Saving wolves, one CEO salary at a time

Thank you for the pen, Defenders of Wildlife. I know you want me to use it to fill out the accompanying donation card, and the windbreaker I would receive for a $15 donation seems like a steal. I wonder how you can send me a pen and a windbreaker for $15 and still have money left over to “stop the Palin bloodshed” and adopt a wolf pup in my name.
At first, I admit, I was a little miffed to find this rather elaborate package crammed into my mailbox, all the cardboard and plastic and paper and free pen, and I was about to say, “Forget it! I’m not sending money to an organization that spends it making obnoxious mailers.”
But you anticipated that. You put your counter-argument right on the back of your letter. Ninety percent of your fund raising goes to program costs, it says, and only 10 percent to marketing. So only $1.50 of my $15 will go toward all of your overhead and the next mailer, pen, windbreaker, I guess? And $13.50 will stop the Palin bloodshed and adopt a wolf pup in my name?
That sounds like a much better deal. Or do “program costs” include things other than wolves, like office space, paper clips, electricity bills, salaries?
I’m particularly curious about salaries because according to Charity Navigator, your CEO, Rodger Schlickeisen, made a schlick $268,671 in 2007. I’ve never been great at math, but if $13.50 saves a wolf pup, by my calculations Rodger’s salary could save 19,901 and a half wolf pups. And let’s see, your website says, “There are an estimated 7,000 to 11,200 wolves in Alaska and more than 5,000 in the lower 48 states.”
Hmm.
Oh look, now I’ve found your 2007 Form 990 (pdf), and it seems Rodger is not the only one enjoying the high life. Executive VP Jamie Rappaport Clark made $232,138, and Senior VP for Operations Charles Orasin made a cool $190,000. Operations must be more important than conservation because Senior VP for Conservation William Irwin only pulled in a measly $158,340.
Okay. How much of my $15 does a wolf get?
I know there’s an argument for necessity out there somewhere, that you and other charities must operate this way, but I have a hard time seeing a $268,000 salary as a necessity. (And I do realize that Rodger probably feels underpaid, because Wildlife Conservation Society CEO Steven E. Sanderson makes $628,642). It seems to me that when you build a lucrative bureaucracy to solve a problem, the bureaucracy becomes dependent on the problem. If we ever do save the wolves, how is Rodger going to make his house payment?
Thank you for the pen, Defenders of Wildlife.