The top executive of the "non-profit" Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) is paid nearly a million dollars a year. Roxanne Spillett's compensation for doing "charity work" is listed at $972,908. [Source: CharityReports.bbb.org]Does that sound like a "non-profit" to you?
Or does it sound like a big, huge organization trying to fatten itself up?
It stinks. Spillett's salary was just under $600,000 a year and a half ago. She is something of a star in the charity world for have such a large salary, and a salary that grows rapidly every year.
Now consider this: The BGCA's finances are not in the best of shape. Considering that, shouldn't Ms. Spillett be charitable and reduce her own salary? After all, that's something the likes of Jan Schakowsky, Heather Steans, Joe Moore and Jim Ginderske and others would call for - if Ms. Spillett was an oil company executive. But because she works for a "non-profit," it is acceptable to the likes of Ginderske for the likes of Spillet to take a huge personal ever-growing windfall profit.
"It's for the kids" is just a cynical advertising phrase for a "non-profit" whose top executives are apparently profiting quite nicely.
This report by Bill Treanor, October 2007, sums it up well:
The Capitol Hill-financed juggernaut that has been the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for over two decades has stalled in the fast lane of national politics. As of late September, the BGCA was scheduled to receive from Congress $60 million in fiscal 2008, no small sum by any reckoning. But that’s down from its peak of $85 million in fiscal 2006. Last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the group that claims over 4.8 million youth served through 4,100 clubs received $70 million from the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). FULL ARTICLE at Youth Today...
So, BGCA's federal funding is down, and down significantly. Has that stopped Spillett from siphoning more and more money from BGCA into her own purse? Nope.
And here is where we may begin to understand the sudden, hyper-enthusiastic support that the Ginderske-Moore hydra has shown for BGCA. Moore and Ginderske, politicians both, are creatures in constant search for future political campaign donors. They're very eager to scratch Ms. Spillett's back for now. They will probably expect something in return from Spillet & Company down the road.
