The last chapter in "Nonprofit Boards and Executive Contracts" covers the Supplemental Executive Retirement Plan, or SERP, an element of the employment contract that offers significant advantages to both the CEO and the board. For the CEO, the SERP allows for an individual to set aside, or defer,...
Museum staffs are unionizing like wildfire – what's to be done about it, and by whom? Three recent articles detail the new round of unionization in the nation's art museums. The Columbus Museum of Art, Mass MOCA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art are the more recent. Still,...
Employment contracts are communications between the Board and the CEO. They describe facts, amounts, consequences, conditions, and time periods. They can also convey sentiments – to wit, an expression by the board of its appreciation for and desire to retain their CEO. One aspect of...
Episode One: Severance Many of my clients, boards of nonprofit organizations, often object when I suggest offering their CEO an employment contract. Their responses are some variations on: "we've never had a contract," or, "we trust each other, there is no need for a contract" or,...
A DHR Survey and commentary from James Abruzzo, Managing Director, Global Nonprofit Practice The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated the performing arts industry. By mid-March 2020, throughout North America, all symphony, opera, ballet, modern dance and theater performances were cancelled, resulting in major economic losses to the...
The controversies over art museum directors’ compensation, particularly during the time of COVID-19, has led me to think more broadly about the topic of museums and ethics. In a recent NY Times article on the disparity of compensation between very highly compensated museum directors and relatively low paid...
The compensation packages of museum directors are drawing scrutiny as their institutions try to fill budget holes with cutbacks that have included layoffs and furloughs of lesser-paid staffers. As originally seen in The New York Times on August 18, 2020 Many of New York’s museum leaders have...
Nonprofit compensation committees often ask me, “Why should we offer severance to our incoming CEO; it protects the candidate, but what does it do for our organization?" And now they may ask, “What good did it do Fox; Bill O’Reilly had a severance agreement that...
The Plight of the White-Tie Worker By BLAIR TINDALL JULY 4, 200 That would be a lot in any case, but it's especially striking at a time when classical music finds itself on the ropes. For big American orchestras, audiences are declining, government and private donations have...
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a responsibility to the public to provide "fair and reasonable" compensation to its executives - and it is not doing a good job. Best practices call for a nonprofit board to hire an independent compensation consulting firm that compares the...
A recent article by Boston Globe Spotlight reporter featured my comments on the complexities of nonprofit CEO compensation. There are many times when a CEO is overpaid, and when that happens it is unreasonable and unfair and the IRS should step in; more importantly, a...
In my role as a nonprofit compensation consultant and contract negotiator, I am usually retained by CEO's or boards to negotiate multi-year year, complex employment contract. Sometimes, I get a request for advice that, if I have time, I respond to. As you can see...
According to a number of studies I have conducted over the years, nonprofit CEO contracts have longer durations than other industries. The majority began their current position over seven years ago and many things have changed since that first day: for one, new recruits are...
A recent ArtNet news article about the “whopping” compensation of Glenn Lowry, MOMA’s Director, quoted me as saying “It's a nonprofit but it's also a business. The board is paying him because they think he's worth it." Nonprofit executive compensation is a newsworthy issue. There are...
Executive Summary The nonprofit board’s most important decision is hiring or extending the contract of the CEO. And for the prospective or sitting CEO, there is no more important decision than either accepting the position or extending its term. Over the last 30 years I have been...
