Don't be a chump - Ask about the college president's salary next time you get pitched by your alumni fund

Non-profits aren’t what they used to be. Many colleges and universities get tons of money and waste most of it. Do you really want to give money to support exorbitant salaries and benefits of college and university presidents, vice presidents, and deans? Find out before you give what they make and use as a measure the salaries of US senators and congressmen ($165,200). In many cases it will be much higher.

In other articles, I will write about the waste, silliness, and inefficiencies in colleges and universities today. For now, we all need to pause before giving our money to support these places. The salaries of CEOs at many non-profits have gone up dramatically recently, mirroring what is happening in the corporate sector. When one questions such salaries in the corporate or non-profit worlds, you hear back about competition for the most talented leaders and the need to pay them the market rate. I am not going to comment on corporate CEO salaries, but it is very hard to believe that those in the non-profit world don’t have or shouldn’t have other motivations. At any rate, I personally have little interest in contributing to an institution that uses this kind of reasoning and that pays its executives ridiculous amounts of money. So my rule of thumb is to ask for the president’s salary (and I seldom hear back) and then compare it with those in Congress. It will come as quite a surprise.