Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - June 6, 2002
Michael Stoll, Of The Examiner Staff
Pat Christen, executive director of the $19 million-a-year San Francisco AIDS Foundation, made $207,000, plus benefits, a recently released 2000 tax return shows. The group will not say whether she got more this year, though it did say cuts from the top were under consideration this summer.
The AIDS Foundation will have to do something to cut spending. It earned less this year from its bicycle race, after it abandoned the California AIDS ride for a new event, AIDS LifeCycle. It expects revenues to grow next year, though.
Other groups say that withering government support and a growing client need in a sour economy means the higher-ups have to sacrifice.
"You'd think they would see the writing on the wall and freeze their salaries," Jim Illig, director of government relations at Project Open Hand, said of the AIDS Foundation. "They're already too high."
Tom Nolan, Project Open Hand's executive director, faced a $1.3 million shortfall for next year, out of a budget of $9 million. So he laid off six managers and canceled raises for all 150 employees. He told all managers to take a 5 percent pay cut. Then he hacked his own $115,000 salary by 10 percent.
Nolan's top priority: maintain services. The group delivered 200,000 meals to people with AIDS and HIV last year, and expects demand to jump to 380,000.
"Everyone's doing more for less," Nolan said. "And yet, I think there's a sense that we're all in it together."
Joanna Rinaldi, deputy director of the UCSF AIDS Health Project, cut her own salary and that of 16 other top managers by 5 percent, avoiding cuts for subordinates.
"You don't demonstrate leadership by cutting other people's salary," she said.
Federal funds through the Ryan White Care Act fell 6 percent this year, though The City is making up some of the difference.
Regardless, Christen's pay at the AIDS Foundation has been rising steadily for years, long ago surpassing the head of the Bay Area Goodwill, Police Chief Fred Lau, Superintendent of Schools Arlene Ackerman and Mayor Willie Brown.
Six-figure salaries are not limited to Christen. The top five AIDS Foundation employees under her received between $122,027 and $155,264. Add their $14,256 benefits, and the top six people made a grand total of $1,002,001 last year.
As with many other nonprofits, the foundation does its best in its tax return to downplay administrative costs -- it claims to spend only 4 percent on management. One trick is to break up Christen's salary into chunks -- she apparently spends 83 percent of her time engaged in program services, 12 percent of her time in fund-raising and just 5 percent of her time in management.
Many nonprofits offer qualified criticism of The City's most stable AIDS organization.
"Are they paid too much? Yes," said Michael Lauro, a member of the activist group Survive AIDS. "Are they the most responsible group in The City that provides things like lobbyists and advocacy that no one else does? The answer is also yes."
E-mail: mstoll@sfexaminer.com
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