4 ms·

So yep, I'm not too concerned about this. ICANN aren't a great organisation, and they seem to mainly bring out new TLDs to get more money. ICANN is a non-profi

• pavlov 15y ago
  For comparison, the CEO of the American Red Cross has an annual salary of $500k. I don't think this is a relevant metric at all for judging a non-profit's goals or performance. There is a certain point where the organization has become so big or important that any person whom the stakeholders can trust to run it will command a high salary.
  • windsurfer 15y ago
    So as a stakeholder in a non-profit, I'd want the non-profit to be as efficient with money as possible... yet I'd want a a CEO that burns through way more money than he needs? Please explain.
    • tedunangst 15y ago
      Efficient is not strictly synonymous with cheap.
      • tptacek 15y ago
        It's not strictly synonymous with "expensive" either. If it correlates, it probably correlates in the direction of "cheap", if only marginally. And any way you slice it, "expensive" is synonymous with "expensive". Let's come up for air here and ask the simple question: do we believe we have better domain policy because we pay some guy at ICANN a 7-figure annual comp package? I don't believe that. Do you?
        • pavlov 15y ago
          Well, define "better domain policy"...? Due to its ARPANET origins, the Internet namespace was technically property of the United States. Obviously that situation had to change, or the other nearly 200 nations on the planet would have difficulty accepting the Internet as the true global network. The ICANN is necessarily a compromise between the interests of powerful nations. It's not reasonable to assume that it could be run completely differently from all the other global intergovernmental organizations. Most politicians don't consider Internet policy to be all that special compared to trade, foreign aid, patents and everything else that needs to be similarly balanced and negotiated. Hence, the head of the ICANN is someone who's acceptable to governments foremost.
        • tedunangst 15y ago
          I'm not really inclined to figure out what the appropriate compensation for ICANN's CEO is. My comment was not about ICANN in particular.
    • saucetenuto 15y ago
      I'm not the grandparent poster, but I think he's saying that executives skilled enough to run the Red Cross are motivated primarily by their salaries, and so those salaries have to be competitive with what the same highly-skilled exec could make in the private sector.
      • pasbesoin 15y ago
        I might argue that the situation is in part a matter of "like attracts like". I've you're going to get executive types to contribute and to encourage/force their workforces to contribute, you have to present them with an "executive" type interface. (If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... and plays golf like a duck...) My thoughts next turn to "hypocrisy". These are supposedly charity endeavors. But much of their activity -- fundraising activity, at least -- is just more status seeking and building and fraternizing. There, for me, lies the heart of the matter. When in the minds and/or actions of the top level participants, charity work is anything but. (I'm "on the outside" looking in, and perhaps I'm too cynical. I want to believe that people have more depth than this, and some individual acquaintances who travel in those circles sure seem to. But it makes me wonder.) No wonder they are not more effective. I'm not entirely comfortable with my comment, but I'll make it for the sake of the point about "like attracts like".
  • tptacek 15y ago
    Gail McGovern, the CEO of the American Red Cross, makes $995,000. Charity Navigator gives the Red Cross 3 of 4 stars. By contrast, Ophelia Dahl of the 4-star rated Partners in Health makes $86,000. PIH is a smaller organization than the Red Cross, but there are people who could argue that PIH is also more impactful. It's also the case that part of the reason the Red Cross is so much larger is that it's a key mission of the Red Cross to be larger. It's not unlikely that charities with highly-compensated CEOs share that trait. You pay a CEO a lot of money because their market value is high. What makes a manager-type CEO's market value high? Sales and financing skill. It's absolutely reasonable to point out and question the salary of a nonprofit's CEO.
    • derleth 15y ago
      > By contrast, Ophelia Dahl of the 4-star rated Partners in Health makes $86,000. That's still tens of thousands of dollars. Can you point to a CEO of a non-profit making less than $10k? Less than $1k?
      • Hoff 15y ago
        http://kittyrescueandadoption.org/how_to_help.html http://kittyrescueandadoption.org/how_to_help.html "The shelter depends entirely on the generosity of others to sustain our efforts. There are no paid personnel and all monies/donations are used to care for our cats. KRA is a non-profit 501 (C3) corporation and donations are tax-deductible."
      • r00fus 15y ago
        $86k in many places (say NYC or SFBay) is (just below) a living wage. Must all do-gooders be penniless?
        • c2 15y ago
          SFBay average is about 76K: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm Equating 86K a year to penniless is a statement very very far removed from reality.
        • 15y ago
• gnosis 15y ago
  If profit is their motive, why didn't they do this 20 years ago? That's 20 years of lost profit.
  • fbnt 15y ago
    Market timing. 20 years ago a top level domain wouldn't have been such a valuable asset.
  • fanf2 15y ago
    ICANN is less than 13 years old. The Internet only went fully commercial 16 years ago.
• wmeredith 15y ago
  ~1M a year!? That poor CEO...