My Nonprofit Reviews

DoW pays their CEO about $500,000 per year as of 2017! No charity executive should be paid that much. The folks who do DoW's conservation work are not paid well. DoW spends over $4M just on printing (primarily) fundraising mailings. Their top contractors are all involved with fundraising. I get a mailing from DoW almost once a week; DoW's mailing are among the most wasteful I've seen; most offer expensive trinkets (bags, jackets, etc.); they use every fundraising gimmick in the book--fake surveys, fake certificates, calendars, stamps, sad photos of teddy bear like animals. They deliberately make it difficult to get off their mailing lists; they spend huge sums to buy marketing name lists. Their accounting blurs the lines between fundraising and conservation work. This has become mostly a marketing organization with benefits going to the CEO.

EDF pays its president more than the President of the United States; more than the Secretaries of Defense and Interior, combined. That's way too much for a charity, and a big chunk of the total donations. You don't have to take a vow of poverty, but leaders of charitable organizations shouldn't be in it for the big bucks and should not accept the big bucks. EDF is also very wasteful in mailing numerous fundraising solicitations to the same persons. Do they really need a NYC Park Avenue office!? Maybe EDF puts the welfare of EDF ahead of the welfare of the planet. However they do some good work too, just not as efficiently as they should.

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