In today’s post, I’ll show how you how Greenpeace USA is “bulking up” on executives and how those executives are claiming an increasing portion of the compensation pie. First, we’ll need some background information, but if you’ve read the other posts in this series you can skip the Background section and move on to Findings.
Background
Greenpeace is an American non-profit organization, and as such it is required to file annually a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service. The Form 990 is a tax return document providing information on a non-profit organization’s financial status. And because non-profit, tax-exempt organizations are essentially taxpayer supported, Form 990s are documents open for public review. How does one get a copy of a non-profit organization’s Form 990?
An organization’s Form 990 for any year may be obtained directly from the IRS, from the organization itself, or via intermediary organizations. One of those intermediaries is Guidestar.org, which catalogues and makes available non-profit organizations’ Form 990s. It was Guidestar that I used to obtain the financial information shown in today’s post.
We’ll get to the numbers in a moment, and believe me they’re very interesting. But in order to understand this analysis better, let me explain how Greenpeace USA is organized.
Greenpeace USA is essentially comprised 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. This corporation is a 501(c)(3) organization. What’s the difference between them?
Greenpeace, Inc. is the well-known, general kibbitzing and protest organization that one usually thinks of when the word “Greenpeace” is mentioned. This is the organization that oversees the folks who climb corporate headquarters buildings, bridges, national monuments, and who dress up as animals and then burst into annual meetings of shareholders.
Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is essentially a philanthropic foundation which funds much of Greenpeace, Inc.’s operation.
If you’d like to learn the difference between a (3) and a (4), please let Wikipedia explain, although an understanding of this difference is not necessary in order to enjoy the balance of this article.
What you should know, however, is how we’re defining “executive” in this article.
Definition
In Part VII of each Form 990, the organization is required to provide information on the “Compensation of Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees, Highest Compensated Employees, and Independent Contractors.” So, on that Part VII page what can be seen is the compensation for the “high mucky-mucks,” the “grand poopahs,” the “honchos” of the organization. For simplicity, let’s just call them the “executives.”
Findings
Greenpeace USA – Select Financial Information – 2008 and 2010
20082010Percentage Increase
Total Revenue$35.518 million$35.856 million< 1.0%
Total Salaries Paid$16.665 million$18.029 million8.2%
Total Executive Compensation$417,503$881,639111.0%
Number of Executives510100.0%
As I said above, I used Guidestar.org to retrieve the Form 990s which supplied the research used in today’s post. I examined the Form 990s for the years 2008 and 2010 for each Greenpeace corporation. On each of the Form 990s, I compared the categories of Total Revenue, Total Salaries Paid, Total Executive Compensation, and Number of Executives. Please note
Continue reading Greenpeace Rewards Executives at Expense of Rank & File
It seems that the more I write about Greenpeace executive compensation the more discoveries I make about Greenpeace executive compensation. Today’s post is about a Greenpeace pay raise that is 4.5 times the rate of inflation. Before I get to the details on this, as in the preceding articles in this series, I’ll set out a little background on the way Greenpeace is organized and on how I identified their compensation information.
Greenpeace US operates under two corporations, Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc. I obtained each organization’s publicly-available Form 990s (a non-profit organization tax return document filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)) from Guidestar.org, an organization that catalogues Form 990s of non-profits and makes them available for public viewing. The Greenpeace Form 990s for 2007 and 2008 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
Simple arithmetic shows that the amount of increase for 2008 was 17.0%.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2008 shows that the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 3.8%.
17% divided by 3.8% equals, rounded off, 4.5.
Thus, the Greenpeace CEO for 2008 received a raise that was 4.5 times the increase in the CPI, one of the measures used to calculate inflation.
IRS regulations say that non-profit organization salaries must classified as “reasonable compensation.” Of course, “reasonable” is open to interpretation. But as I’ve said in previous posts in this series, here in this discussion whether or not this increase is deemed appropriate depends largely on opinion.
You have your opinion, and mine is that an increase of nearly five times the rate of inflation for a non-profit organization salary is excessive, and especially inappropriate for 2008 when late in that year many people began hitting the ranks of the unemployed.
By the way, how much of a compensation increase did you receive in 2008?
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
My last post, Greenpeace Executive Salary in the Top 5%, made reference to the compensation of Greenpeace’s Executive Director, Mr. Philip Radford. In that article, I mentioned that I would be taking a look at Mr. Radford’s compensation level in terms of where his compensation appears on the scale of American income earners. Today we’ll discuss that.
As Executive Director (CEO), Mr. Radford leads the U.S. branch of Greenpeace. He heads two American Greenpeace corporations, Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc. (Please see my previous post, “Greenpeace Executive Salary Increase Soars Past Inflation,” for some details on each of these corporations.)
As a non-profit corporation, Greenpeace files annually a Form 990, the publicly-available tax return document that non-profit organizations are required to file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. After downloading the Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc. Form 990s from Guidestar.org, an organization that makes these documents available online, I found Mr. Radford’s 2009 and 2010 total compensation figures. (He began working for Greenpeace in 2009.) His compensation was as follows:
Fiscal 2009 Total Compensation – $125,627
Fiscal 2010 Total Compensation – $142,801
Now, as I said in my previous posts on this subject, at first glance these salaries may not seem excessive. But that is because they aren’t in a context. So, let’s put them in context and make them relative.
Per the above, for 2010 Mr. Radford saw an increase of 13.7%. However, it is noted that Mr. Radford started his present position with Greenpeace during April 2009, so the 2009 compensation figure is only for a partial year. Thus, I can’t compare his compensation increase in 2010 to the 2010 inflation rate.
But we can use the 2010 figure to see where this Executive Director’s compensation falls on the percentage scale of American income earners. Here’s that scale for 2010 which 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
You’ve heard about the “1% vs. the 99%.” This is the scale that’s used to make that comparison. For 2010, Mr. Radford’s $142,801 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 $142,801 per year falls into the top 6.8% of income earners for 2010. 6.8% rounds off to 7%.
So, in my last post, Greenpeace Executive Salary in the Top 5%, we saw that one other executive placed in the Top 5% of American income earners, while in today’s post we see that another Greenpeace executive places in the Top 7%. And in that last post we learned that Mr. Radford, in an October 2011 Greenpeace blog post, declared 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%, while Mr. Radford
Continue reading Another Greenpeace Executive Salary Near the Top
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.
One of the most popular articles here on Telofski.com is the post titled “Greenpeace CEO Makes ‘More’ Than Exxon CEO?” Based on a review of my site’s stats, it seems that many folks like to read about the compensation received by Greenpeace executives and officers. So, give the people what they want, right? Here’s another post about Greenpeace executive compensation.
Background
American non-profit organizations are required to file annually a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service. This document is a tax return giving details about the organization’s financial operation. Form 990s are documents open for public review. An organization’s Form 990 for any year may be obtained directly from the IRS, from the organization itself, or via intermediary organizations. One of those intermediaries is Guidestar.org, which catalogues and makes available non-profit organizations’ Form 990s. It was Guidestar that I used to obtain the financial information shown in today’s post. But before we get to the numbers, let’s get some organizational explanations out of the way first.
Greenpeace is essentially comprised of two separate corporations. One is Greenpeace, Inc. which is a 501(c)(4) organization. What does that mean? Let’s allow Wikipedia to explain:
“501(c)(4) organizations are generally civic leagues and other corporations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees with membership limited to a designated company or people in a particular municipality or neighborhood, and with net earnings devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes. 501(c)(4) organizations may lobby for legislation, and unlike 501(c)(3) organizations they may also participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as campaigning is not the organization’s primary purpose.”
Greenpeace, Inc. is the well-known, general kibbitzing and protest organization that one usually thinks of when the word “Greenpeace” is mentioned. This is the organization that oversees the folks who climb corporate headquarters buildings, bridges, national monuments, and who dress up as animals and then burst into annual meetings of shareholders.
The other Greenpeace corporation, which is not as well known, is Greenpeace Fund, Inc. This corporation is a 501(c)(3) organization. What does that mean? Again, let’s allow Wikipedia to explain.
“501(c)(3) exemptions apply to corporations, and any community chest, fund, cooperating association or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, to promote the arts, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.”
Both (3)’s and (4)’s are income tax-exempt organizations. Contributions to 501(c)(4)’s are not tax deductible for purposes of U.S. income tax, while contributions to 501(c)(3)’s are usually deductible. Consider that the next time you reach into your pocket to support Greenpeace.
Findings
Several of the executives from both Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc. work for each of the two corporations, drawing an executive salary from each organization. Executive compensation is detailed on Form 990s. I reviewed the Form 990s, obtained via Guidestar.org, for each of the two corporations
Continue reading Greenpeace Executive Salary Increase Soars Past Inflation
|
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 . . .
 |
Klout.com rates Richard as influential on the subject of activism. |
|
