Hm. Though I'm skeptical it's really "talent" in the sense of purely meritocratic ability, you know? It seems cronyish. Why does a nonprofit actually need someo

Hm. Though I'm skeptical it's really "talent" in the sense of purely meritocratic ability, you know? It seems cronyish. Why does a nonprofit actually need someone who is "worth" 700k/year? Would that person be able to command that much in private industry? In theory, if they could legitimately pull down 700k from nonprofit work, this suggests they would be worth far _more_ in industry. The Wikimedia foundation does not oversee a fast growing startup. They need to maintain a website. Why does that need 200 staff and some of them pulling down 700k? The other thing is that nonprofits have a fundamental misalignment in product market fit. They are not selling a good to a customer, so the feedback loop is not tight. They have to convince donors of their value, fundamentally an ideological proposition in many ways, but the donors are not the consumers of the product. So there's an information asymmetry there. Of course I agree on all your points about corporates. But nonprofits get a special status -- both in terms of tax and in the eyes of the public -- so we hold them to a different standard.