Petrelis Files

EQCA: 58% Revenue Drop;
Kors' Pay Rises to $261,000

Now that I know every tax exempt org has to make public their latest IRS 990 filing on the day they accept it from their accountant, I check out the sign-off date on recent 990s from key Gay Inc orgs. Since I knew Equality California and its related group signed their 990s on November 14 or 15 in recent years, today I emailed the head of the org, Geoff Kors, to inquire about their new 990s.

One my top concerns here is getting EQCA and EQCA Institute to meet the Kendell Standard, named for Kate Kendell at the National Center for Lesbian Rights and her recent gay sunshine move of posting her org's three most recent 990s on their site.

Here is Geoff's response:

The 990s for both EQCA and EQCAI were due on November 15th and were posted on the two respective websites yesterday. If you go to “About” in the top navigation bar and click on “About EQCA” you will see then under “Our Financial Figures” immediately after “Board of Directors” and before “Our Sponsors”. For EQCAI, to “About EQCAI” in the upper right hand corner of the website and they are listed under “Our Financials” immediately after “Our Work”. To make it easier, the link for EQCA is at: http://www.eqca.org/site/pp.asp?c=kuLRJ9MRKrH&b=6390643 and for EQCAI is at: http://www.eqcai.org/site/c.mtJYJbMKIoE/b.6390809/k.8B7A/990__2009.htm.

In the same location we provide a link directly to our pages on Guidestar where our 2006, 2007 and 2008 990s are, and have always been, posted for public review.

I spoke at length with the BAR today regarding the 990s, answering all of their questions and providing analysis. The story will be in this week’s edition. After you review the 990s, please feel free to send me any questions you may have. 

The EQCA site and Geoff are now recipients of much gay sunshine credit from me, for so quickly getting their two new 990s up to the web. I believe this is the first year they are turning on the fiscal sunshine, but I don't recall seeing any 990s on the EQCA site before today. It is laudable they are linking to recent 990s at Guide Star, but EQCA could do away with the links and simply meet the Kendell Standard.

So, what's of interest in the new 990s? For starters, at EQCA it looks like revenue plummeted 58%, from $15 million last year down to $6.3 million now.

Over at the EQCA Institute, the revenue drop was at 81%, declining from $9 million to only $1.7 million currently.

Regarding Geoff's salary, which last year was at $179,550, has now jumped to $261,471, which represents a 46% increase.

I believe one plausible explanation for the revenue drop is that in 2008 the coffers at EQCA swelled because of the No on 8 campaign. Speaking of which, we lost that battle, gay marriage rights were rejected by the voters, $45 million was spent on the campaign that rendered gays invisible while failing to lay down an education foundation with the message that "gay is good," and the chief architect of the campaign, Geoff, is still the head of EQCA.

He not only kept his job after the massive failure, on so many levels, and his compensation hasn't suffered, all the while running EQCA exactly the same way he did before the 2008 election. If there's any real democratic engagement by Geoff and his org - town halls, regular forums with the board, etc. - I've not seen it.