So we all know that in the United States a large non-profit organization is typically run by a board of trustees or a single trustee (director). As top 'management' they have the authority to dictate their own salaries. This is a brief article about how two museums, created by the estate of Paul Getty have been manipulated to earn its trustees very large salaries. The article is insightful as to how non-profit organizations can be exploited.

http://www.truthdig.com/...to_a_piggy_bank_20120911/

Sad.

I think that when someone leaves an endowment of this nature in their will, their heirs (unless specifically excluded in the will) should have the legal authority to pursue civil action against the board of directors if it acts against the intent of the deceased. Paul Getty's memory should not be abused like this.

err I think whenever a non-profit is used to enrich the trustees and avoid corporate tax the government should pursue action to remove the status as non-profits

+100 PP :)

PP, that makes no sense. Removing the Getty Museums status as 990s would defeat the purpose of the museums and their endowment. Asserting criminal charges against their directors would be much more effective in that regard. There is nothing wrong with the museums.

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As a person who runs a npo, I say the directors need to be held accountable. I pledged to do my NPO at 0 wages. If that changes and I am to make a dime from the NPO it is my duty to make it clear to every stakeholder (government, public, user etc).

If the directors are profiting outside of their mandated wages (to avoid taxes especially) they need to fry!

I was kind of using the principle (not sure if it exists in US law but UK law) that you can only sue the directors of a company in very limited cases. Otherwise you just have to sue the company. If you have the power to prosecute the trustees, then I guess that makes sense as well. But who appoints the trustees? Are they responsible at all?

Enter Wikipedia:

"the midst of an investigation by the California Attorney General,[9] Munitz resigned in 2006 and was forced to "forgo his severance package of more than $2 million, and reimburse the Getty Trust for $250,000 after alleged improprieties including lavish expense account spending."["
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Paul_Getty_Trust

It appears that the California AG has taken action in the past against the Board/Director level for JPGT. As for the parking, I'm not really sure the parking is that much of a boon for the art institution with the largest endowment in the world at $4.2 billion. In fact, the interest on their endowment alone well exceeds the parking several times over.

This happens all the time - with Christian organizations as well. The metric to pay attention to is the ratio of donated dollars to dollars that reach the people being served. Analysis of this metric for all known charities is done fairly competently by the website charitynavigator.org

Charities are held to a lot higher standards. NPO's legally only have to have(In Canada, I believe but may be wrong) 5% Of their gross income directed towards a charitable cause. The rest can legally be allocated to administration fees like salaries, expenses etc