Wilderness Society shortcomings, Howie Wolke Speaks Out

[mcds]

When I do a web search on Rey and the Wilderness Society, mostly I find cases where the WS has sued him. Then there is one link in which on one line he lists the WS as a client. That's odd, but I wouldn't really know what to make of it without further info.

I agree. It could be the case that Rey registered WS as a client for tactical reasons to 'discredit WS' to benefit timber interests, or Rey could have registered WS as a client in anticipation of a contract, or because he was soliciting work from WS. The website that publish the public records is considered by google to be a valid source of news.

And I don't care if he is friends with somebody in the environmental movement. Agreement on politics is not a mandatory requirement for my friends, and I think it is healthy to have friends who you disagree with.

I agree. But being friends means there is a much lower hurdle to a financial relationship than if they were not on speaking terms.

The split between many grassroots environmental groups and the national lobbying groups has been around for decades and much debated.

Just as our national Senators and Representatives ought to be responsive to the citizens, the national environmental groups, such as WS, ought to be responsive to the grassroots groups. Wolke claimed they are not. Parker's article on the Collaborative Environmental Campaign says as much. That is not enough for a conviction, but it warrants a closer look.

Nonetheless I come back to what I said above: deciding when compromise is appropriate is not a simple decision, IMHO.

Agreed. The Wilderness Act itself was an exercise in compromise.

Despite their problems, the national groups do have accomplishments to their names. That they decide to have a private group to consult with each other is no big deal. If there was no group, they would still call each other on the phone and talk, just like the smaller groups do all the time. That it has no internet presence might just mean that it is a pretty thin grouping and not very significant, not some hidden conspiracy.

Agreed. But again, Wolke claimed, and the Parker article substantiated, that the national environmental groups are exclusionary.

I'm sorry that I don't have the time to watch multiple videos. I don't much watch videos on trip reports here either. I find that videos take up too much time - when reading text I can scan and skip as I want. With a video, you don't know what you're missing if you do that. In this case, I watched the first half - 17 minutes! and the stuff I needed to see was on the second half? If it had been a transcript, I would have skipped forward and found it. I know that many people prefer videos these days, but I don't.

I agree, videos eat up time. Yet, you and I can skip ahead in a video by clicking on the time bar that is at the bottom of the 'viewer'. That works on youtube and vimeo. Presentation videos ought to have transcripts, and the transcripts ought to have links that advance the video to that point. This is quite feasible. The playlist in this video contains such links.

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You seem to me to be quite reasonable and experienced in politics, more so than me anyway. From what I understand of your posts here, I agree with you in a general way. The Wilderness Society has a long and respectable history. Wolke's claims and the little I've dug up definitely is not a sound basis for blacklisting WS. But it does suggest that some investigative journalism would reveal such a basis. Past performance is not a sufficient predictor of any organization's future. Anointment has too long of a half-life relative to the changes in players.

I just know that I'm not going to be donating money to a wilderness organization whose president is paid $400k, and whose executive compensation totals $1.2 million dollars: The Wilderness Society.. Heck, given their annual revenue, that means 5% of every dollar I'd contribute would go straight into the pockets of executives. Yeah, right.

[drm]

I just know that I'm not going to be donating money to a wilderness organization whose president is paid $400k, and whose executive compensation totals $1.2 million dollars: The Wilderness Society.. Heck, given their annual revenue, that means 5% of every dollar I'd contribute would go straight into the pockets of executives. Yeah, right.

Yeah, what would Aldo Leopold think of that. The background presumably is that in nonprofits, there is pressure to pay a lot to people who raise money. My guess here is that these executives are bringing in large donations, and so that compensation is seen as the cost of raising money. When I was running the Green Party's national office, there was a suggestion that an experienced fundraiser be hired and paid a lot more than anybody else in the organization (though still far less than the numbers you quote above for the WS) on the grounds that this person would raise enough to pay for it. That latter criteria did not sit well in an organization with a very egalitarian attitude and the idea did not get support. But it is the general trend in many nonprofits. Executives with the connections to bring in donations or grants are compensated - and if you won't compensate them that way, they will just go somewhere else where they will be. The mindset that envelopes you in Washington DC is that you can't change the way the world works and if you want to get anything done, you have to play by the rules as they are.

[mcds]

I looked at The Wilderness Society's form 990 for 2010, 2011, and 2012, as posted on their website. Executive compensation was actually much higher than indicated above, totaling about $2.1 million for 2010. See page 48 here:

http://wilderness.org/sites/default/fil ... rm_990.pdf

During those years, and for some time before, under William Meadows' presidency, TWS expenses had been exceeding revenues (primarily donations) by several million dollars every year. How red was that? In 2010, their staff numbered 224 (possible over count). In 2011 they reduced staff from 187 to 155. And William Meadows, the president of 15 years who was being paid $403k in 2010 (see above 990), announced his resignation, according to the subscription service E&E News, but viewable here.

TWS fiscal year starts on Oct 1st. Meadows remained president until March 2013. For the 5 months from Oct to March, he was paid $309k. Annualized, Meadows was being paid $741k. See page 11 in their 2012 form 990. For the remaining 7 months, the new president, Jamie Williams, was paid $205k, which annualizes to $351k.

Their 2013 forms covering Oct 1st 2013 to Sept 30th 2014 are due out in April 2015.

On top of paying $2.1 million in executive salaries (supposedly justified by the fundraising skills, as you say) they still have to hire fundraising firms to the tune of several million dollars per year.

Meadows is listed as a donor in their 2013 Annual report, not in the $100k+ category (16 donors), nor the $25k-100k category (35 donors), nor the $10k-25k (30 donors), but in the $1k-10k category. Given his 15 year tenure as TWS president, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year as a paycheck, millions over his tenure, is that giving back?

I'm not a CPA, this is just my 2 cents. Doesn't look good.