Another story from The Star.
After Enron, Lord Black, cheating at exams , such a story doesn't get much traction...
Two prominent Canadian charities – Sick Kids Foundation and World Vision Canada – have admitted to using a discredited fundraising technique and are moving swiftly to clean up their act.
Each has been using commission-based techniques frowned upon in the charity world because they can lead to aggressive tactics. When canvassers get paid only if you donate, there's a tendency to embellish or even lie – anything to close the deal and sign up a donor to a monthly giving plan.
Both charities have long told the public and the federal regulator that only flat fees were paid to fundraisers who knocked on doors. The Star investigated and found commissions or "success payments" have been paid for years.
...
At Sick Kids Foundation the cost of management has almost doubled from just over $2 million a couple of years ago to $3.7 million in 2006.
Salaries are a big part of that. O'Mahoney is paid $612,000 a year and there are three vice-presidents each earning roughly $200,000 a year.
Those are unusually high salaries for a Canadian charity, particularly O'Mahoney's. The president of World Vision Canada, Dave Toycen, earns a salary of $175,000 to run a much larger organization that (unlike the Sick Kids Foundation which just raises funds) delivers services overseas and in Canada, and also fundraises.
O'Mahoney's salary is higher than that of the president and CEO of Sick Kids hospital, who is paid $563,061.56 to run the entire hospital.
Crooks can go on crooketeering; people have become blasé.
WW