To the editor:
$250,976 salary for a one hour work week sounds great if you’re getting it. Not so great if you’re a taxpayer helping (sic) supply the money.
Who is this person and who does she work (sic) for? According to the last tax return I received from the Nature Conservancy (a 503-C3 private nonprofit), an individual is listed as making $250,976 for an average work week of one hour, that’s right one hour. There’s a total of 2-1/2 pages of salaries starting at $788,524.
Why the problem? Under revenue it’s listed government grants as being $108,446,526. Our tax dollars at work? They’ve also listed $64,565,923 in cash (non-interest bearing) checking account? Is this [one] (among others) of President Trump’s targets of wasteful spending?
Charley Burbank, Marshfield
That does sound outrageous and I was on hold, so I looked up NC’s most recent 990 form–2023. It took me 5 minutes to find out that there is no one working 1 hour (I believe that is how companies code for a volunteer) who earns anything. The CEO does earn a high salary–about$883k/yr and 14 other executives earn around a half million each and one pulls down almost $1 million. All are listed for 35 hours–i.e., a full-time job. It had $36 million (not $64m) in cash-non-interest bearing, but no mention of a checking account. Government grants were worth $126m not $108m. Where did you find that and other info you cited?
Mr. Burbank provided us with copies of the 990s from which his numbers came and we verified them. I don’t recall what year they were from or have them available at the moment, but the employee indicated as working 1 hour a week seemed to be a former high-level employee.