Taking aim at the NRA’s high salaries

December 22, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

The Washington Post ran an interesting opinion column recently by Richard Feldman, a former lobbyist for the National Rifle Association who has become critical of the organization.

Feldman slams the NRA for eschewing all forms of compromise and taking extreme positions. He speculates that top NRA executives actually want to keep conflict over guns alive because it’s good for fundraising — and the personal bottom lines of the NRA’s top leaders. Feldman writes:

Harlon B. Carter, who created the modern NRA in the 1970s, earned about $70,000 a year (about $200,000 in today’s dollars) as executive vice president and was driven to meetings in the company Chevrolet. Wayne LaPierre, who currently sits upon the executive vice president throne, pocketed about $950,000 in 2005. The parking lot at the association’s twin-glass-towered headquarters off Interstate 66 in Virginia is filled with shiny new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes.

What’s unseemly about the stratospheric six-figure salaries flowing into NRA leadership wallets is that the cash comes from hundreds of thousands of members who are hard pressed to write $35 annual membership renewal checks or send an extra $10 or $20 to the NRA Political Victory Fund to protect their guns.

I got curious after reading those figures. Non-profit groups holding a 501 (c)(3) status are required to fill out a document called a Form 990 every year. It’s a detailed financial statement, and by law these groups are required to make it available to the public.

This means you can stop by the office of a non-profit group and ask to see its 990. You can also request a copy by mail, but this takes time, and the organization is allowed to charge you a “reasonable” fee for copying and mailing.

The rise of the web has made things a little easier. Several groups have come along that post 990s online. One of the best is Guidestar. (Free registration is required to look at material on Guidestar.)

One of the things the 990 lists is the organization’s top five salaries, so I pulled up the NRA’s most recent report.

It dates from 2004. At that time, LaPierre’s salary was listed at $633,823. (This is salary only and does not include other forms of compensation, such as health care.) The four salaries below him were all above $300,000, with two approaching $400,000.

That was three years ago. I think we can assume they’ve gone up since then.

The term “six-figure salary” can be a deceptive. The U.S. median income in 2006 was $48,200. In some regions of the country, you could live on that quite well; in others it would be a stretch. In Washington and its surrounding suburbs, where many non-profits are located, an executive “six-figure salary” in the low 100s would not be considered excessive. In the D.C. area, even a modest house in a marginal suburb now costs at least half a million dollars.

But $950,000? That’s excessive by non-profit standards anywhere. It might be acceptable in the corporate world, but the NRA isn’t the corporate world. It’s a non-profit group. People who work for non-profits forgo higher salaries for the less tangible benefits offered by public advocacy.

Non-profit organizations are closely regulated by the Internal Revenue Service. A standard rule is that excessive compensation is a red flag that something is not right. In fact, the IRS in August of 2004 launched an effort to crack down on exorbitant salaries in the non-profit world.

“We are concerned that some charities and private foundations are abusing their tax-exempt status by paying exorbitant compensation to their officers and others,” said Mark W. Everson, IRS commissioner at the time, in a press release.

I do not know what, if anything, ever became of that initiative. But looking at these NRA salaries, I can only conclude that more work needs to be done. I support the NRA’s right to promote its point of view, although I disagree with it. I simply see no reason why its top leaders should be permitted to loot a non-profit in the process.

Executive salaries of for-profit corporations are even more out of control. One of the ways that 501( c)(3) executives (like LaPierre) justify their high salaries is by comparing them to those of their “peers” in the for-profit world. Stockholders theoretically have the final say in management of the corporations that they “own,” but as a practical matter there has been nothing that investors have been able to do to rein in executive compensation in the eight figure range.

Of course the NRA management wants to keep gun controversies alive. It pays for them to keep telling the faithful that liberals want to confiscate their guns. But many non-profits, both liberal and conservative, are guilty of using scare tactics to raise money.

NRA donors must feel like they are getting their money’s worth, or they would stop giving. At least the people who give money to the NRA do so voluntarily. Some companies strong-arm their employees into giving to the executives’ favorite charities, like the United Way, and those charities have experienced some of the worst abuses. You may recall that back in the 1990’s the United Way’s CEO, William Aramony was convicted of looting that organization, but he was a piker by today’s standards. He stole only $1.2 million.

  • NRA isn’t the only example of top pay gone amuck. The Getty, a non-profit art institute, recently went through a series of scandals because its director traveled only first class, bought expensive cars, paid himself and friends for consultations, etc. He is no longer the head of the Getty and many of the Board members resigned.

    Edwards is right about the split in our society. The top tier truly think they are superior and deserve the bulk of profit/comfort/luxury. The rest of us are necessary evils.

  • A cynic might suggest that membership organizations exist for the sole purpose of stealing money from their members for the benefit of the organizers.

  • True that nonprofit salaries are typically not in line with corporate salaries but depending on the annual budget of said nonprofit salaries can be quite high (though still not in the same range if that employee was doing the exact same job for a private company.) A bit of “help your neighbor AND help yourself.”

    A CEO/President who runs a nonprofit with an annual budget of $1 million dollars will make much less than a CEO/President who runs a nonprofit with an annual budget of over $120 million – the annual budget of the NRA. For example, the salary range for exec staff in a nonprofit with an annual budget of only $15 million dollars is in the $1 -300,000/year range which puts the NRA salaries cited well within an acceptable range.

    In addition, every nonprofit uses individual donations and membership fees (if they have them) towards salary – it’s that general support money that is less restrictive and easiest to put towards those things no one wants to support – like rent, mailing costs, and yes, salaries.

  • They’re all modeled after the ultimate Republican wet dream come true, the Bush Administration.

  • Does the exec of a non-profit need to have the income of our top 1%?

    Theoretically, if it weren’t for the fact that such an income is highly out of line from what is quite well-to-do.

    Once you have a pure income of half a million dollars… You no longer even need the job to maintain a completely want-free status of living.

  • Well the salaries should enrage all NRA members. What angers me most about the NRA is that they claim all hunters under their wing. Just because I hunt doesn’t mean I think everyone should be able to own whatever gun they choose. Really? $950K? Damn.

  • All of this stirring is peanuts. Is this a deliberate diversion so we won’t pay any attention to the red cross and other government sanctioned donation collectors?
    If you don’t like the NRA then don’t belong. If you don’t like others being duped out
    of money then you can just add the NRA to a huge list of rip-offs starting with TV evangelists and continuing through a lot of political fund raising. I don’t have the energy to be angry with dumbos being ripped off due to their ignorance.

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