Wednesday, March 07, 2007

HRC's Two IRS 990 Files: $30.3M Revenue, Former-Executive Director Made $221,917

I recently examined the latest IRS 990 tax return for National Public Radio and found quite a few hefty salaries and contributions to benefits' plans, and this got me thinking about the most current IRS 990 for the Human Rights Campaign Inc and the affiliated Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
Here are some basic numbers from the FY 2005 IRS 990 reports for the two HRC nonprofits, based in Washington.
What the gay community got in return for endowing HRC Inc with $23.7 in 2005 is open to question.
Both HRC Inc and the Foundation show the group paid then-executive director Cheryl Jacques a salary of $221,917 for her services, and contributed $28,849 to her benefits package.
To my eyes, these sums are damn impressive. Too bad the same can't be said for about HRC supposed accomplishment with the gay community's money.
Of course, I wish the HRC leaders made their IRS 990 reports available on their own site, as does NPR.

But the last thing HRC wants is for the community to read their tax report, since the group is not committed to fiscal transparency.

Anyone know how much Joe Solmonese is making? His salary won't show up on an HRC IRS 990 for another year, but I think the community should know what he's earning right now.
But we all know that is asking too much of an organization that can't even throw an occasional bone to piss-poor bloggers who tirelessly work to find straight GOP state reps in places like Wyoming, who stand up for gay equality, and the day after they make great speeches for us, hearing from bloggers, who also run up long-distance phone bills to generate AP wire stories singing the praises of the GOP friends in the Equality State.
Almost two weeks ago Dan Zwonitzer and Pat Childers took great risk speaking and voting in favor of gay equality. Sure would be nice for the well-endowed HRC to send a thank you note to them and toss some bucks to bloggers.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Micahel -

Our 990's are on our website and have been for some time. You can find them here:

http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=About_HRC

Please read what we posted about your outreach to the Wyoming legislators here:

http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=About_HRC&CONTENTID=35758&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm

Joe's salary is $225,000 and was made public the day he was hired.

Unknown said...

This is rich. Gay Democrat and HRC spokesman David Smith reads my blog and he's not pleased I overlooked HRC URL for its IRS 990s and he states what Solmonese's pay is.

Oops, I made two minor mistakes. There, David, I stand corrected.

Now, about the much larger messages I've made to HRC's p.r. department and Solmonese's assistant for the transcript of their interview with Zwonitizer, I've yet to receive a copy of it. I would think they'd want to parade the word of Solmonese and Dan on their site, but they can't be bothered to transcribe their radio shows.

Two hours. Once a week. HRC does not have the money nor the staff to transcribe two hours of their own talking heads and guests. Can't make money that way. You want to know what was said on the radio show? Pay up first, then listen. Guess even HRC must think their own words aren't worth writing up for people to read.

So HRC can't get the Zwonitzer transcript together, takes them almost two weeks to say a simply thank you to two courageous straight GOP Wyoming reps, they've said nothing about the release a day ago of the annual State Department report on human rights abuses, which heavily delves into gay and HIV matters, they issue a soul-less statement on the death of Bob Hattoy that had all the emotion of a goldfish's death notice, they misspelled my lesbian girlfriend Pam Spaulding's name in a meager introduction of "forced-at-gun-point" thanks to her and I for our joint work on Wyoming, they're facing renewed criticism from my gay conservative brother Andrew, and the communications chief is worried about me not posting his comment to my blog.

Methinks HRC doth operates in panic mode.

In a message dated 3/7/2007 8:45:37 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, David.M.Smith@hrc.org writes:
Why won't you post the one I submitted to you?
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld


----- Original Message -----
From: MPetrelis@aol.com
To: David.M.Smith
Sent: Wed Mar 07 23:41:31 2007
Subject: Re: where's my comment michael?

ask andrew sullivan to post your comments, or start your own blog.