Petrelis Files

SF Open Hand's ED Pay 
Stays Near Quarter Million Mark

(Photo courtesy of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency.)

Yesterday, when I was looking at the financial info for NYC's God's Love We Deliver, a hot-meals program for people with AIDS and others, I checked out the same info for San Francisco's Project Open Hand (POH) agency, which also provides food services to PWAs.

The POH site has a page devoted to 20 important questions related to their work, and it talks about their 501c3 tax exemption from the IRS, but omits mention of the IRS 990 form it must file annually. However, on their About Us page they do post their latest IRS 990, and I laud them for making the most current filing available, but also call on them to make three years' worth of 990s for public inspection.

Tom Nolan, the executive director of POH, received $232,045 in pay for 2009, which is slightly less than the $248,200 he was compensated in 2008, and that was a huge jump up from his 2007 pay which was a relative paltry $184,585. Revenue for those respective years was $10.3M, $10.2M, and $10.9M.

Nice to see an AIDS Inc director sacrificing a small amount of his pay in these difficult economic times, but his take home salary is still sizable. In comparison at DC's Food and Friends, CEO Craig Shniderman's latest pay comes to $334,000, and NYC's God's Love We Deliver is compensating their executive director, Karen Pearl, a healthy $310,000. Clearly, the top honchos at these meals-on-wheels programs are not about to starve.

In the case of Nolan, I must point out that after working a forty-hour week at POH, he has so much time on his hands he is able to serve as chair of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency board.

I blogged about Nolan, his POH pay and service to the SFMTA last year, and he gave me a written explanation about the few hours he puts at the transit agency. Today, the secretary to the SFMTA board of directors, Roberta Boomer, told me on the phone that she spoke with Nolan about his time commitment to the agency, and the weekly hours remain the same as last year - way under ten hours.

The salaries of these and all executive directors at AIDS Inc and Gay Inc orgs, along with the most up-to-date IRS 990s, should be an integral part of community-wide discussions about the groups, their missions and stewardship of their dollars.