it here. The outrage, in what I came to call “The Kit Kat Incident,” to which Greenepeace refers was orchestrated by Greenpeace; much of it, at least, was not spontaneous on the part of those “millions of consumers.” Such actions do not constitute debate. Such actions constitute advocacy.
As I observed in a previous post, “If Greenpeace was not confrontational, would they be known for protest actions such as draping a banner over Mount Rushmore, or scaling the Canadian parliament building, or for disrupting a Nestlé shareholders meeting by rappelling down from the ceiling with leaflets and banners flying?”
Greenpeace is not a debating society and this point was driven home in a CNN interview with Kumi Naidoo, the Executive Director of Greenpeace International. In that May 2010 interview, Mr. Naidoo stated ”We’ve got lots of dialogue going on with a range of companies. Even with Nestlé we had been talking with them, but if talk does not deliver the results, we have to create the possibility for millions of people who care about the environment to send a clear message. Those [companies] that don’t have products that are sold to the public, the challenge there is slightly different, but when you have a company that sells a product directly to the global public you have a greater ability to leverage things more quickly.”
This type of philosophy is not based on open debate. This type of philosophy is based on coercion and the leadership of that coercion (“we have to create the possibility”).
So, come on Greenpeace. Give us a little credit. Don’t try to “nicewash” your image by telling us in your GRI report that you promote open debate. Perhaps then you might earn more points on the transparency rating that you are trying to earn by filing these reports.
Recently Greenpeace announced it’s corporate campaign against Facebook. The reason for the protest? Back in February of this year, Facebook announced that it will build a new server facility in Oregon, which will be powered by an electric utility that burns coal for power generation. This presents an interesting conundrum for Greenpeace, one that I haven’t seen raised elsewhere. How?
Well, Greenpeace has no compunction about using Facebook, when it suits them, as a social media battle space in their anti-corporate campaigns. A free social media battle space, mind you. For example, they used Facebook in this fashion extensively and especially well in The Kit Kat Incident (a protest action and boycott against Nestlé) about which I wrote on this blog. And, in a recent Forbes interview with Greenpeace online specialist Laura Kenyon, Jeremiah Owyang wrote that Greenpeace claims over 1 million Facebook supporters which Laura indicated that Greenpeace would call upon in future campaigns.
So, if Facebook doesn’t accede to Greenpeace’s energy usage demands, and bow to the Greenpeace corporate campaign launched against Facebook – ironically enough on Facebook itself, will Greenpeace call upon its Facebook supporters to boycott Facebook in the same way Greenpeace called upon Nestlé customers to boycott the Kit Kat bar?
Will 1 million Greenpeace supporters suddenly disappear from Facebook, leaving Greenpeace scurrying to find a new, and free, social media battle space for future anti-corporate campaigns?
As the Brits say . . . not bloody likely.
Hypocrisy lives.
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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