They are willing to think horrible things about you because you are somehow a celebrity, or famous, when you are the same person you were when you started. We give up our privacy, our quiet lives, our private opinions on anything (because anything we say in public reflects on the organization we lead - I only got my own voice back in retirement).Īnd people question your integrity all the time, just because you are a public figure. It may sound glamorous, but it really is a drag if you do it all the time. That he uses that money to fly home on weekends from where ever it is that KA has him speaking during the week at a conference so he can do his laundry and go to the next education conference.

You can ignore that he gave up a quiet life he loved as a teacher and has no fixed home, and lives out of hotels, and never sees his friends for more than two weeks at a time, or really gets to enjoy a settled life. Now, you can be freaking petty about it, and be envious and jealous. You don't have to worry about KA's fiscal health, Sal's integrity, or what your money is going to. It also brings in volunteers and in-kind donations.Īre you starting to catch my drift? He makes his money back for the group, and then he essentially leverages probably a lion's share of the tens of millions of dollars of fundraising based on his outreach and name. Every one of those speaking engagements brings in more money in donations and grants. He is the person out there bringing in close to his salary in speaking fees every year (if you look at their tax returns). Stop being envious and certainly stop worrying that he's hurting the organization. Sal's negotiating 15,000 speaking fees at conferences is paying for his salary.

You think your $50 a year that you give to KA is paying for Sal's caviar. large major nonprofits with budgets in the tens of millions sometimes use a percentage from 1 to 2.5 percent.'Īnd you know, I was going to leave it at that, but after a couple days I'm going to say more.

This is at the low end of industry standard for a nonprofit this size.

Is the Salary of an Executive Director of a Non-Profit a Percentage of the Budget? As a former nonprofit administration consultant, let me settle this with metrics.

Sal khan ted talk