EDITORIAL: Reverse Robin Hood — Making Big Money in RI Helping Out RI’s Poor
EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL: Reverse Robin Hood — Making Big Money in RI Helping Out RI’s Poor
The effort to collect money from both wealthy and average people and transferring it to poor folks is the job of the Foundation.
“A community foundation provides a link between philanthropy and the needs of a place,” writes the Foundation.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBut, there is now a reign of perversion.
That very community Foundation pays its CEO, Neil Steinberg, at a level that is out of whack with what other foundation heads make in the region and more than the heads of the largest foundations in the country.
Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation, one of the largest foundations in America, makes about a million dollars a year. According to tax documents, Steinberg received a compensation package of more than $1,100,000 in 2019 - the most recent year the documents are available.
In Rhode Island, Steinberg's role at the RI Foundation oversees an organization that is a fraction of the size of the Ford Foundation.
Steinberg's compensation has nearly tripled in just over a decade. His compensation started at a robust level -- over $300,000 -- eleven years ago.
Pew Research found in 2018, “Despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.”
In 2021, the labor market is weak as tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders are unemployed — hundreds of businesses have closed due to the pandemic and economic downturn.
To put Steinberg’s comp in some relationship to the average Rhode Islander, the median per capita income is $36,121. Steinberg, who is running a nonprofit focused on, among other things, serving the poor — is grabbing 30 times what the average Rhode Islander makes.
30 times.
While the average Rhode Islander has run in economic place for decades, Steinberg’s salary has exploded, ballooning from over $309,000 to $1.1 million during his tenure.
In service to the needy, Steinberg has rocketed to the 1% of the 1%.
The Ivy League-educated former Bank President during his tenure at the Foundation has received more than six million dollars in total compensation.
His salary is determined by the Board of the RI Foundation, which is headed by another former top banking exec, Polly Brooks Wall, who during her career may have lost perspective. She is a former Managing Director and Chief Credit Officer (Americas) for Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Capital, and Union Bank of Switzerland. Her father was a prominent Rhode Island banker and a former RI Foundation board chair.
The Rhode Island Foundation may wish to rethink its philosophy of lavishly rewarding its CEO. The Foundation is not a hedge fund. No one begrudges Steinberg a fair salary, but this is the anti-Robin Hood.
This is perverse.